The funding was divided in a series of perks, 610 people contributed and the final distribution for them (monetary-wise) was:
- Altruist: 1.5% (Thank you)
- Early adopter: 17.95% (LiClipse regular license -- no access to betas)
- Believer: 11.92% (LiClipse regular license -- access to tracker and betas)
- PyDev Knight: 23.48% (Get a vote in the PyDev tracker and contribute only to PyDev itself)
- Oracle: 22.61% (LiClipse perpetual license)
- Bronze Sponsor: 2.86% (10 regular licenses)
- Silver Sponsor: 19.68% (10 perpetual licenses)
I must say that the funding changed quite a bit. Initially there was no PyDev Knight perk (which is a perk targeted only towards PyDev, whereas the others are targeted at PyDev and LiClipse). So, this was the result of listening to feedback and adjusting the campaign (also, initially I didn't put enough details on PyDev and added to much emphasis on LiClipse -- which is something adjusted during the campaign).
There is also one thing I failed to check properly before : Paypal fees are not the same everywhere. Here in Brazil it's 7.4% + 0.3US$ (whereas in US it's 2.9%+0.3US$). So, in the end, 12% went to Paypal/Indiegogo, whereas I was planning something around 8% (and there are still taxes to pay, but this is something to be expected anyways, so, in the end the net result for me will be something as 73% -- but just because I have a company setup for that, had I done it as a person it'd be around 63% here in Brazil -- I just hope the government does use it's share properly -- grin).
I still think it was worth as a way for a one time funding as everything is already setup and to know if there's interest before starting it -- which I think is the main point of a crowdfunding campaign: discover if something is viable before delving into it (not that failing on a crowdfunding is always a sure sign that something won't work, but in this specific case, with a product that is already mature, and with an existing community, I think it's how I'd see it).
Also, during that process I've set up a new tracker at https://sw-brainwy.rhcloud.com for both PyDev and LiClipse. It's a tracker I had done for fun some time ago (and yes, I know it's one of the seven sins of a programmer), but as I'd have to customize any solution for what I want, I think it's nice. The idea is that anyone will be able to create tickets and comment on those, but for voting which tickets will be done next you'll have to become a PyDev Knight (I still haven't sent the access for existing PyDev Knights to vote, but I'll do it during the upcoming month -- as you can see, I still have some things to set up).
A note on the tracker: it's hosted on RedHat's OpenShift, and it's called Brainwy because that's the company I created to keep PyDev going :)
Mainly it's a Javascript-based tracker where it's easy to see the whole picture and move things around. If you're curious, you can use an offline version at https://sw-brainwy.rhcloud.com/demo/, because as a user in the PyDev/LiClipse trackers you won't really be able to move things around, just add ticket, comment on existing ones and vote (once you have a vote) -- you can use it as much as you want, but note that I don't plan on adding support to it or actually distributing it differently -- I've already enough supporting PyDev and LiClipse :)
All in all, it was definitely a good outcome and it was nice having so much support from so many people!
Thank you everyone!
Fabio
15 comments:
Are you planning to migrate existing issues from previous trackers? Correct me if I'm wrong but I think when you changed source forge's tracker to Aptana's one existing issues were not migrated. If the same happens now I'm afraid it does not send the right signal to users...
Hi Piotr,
I'm still evaluating that... actually, existing issues were migrated to Appcelerator's tracker, but I'm not sure I like the final result.
Here are some thoughts on that:
1. The owner of those issues would end up having to be a 'fake' account (something as username@sourceforge.net), which isn't very nice (on many occasions, the author is no longer accessible).
2. As the tracker in sourceforge is very 'simple', information isn't properly categorized nor sorted (basically, it's a mess because the tracker isn't really suited for handling the amount of information it contains), so, doing the migration myself would require quite some effort -- both in doing scripts for the conversion as sorting out and reorganizing tickets.
3. I think having the community report the issues it thinks are more important and put them in the new tracker can yield better results (and will definitely take less of my focus from development of PyDev itself).
4. If needed I can still go back to it and use it as a backlog (although I expect the community to point me what it thinks it's more important).
5. I'm not sure there are benefits in having a big backlog... (which is what I get by importing all the current issues to the tracker -- I'd rather skim through it and bring things I feel are likely more important).
Still, I'm open to changing my mind if you bring good arguments on the benefit of doing a bulk import on existing issues...
Cheers,
Fabio
Sounds fair. I understand you don't want to import from sf's tracker as it contains many outdated issues which are no longer valid. However, maybe you could import some interesting issues from Appcelerator's tracker which is more up to date?
Suggestion; stack overflow is great as long as there is a strictly technical question to ask but it does not allow for more chatty communication. I would propose taking a look at http://www.discourse.org/ or something similar and to establish communication channel where users might help each other.
Question; Is PyDev going to be a closed source from now on? If not are you planning to bring more people to the project?
I'm probably using both as a backlog (so, I'll probably skim through them and bring what I think is more important).
I think the place for more chatty communication would be http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pydev-code -- otherwise, I think stack overflow is a better solution: previously there was the PyDev forum, but there I think it had less visibility than stack overflow, and in the end I was the only one answering things... I'm probably still the one that answers most pydev-related stuff on stack overflow, but at least there there are other people that answer it there too :)
-- although if there's some shared install of discourse I think it could be a nice place to replace the pydev-code list (it seems that their site is currently not targeted at providing that).
Regarding PyDev, it'll remain open source as it always was... as for more people on the project, unfortunately I wasn't able to get to the higher funding levels (which would allow to pay for more people working on it), but being open source, there are contributors that pop up/disappear from time to time -- and everyone is always welcome to join the project and contribute through pull requests (still, I'll create a way for people to keep supporting it financially, so, based on that, if things turn out well, I may be able to get more people involved through financial contributions too).
Hi, I just want to say that the campaing would probably be more successful if there was a option to donate 5$, for us who use python occasionally for fun :(
Hey Fabio,
It is great that you are trying to crowd fund the development of pydev.
I donated 50 USD and I have pending pull request on github :) Money left aside I would like to help merge some request.
Hi Mijo Gračanin,
Thank you for the feedback. I'll actually have to put something up for continued PyDev support over the years, so, I'll put such an option there :)
Hi Nikola Borisov,
Thank you for the support! As for the pull request, I'm now active again -- and just added some comments in your pull request in github (thank you for the patch!)
Please help me,a trouble in eclipse pydev, I have post question in: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16727211/how-to-cancel-tip-in-eclipse
Thank You!
I really think the campaign was hurt by not just supporting PyDev. I think a lot of the early attention stalled because of the split focus on two things, one of which people didn't seem to care about much. I really think you might have been able to get 50k if it was all PyDev with lots of details from the beginning.
Lessons learned, and good job listening to feedback in the middle of the campaign.
Keep fighting the good fight!! Thanks for all the hard work.
Hi, my company would like to donate money to PyDev. Is it still possible?
Thanks.
Hi, my company would like to donate money to PyDev. Is it still possible?
Thanks.
Hi,
Yes, that's still possible (I'm actually on the process of setting things up in the homepage, but it'll still take a couple of weeks, if you'd like, you can e-mail me and I can pass you details on how to do that before that's all setup).
p.s.: my e-mail is fabiofz at gmail dot com.
This is cool!
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