[TYPO3-hci] ...was inspiring people to slave, now lets talk turkey...

[JoH asenau]

> and I thought your main job is software-developer ;-)
>
> The question is for me - is it really FreeSoftware when there's some
> kind of tax on it?

Well - the GPL states clearly:
When we speak of ``free software'', we're talking about freedom, not price.
(Think of ``free speech'', not ``free beer''.)

> But why not stick a nice looking donate-Button right to the
> ExtensionManager-Download-Button? So people keep in mind that it made
> much work to develop each extension and the core system.

Because most of the people unfortunately don't pay after they got something
for free.
If they had to pay a small amount to get the latest version from any
official downloadserver, I guess most of them would pay.

This download fee would not be a real limited license though and the GPL
would enable them to use it for thousands of clients and offer a free
download for others. But it could be worth a try.

We discussed other payment models during the german marketing meeting.
These were my favourites:

There could be an official support hotline based on 0900-service (or
something similar in other countries). You can set up the service to be paid
after the caller agreed to and the amount per call can be up to 30 EU (not
sure about the maximum). Part of the money could be used to pay the
supporters and the service and the rest would be available for development.

You could use the same 0900-service as a donation hotline. You don't have to
invest time to do any kind of money transfer. Just dial the number and you
donate up to 30EU. Another option could be using paypal for donations.

There could be corporate teams offering paid development, so that
consultancies or end users could get special features they need just in
time. The client would get the results a few months before they are
published in the TER. (Something like that already worked for the new
commerce extension)

The major problem is: As soon as you start moving around some money, there
has to be a legal body due to fiscal reasons. Since there is only one legal
body for the moment, which is the T3-Association, there are only two
options:

1. The T3A agrees to setup these services as the official legal body
2. You have to incorporate new legal bodies (ideally one for each country)
that will be the official providers of these services

Any volunteers? :-)

Joey

-- 
Wenn man keine Ahnung hat: Einfach mal Fresse halten!
(If you have no clues: simply shut your knob sometimes!)
Dieter Nuhr, German comedian
openBC: http://www.cybercraft.de
T3 cookbook: http://www.typo3experts.com