UB Ports funding
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@cliffcoggin I am also donating. But i can't help but think this is virtue-signaling and I wish I could have avoided that - now I feel compelled to give my opinion. You haven't got straightforward answers because the answer is not straightforward. Just like @Moem I'd be glad to pay for UT. But I also believe it would crush the future of the OS if it was "mandatory". It would doom it forever. I've heard numerous times on this forum that we're trying to build a system that is NOT meant for an "ethical phone" - toting elite but rather for everyone wanting to escape mass surveillance, for one. Making UT paid-for would effectively do that. And for an open source project, losing users mean losing devs in the long run. I see that the project , and the separate dev team that compose it are in dire need of money. But making UT a service you pay for is not the way to fix this I believe. Infrastructure costs have to be able to rely on a steady flow of cash and there's no getting around a donation system. Maybe we do need to make the monthly goals more visible. It would certainly help. Now for the apps, just look at what happened with waydroid: people were hoping that sth could be made to work and paid what was needed. Some of these people most likely never donated for other UT aspects. If UT became paid-for, we might get some sort of expensive "secure phone" like some security companies are selling - only less reliable, and without the flexibility of a community that drive the OS depending on each members' separate interests.
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Patreon is one of the methods to donate that is given on the ubports.com donation page. According to Patreon, 158 patrons are giving $US 1,148 per month to the UBPorts Foundation. Sure, that's not going to pay a salary, but, to me, it is a significant amount of money toward running servers and infrastructure. However, I don't know if that's true, because I don't know what the operating costs are. I am blindly donating because I want to be supportive, not because I am trying to pay an amount that I think the software is worth to me. What are the operating costs? If that was clear, maybe more people would be likely to donate. A graphic popped into my head: a thermometer where the level in red is the annual cost, and the red turns green from the bottom up as donations come in.
The question of charging a fee for FOSS is an old one. It cannot be easily answered. There's a lot of philosophical debate about it in the history of FOSS. To me, FOSS is one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. A shining knight standing to face the history of industrial economies. I'm just saying that charging money doesn't just slowly smother UBPorts. It's no longer FOSS. It doesn't matter if you charge $US 10 or $US 1,000. It's no longer part of this amazing community of altruistic creators.
Do you want a fee to use Linux? Wikipedia? Every forum and website you use to troubleshoot the problem with that driver that doesn't quite work right in Linux in the latest new bare hardware you bought? When someone posts a solution to a problem in a forum, they do not charge money. They are freely giving their intellectual property. This is all part of this network economy that the Internet is enabling. To me, UBPorts is my best hope for a phone in this economy. I will do what I can to voluntarily give of my time and money.
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@emphrath well yes at some extent I can understand you arguing.
But a few aspects of Ubuntu Touch are unique in the OS world, and it therefore cant necessarily be compared to other projects that are out there.
- We need hardware to exist. That hardware evolves at a stunning pace - Android. Android 12 is out, and we do not even support all aspects of Android 9. That race is breahtaking for us, but whats the alternative?
- We need infrastructure and services. Its not like e.g. a project that just has a static webpage and publishes their software there.
- We are security-relevant. We need to keep up with security updates coming nearly every week (and right now we cannot do this at all since we fell out of 16.04 support). After all we cannot expose our users to this any longer.
We are more like a distribution, not a single, contained, self-paced OS project. In many many cases (maybe over 90%) we depend on upstreams that set the speed of development for us.
Yes, we cannot control what speed of development is healthy for UT. We instead need to chase, every day, every week, after trying to close the gap that constantly opens. Sometimes I feel paralyzed by realizing that the gap never closes, we seem to be only able to stop it opening more for some months. And then, something big happens, and with a big crack the gap starts moving again at rapid speed.
So, its obvious that normal OS rules do not apply to us: We repackage, publish and tweak/modify whats there, and we have no choice to follow those upstreams into whatever endeavour. Its a wicked fate.
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@aarontheissueguy I think this is a good idea and it can work. I was very impressed by the fundraising campaign netzpolitik.org ran from October to end of December. They managed to raise 1 Mio Euro (they had about 400K in October if I am not mistaken). I think this was successful because they made it clear (in their quarterly transparency reports) how much money the need to continue providing their service/product for free for one year without adds. It was impossible to visit their site and not seeing the amount still needed. If the foundation would come up with a clear goal and good justification for what the money is needed each year, I am convinced it would work. Specifically if certain budget items can be personalized (e.g. don't say software developer 0.5 FTE/y, but we do need XX$ per year to support Joe X to work on this and that and advance this and that feature for your phone). I am donating regularly ans would not mind paying a regular fee but I think this OS and it's updates as well as certain basic apps should remain free so that underprivileged users can continue to use it (I am specifically thinking of users in countries where a phones like this might be the only option to some kind of privacy in communication). We just need to motivate those who could contribute more to do so.
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Well guys, you heard Florian, we need to move to 20.04 now,
I propose that all users donate 10 € per month in this year 2022 so UBports can pay more developers, this is necessary, if you don't want to stop drinking 2 beers, ask your boss to work 2 extra hours, so that Ubuntu touch can move forward...
I have already changed the wrong date
Regards... -
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@domubpkm hahahaha thank you
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@domubpkm
Yes it was :winking_face: -
@rondarius the first official release of Ubuntu was in 2004 if I'm not mistaken.
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@domubpkm
Dang it, you are right, hahaha, sometimes time doesn't flow as fast as one think. -
Altruism is a fine concept but it is unrealistic to expect everything to be provided at no cost to oneself if it costs the developers money to provide it for you. I expect most of us would also like a free car and a free holiday every year, but only a fool would expect it to happen. The idea that Ubuntu Touch should be free of cost because of poverty in some parts of the world is a fine principle, but the reality is that UT is most widely used in the wealthy nations, the ones who can best afford to support it. I note that several contributors to this forum advertise that they have more than one phone, others show they own new phones costing hundreds of dollars/pounds/euros, others seem to treat phones as expendible. To my mind they are the people who can afford to pay a regular significant contribution to UB Ports.
The fact remains that UB Ports has been unable to keep up with developments since its inception four years ago because it does not have the resources to do so. That situation will not change unless more developers, or the money to pay for them, are taken on.
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@cliffcoggin said in UB Ports funding:
That situation will not change unless more developers, or the money to pay for them, are taken on.
More contribution whatever form it takes. Releasing the core team or the foundation from some task would be a good improvement.
Dalton already made it clear that sorting the tickets on Gitlab/Github is an important time consuming task.
Also there is community management (if we want to think like a company), being active on social networks, here on the forum, on Telegram and whatnot. -
@cliffcoggin
Hi,
People who are able to donate a significant amount of money are used to getting what they think they will get, otherwise it will be returned or claimed.What is not possible with donations, so they will be careful not to spend a lot of money in advance, but they want to try it out to form a satisfaction ranking, on the basis of which they decide what it is worth to you.
Only with hobbies and other passions or for donations to charities, the money plays a subordinate role.
It's just the way it is in this world, you can't deny it or change it.
Greetings Mario
