So, you wonder how you can be paid. Mind the long post, and don't trip.
One of the biggest secrets of the Open Source Initiative is the power to pay individual developers who are involved on a project. The beauty, most of the old school of thought tend to believe, is that they don't have to pay anyone. Linux essentially has 200,000 free workers.
The problem with this concept is that on occasion, a great developer's time is needed on another project. They are paid for this project, which could be long-term, short-term, or somewhere between. In order to justify their concentration on an open source project, they must have money. This means donations, sales... any means possible so they can justify their time. Unfortunately, most people are short-sighted enough that they don't see the overall picture.
I can't say that I see it, either. However, I see more of it, as I've had to figure out how to keep people interested in developing on a project that hasn't seen anything significant in the way of source code for 2 years. Most of that's my fault. But one of the big issues is getting paid by working for free. Because this free work is voluntary, it's considered "volunteer" work.
Open source software should be anything but volunteer work. It should be *investment* of time, rather than simply *wasting* of time. What this means is that if anyone ever wants RHERP to fire off a few dollars, they're going to have to pay for it. In this case, the pay is called "sweat equity" and is one of the primary means through which anything worthwhile is built, especially that which is built from nothing. For that "sweat equity", I will be offering a share of the proceeds as follow:
Financial Consultants (2): Each of our two consultants will have 1% minimum of all profits at all levels, simply for being involved with the project. That will slide up to 15%, depending upon how vital their advice about handling finance becomes to the project. It will be individually tallied.
Project Manager (1): Our project manager will receive a 5% cut of all profits at all levels, flat-rate, at the moment that profit is made. Thus, if we make a sale two minutes after firing a project manager, that project manager will make nothing. Likewise, if the project manager was hired five minutes before a sale, then that PM will be paid. The PM's job is hard, but rest assured that I won't short anyone who has been doing their job, regardless of whether or not I like them. All project managers, for this reason, will also receive a 1% portion of any sales for one year after they leave the project, provided they contributed anything usable by the project.
Developers (2-6): Developers will make money based on the overall percentage of the code that they've donated to the project. They will also receive a bonus for any code they manage to remove. The developers will share a 40% portion of the project's proceeds from sales of the software, as well as from technical support. Developers will be paid per usable comment included, per block of code. Developers should reasonably be able to expect 5% to 20% of the profits from sales as a result.
Designers (1-2): Designers will be in charge of prettifying the interface, which is how many people will gauge the usability of the software (as opposed to the technical usability, which is ugly and which people don't generally want to star at for 8 hours a day). Therefore, designers can expect 5-10% of the profits from software sales.
Doc Writers (2-3): Document writers will write the help files and other documentation for the project, which will then be laid out and bound into a printed volume when we finally get a first release. Document writers can expect 15% to 40% of the profits from sales of the printed manual, depending upon contribution and value to the end user.
Beta Testers: Hey, free software isn't enough?
Project Admin: I will take a 5% portion of the entire project's profits, up to 20% depending upon my own performance ratings by those on the project.
Of all the remaining monies, 10% will be donated to SourceForge.net as gratitude for hosting and to help them offset the costs of running this server; 5% will go to the Electronic Freedom Foundation because I happen to like them, and the remainder will go into things that the project needs for expansion, such as hosting on an actual domain server under Linux, colocation fees, etc., as well as development hardware for building a high-speed transaction server (which will probably mean even more money for the project, if we can find the optimal balance of hardware to take the best advantage of our software). I do have some ideas on this, but I am resolved not to buy even one piece of equipment until we have enough to build 5 systems for 5 different levels of application.
Therefore, the amount that you put into the project should equate to what you get out of it. And if we all work together, we'll have the best project around.
Oh, and... the numbers of people in parentheses I have above are the numbers of people I've calculated to be necessary as a minimum to get us to a first beta within 18 months. That's the goal, folks.
And our software will help us divvy up the money as well.
Hope this answers a few questions.
Sincerely,
Ray Jenson
Project Founder
Red Heron Enterprise Resource Planner
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So, you wonder how you can be paid. Mind the long post, and don't trip.
