Re: Funding software development?

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Ove Kaaven wrote:

> > Okay, I see that they promised:
> > 
> > * Release of Direct3D code under the AFPL -- was this done?
> 
> Yes, there's a public CVS; however, Alexandre doesn't seem to want this,
> as he thinks having non-free sources available removes the incentive for
> the creation of free sources, so don't put too much weight on this point.

If the code is freely available, I'd say that counts.  Does it reduce the 
incentive to write fully-free alternatives?  Perhaps.  However, it also 
increases the incentive for users to subscribe, as they can try the code 
and decide for themselves whether the quality of the work in question is 
worth paying to support...

In my mind, it's better to make it freely available under a restricted 
license than to keep the code entirely hidden and just make claims about 
how great it is.  It's less like vaporware this way.

> > * Release of DirectDraw code under the Wine (X11) license -- was this done?
> 
> Yes.

Should I assume it was incorporated into the standard Wine codebase, then?

> > * Release of all Wine code after a "set number of users" have subscribed to 
> >   their service.
> > 
> > If they didn't do either of the first two releases as described, then they 
> > have clearly broken their promise.  If they followed through on just the 
> > first two, but not the last part, from the above message alone, I can't say 
> > that they've broken a promise.  That's because they've got a loophole in 
> > the "set number" -- they didn't specify the number.  (Did they specify a 
> > particular number later?)
> 
> The number was 20000.

That's good to know.  When was this first stated publicly?

> > It's possible that they intend to follow through on the third part of this 
> > promise, and they never reached their initial goal for subscriptions.  This 
> > would be legitimate, but they ought to make it possible for the community 
> > to verify this.
> 
> I suppose.

It's a matter of trust.  People may give you the benefit of the doubt for a 
while (and it sounds like you had the benefit of the doubt for maybe a year 
or so), but eventually people start to get suspicious.  They assume that 
someone ELSE must have subscribed (even if they didn't themselves) and that 
surely it can't possibly have taken this long to reach the goal.  Then they 
start to convince themselves that they've been played, and that there was 
never any intent to follow through on the original promise.  It's not good 
for anyone if this happens.

From what I've been hearing, it sounds like this is what's happened -- 
after over a year of not seeing the code released, people seem to have lost 
faith that Transgaming would do the right thing, and have been getting more 
and more hostile towards Transgaming's business model.  Chances are nobody 
would be complaining about your business model if it took 6 months to reach 
20,000 subscribers and then all the code was getting released from that 
point on.  Allow a year ot two to pass, and people get less trusting when 
they haven't seen any indication of follow-through.

> > If they want any trust from the community on follow-through, here what they 
> > should have done:
> > 
> > * Make a public commitment as to the EXACT minimum number of subscriptions 
> >   are necessary (1) for the initial release and (2) for ongoing release of 
> >   later patches.
> 
> Both numbers are 20000.

That's good to know.  I gather you work for Transgaming yourself?  Is this 
an "official" statement, or would that have to come from Gavriel State?  
Did he make an official statement about this number in the past?

> > * Keep open books on the number of subscriptions, so anyone can check at 
> >   any time how near or far from the mark the number is.  (Possibly list the 
> >   individual subscribers for verification, but this might have implications 
> >   for subscriber privacy.)
> 
> Admittedly, the number of subscriptions was kept secret while it was
> "depressingly" low, probably because of the negative PR effect publishing
> this low number would have. But the president revealed the number a couple
> of months ago as around 3000. The numbers are steadily growing now, but
> it's still basically in that ballpark.

I can't say I'm surprised.  Like I said before, people are addicted to 
"free beer", whatever they may claim.  It's unfortunate, but not atypical.

But this is part of the trap, and why you want as much transparency as 
possible in this process.  Because everyone assumes that someone else will 
pick up the slack, for the most part nobody does.  If people see how dismal 
the numbers are compared to the goal, some might be inspired to chip in and 
do their part by subscribing.  Others might at least be mollified that it's 
still going to take some time to reach the goal, and realize that's why the 
code hasn't been released yet.

Without transparency, sheer passage of time with no evident change tends to 
lead to distrust, which is a bad thing.  With transparency, it might take 
longer to reach that level of distrust, though it could still happen.

I would suggest that Transgaming place a prominent counter, updated in real 
time if someone new subscribes (so they see it's legit), along with the 
goal number, on the company's homepage.  This might lend some sense of 
accountability to the situation (even if the numbers aren't audited and the 
follow-through can't be enforced) and help people be able to form realistic 
expectations about how long it's really going to take to meet the goal.

To go a step further, Transgaming could even keep track of old numbers, and 
be able to draw a graph of the subscriber counts over time -- after all, a 
picture is worth a thousand words, right?  (I would put the counter and 
goal number on the front page, but not the graph -- put that on a link.)

This is just a thought.  But if Transgaming did this, they might regain 
some of the trust that seems to have been lost after the time period for 
the benefit of the doubt evidently expired for some people...

> > * Follow through with the code release when the threshold is met.
> 
> The threshold is still a long way off. The LGPL didn't exactly increase
> the incentive for continuing to submit code to Wine before reaching the
> subscription goals, although such releases will still happen sometimes.

I'm assuming that if and when the subscription goals are met, Transgaming 
would release the code for use under X11 and LGPL licenses, both?  It seems 
valid, in principle.

But if the preconditions have never been met (not enough subscribers), then 
nobody can legitimately argue that follow-through is lacking.  Making the 
preconditions more transparent is the best way to ensure that everybody 
understands the situation...

Deven