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On 10/22/2015 6:24 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAMm+Lwjn6f5S3rw_XfevbZ2A0Bbwcf3LMpo8YAa8SwCumGQ3fg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">One of the main differences between Firefox and Thunderbird is that
while Firefox has a proven business model, Thunderbird does not. Open
Source software is good but it costs money to produce really good
product. So Firefox has a lot of paid developers, Thunderbird does
not.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Last night I made up a list of my version of the funding model for
Thunderbird in preparation for our meetings with MoFo in a week. It
is a critical issue in our relationship with Mozilla, as Thunderbird
needs to be a public benefit organization to justify coming under
the covering of MoFo.<br>
<br>
Let's understand first what I think are the core principles of who
we are that affect this:<br>
<ul>
<li>We specifically reject advertising of unrelated products and
services as a fund raising mechanism. This is THE model of the
rest of the internet, and not having advertising is a key
differentiator for Thunderbird.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The core Thunderbird itself needs to remain an open-source,
not-for-profit entity.<br>
</li>
</ul>
Within these constraints, here are some funding possibilities:<br>
<br>
1) Contributions from users. Long-term, we need to develop a
strong user organization with dues-paying members. Although
initially we might ask for a pure donation to sustain Thunderbird, I
think that we need to offer specific benefits to members as well.
What those benefits are is a separate thread. You may notice
comments about registering "Thundernest" as a name, this is intended
as the name for the user organization (which we'll probably just
call "The Nest".)<br>
<br>
2) Major donations from organizations supporting the core values
that Thunderbird promotes, or benefiting from the use or
distribution of Thunderbird.<br>
<br>
3) Referral fees for related services. Currently we receive
referral fees from specific vendors offered as email providers, and
we should continue and expand this practice.<br>
<br>
4) Addon Marketplace. We really need to work with our addon
authors to make the development of addons financially viable, by
offering pay versions of addons. This would benefit not only the
addon authors, but really help the users by making addons
sustainable. Thunderbird could also earn a commission as a
percentage of those sales. (As a side concept, we could offer free
access to addons as a Netflix-like benefit to members of
Thundernest, with a corresponding compensation to addon authors from
member dues).<br>
<br>
5) [Indirect: Certified support partners offering level 3
support]. LibreOffice and their parent TDF have an interesting
model, where they certify support providers, requiring them to offer
"Level 3" support. What that means is that certified support
providers must provide partial funding to a core developer who is
capable of fixing the bugs that are critical to their customers.
Practically that means that the core foundation is not responsible
for fixing core bugs, they expect that from their certified support
providers instead. Combining that with the idea that their
distribution partners (Redhat and Collabora) provide most feature
development, the core foundation is not primarily responsible for
moving the code forward! I don't think we can or should go quite
that far, but we could incorporate some of their ideas.<br>
<br>
Of these methods, 3), 4) and 5) are already partially functioning in
a nascent form, we need though to nurture and formalize them to
increase their scale. 1) and 2) are the primary goals of the
upcoming MoFo meetings.<br>
<br>
As usual, comments are welcome. Even more welcome would be offers to
play a major role in developing any of these areas.<br>
<br>
:rkent<br>
<br>
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