One of the biggest secrets of the Open Source Initiative is the power to pay individual developers who are involved on a project. The beauty, most of the old school of thought tend to believe, is that they don't have to pay anyone. Linux essentially has 200,000 free workers.
The problem with this concept is that on occasion, a great developer's time is needed on another project. They are paid for this project, which could be long-term, short-term, or somewhere between. In order to justify their concentration on an open source project, they must have money. This means donations, sales... any means possible so they can justify their time. Unfortunately, most people are short-sighted enough that they don't see the overall picture.
I can't say that I see it, either. However, I see more of it, as I've had to figure out how to keep people interested in developing on a project that hasn't seen anything significant in the way of source code for 2 years. Most of that's my fault. But one of the big issues is getting paid by working for free. Because this free work is voluntary, it's considered "volunteer" work.
Open source software should be anything but volunteer work. It should be *investment* of time, rather than simply *wasting* of time. What this means is that if anyone ever wants RHERP to fire off a few dollars, they're going to have to pay for it. In this case, the pay is called "sweat equity" and is one of the primary means through which anything worthwhile is built, especially that which is built from nothing. For that "sweat equity", I will be offering a share of the proceeds as follow:
Financial Consultants (2): Each of our two consultants will have 1% minimum of all profits at all levels, simply for being involved with the project. That will slide up to 15%, depending upon how vital their advice about handling finance becomes to the project. It will be individually tallied.
Project Manager (1): Our project manager will receive a 5% cut of all profits at all levels, flat-rate, at the moment that profit is made. Thus, if we make a sale two minutes after firing a project manager, that project manager will make nothing. Likewise, if the project manager was hired five minutes before a sale, then that PM will be paid. The PM's job is hard, but rest assured that I won't short anyone who has been doing their job, regardless of whether or not I like them. All project managers, for this reason, will also receive a 1% portion of any sales for one year after they leave the project, provided they contributed anything usable by the project.
Developers (2-6): Developers will make money based on the overall percentage of the code that they've donated to the project. They will also receive a bonus for any code they manage to remove. The developers will share a 40% portion of the project's proceeds from sales of the software, as well as from technical support. Developers will be paid per usable comment included, per block of code. Developers should reasonably be able to expect 5% to 20% of the profits from sales as a result.
Designers (1-2): Designers will be in charge of prettifying the interface, which is how many people will gauge the usability of the software (as opposed to the technical usability, which is ugly and which people don't generally want to star at for 8 hours a day). Therefore, designers can expect 5-10% of the profits from software sales.
Doc Writers (2-3): Document writers will write the help files and other documentation for the project, which will then be laid out and bound into a printed volume when we finally get a first release. Document writers can expect 15% to 40% of the profits from sales of the printed manual, depending upon contribution and value to the end user.
Beta Testers: Hey, free software isn't enough?
Project Admin: I will take a 5% portion of the entire project's profits, up to 20% depending upon my own performance ratings by those on the project.
Of all the remaining monies, 10% will be donated to SourceForge.net as gratitude for hosting and to help them offset the costs of running this server; 5% will go to the Electronic Freedom Foundation because I happen to like them, and the remainder will go into things that the project needs for expansion, such as hosting on an actual domain server under Linux, colocation fees, etc., as well as development hardware for building a high-speed transaction server (which will probably mean even more money for the project, if we can find the optimal balance of hardware to take the best advantage of our software). I do have some ideas on this, but I am resolved not to buy even one piece of equipment until we have enough to build 5 systems for 5 different levels of application.
Therefore, the amount that you put into the project should equate to what you get out of it. And if we all work together, we'll have the best project around.
Oh, and... the numbers of people in parentheses I have above are the numbers of people I've calculated to be necessary as a minimum to get us to a first beta within 18 months. That's the goal, folks.
And our software will help us divvy up the money as well.
Hope this answers a few questions.
Sincerely,
Ray Jenson
Project Founder
Red Heron Enterprise Resource Planner