[Kamailio-Users] project foundation

[Daniel-Constantin Mierla]

Hello,

On 08/13/08 03:57, Alex Balashov wrote:
> Daniel-Constantin Mierla wrote:
>
>   
>> On 08/12/08 20:47, Alex Balashov wrote:
>>     
>>> Do you have a general sense of the general price range in which the 
>>> dues for associate members will fall?
>>>
>>>       
>> a quick operational expenses estimation for the first year brought up 
>> the figure of ~3000Euro, that includes the expenses for creating the 
>> foundation, two hosted servers (one main, one backup), domain names and 
>> trademark registrations. The costs regarding TM registration expenses 
>> (US&EU) are not yet very clear to me, maybe someone can shed some light 
>> if he/she did it recently.
>>
>> What will be extra will be used to pay seasonly some admin to keep the 
>> servers up to date and secure, support events about project.
>>
>> Based on above figures, the membership fees should be like:
>> - 100Euro/year for individual members
>> - 500Euro/year for companies
>>     
>
> That's high.  It's actually a rather bad figure, psychologically, in the 
> sense that it is too high for some very small companies (some of the 
> ones most enthusiastic about the use of OpenSER) to be able to bear 
> (believe me, in the up-and-down, feast-or-famine that is the one or 
> two-man show consulting business, $62 USD/mo, which is what EU500/year 
> works out to, is a serious expense to be carefully controlled).  And for 
> more established to mid-size companies, while easily affordable, it is 
> not a sum they would deem worthwhile to pay to be a member of some 
> foundation of something that is fundamentally free.  They'd much rather 
> just leave it to everyone else to support it.  It's a lot like the 
> prisoner's dilemma.
>
> Personally, I think you should make it EU25/year for individuals and 
> EU100/year for companies.  You'll get a lot more contributing members 
> that way, since that is an amount that, from a psychological 
> perspective, many many more people would be willing to pony up. 
> ("$12/mo?  Sure, whatever.")
>
> You should also make sure that you allow the option of paying monthly 
> instead of collecting the dues up-front.  This gets you a recurring - if 
> amortised - income stream that you can count on more, and it further 
> greatly increases the amount of people willing to pay, because 
> $10-$20/mo has a lot less psychological impact than $150, "RIGHT NOW!"
>
> I cannot speak for the European dimension of the community, but I can 
> say that Americans, at least, are generally very reluctant to part with 
> nontrivial sums of money, even for things that they theoretically 
> support and wholeheartedly endorse conceptually.  It is best to find 
> ways to diffuse the issue by making the amounts small but steady, rather 
> than large and thought-provoking.
>   
making a difference between small, medium or large companies will make 
things evolve heavily in the beginning. I am sure there will be updates 
and differences in time if there is interest and members get to that 
conclusion. Now we work on creating the root of this foundation, so we 
can get members that work on enhancing the environment around it.

Also is hard to evaluate properly the size of the company. We have been 
looking at other foundations of open source projects, investigating the 
reasons behind the fees, overload of doing monthly/yearly/long term 
subscriptions/management.

A company can participate as individual member by delegating a person to 
represent and get listed there. We look to keep things simple for now, 
without much administrative load that will make the expenses increase. 
Practically, board members just volunteer by now to do the job, the 
income will be used for supporting the infrastructure -- the companies 
that provide the two servers now, they sponsor at least 500Eur per year 
each.

The figures try to be affordable even for small companies, by 
individuals. Of course, nothing is nailed down, these discussions shall 
get us to a point where we have the results most of us agree and then 
proceed.

Cheers,
Daniel

> -- Alex
>
>   

-- 
Daniel-Constantin Mierla
http://www.asipto.com