I think a few people have hit on the right idea, but overall isn’t the mistake yours?
Free money almost never helps. In fact, although I might be wrong, I can’t think of a single situation ever where free money has helped.
Money helps when it’s used as a tool and in this case, although I’m assuming it was an experiment of sorts, I fault the no strings attached aspect of the money. Throwing money at something never makes it better.
Instead an analysis of where the project is at, what it lacks, and most importantly, what it would need to better serve the benefactor should of been the first step, and then a conversation with the developers to make it clear what you were intending.
Money with strings would of been the way to go, perhaps some up front, and more upon completion, there’s a few ways it could of been done, but without a goal for the money it doesn’t surprise me that the money accomplished nothing.
Most people aren’t self-organizing. We’re just a pile of self-organized cells.
With 5000 bucks, you could probably run a decent, professional usability test. And since usability is precisely what a developer’s time can typically not buy, this would probably be a great investment for the money.
OSS needs time, not money. $5k not enough to hire someone for long enough to get him used to the project an then produce good code.
So, the best usage ever is: can some of the lead developers get a month or two off, without salary? If yes, he/they take the money, and work as much hours as they usually do for a living, on the project.
Normally they already have knowledge and motivation. They will spontaneously work on week-ends This will have an awesome effect on the project.
Often times Open Source projects would benefit from considering better/different hardware. A web based application is different in that is runs on a server, which will define the requirements relatively well. But, desktop applications, for example can require testing on many different operating systems and hardware.
At the very least, it seems reasonable to consider buying new machines or upgrading the computers the use. This is especially true if people are using computers that are given to them by their companies, which could presumably cause a licensing conflict if a relationship goes bad. I’ve always had pretty awesome employers so this never happened, but I still tried to make sure I kept my development of open source and personal projects separate just so there would never be any confusion that it was my time that was spent.
I say let it sit at ScrewTurn for a little while. Something will come of it, who says it needs to be spent right away. You have provided funds that might end up bailing them out when ads go low or when they need to anti up some cash.
You did and continue to do good stuff… be patient and don’t underestimate Dario’s ability to recognize when the time to use the money is right.
I think the money would be better used if you funded student projects. Students, like me, often have a bad time getting the a project going because we are bound to what universities wants. And universities only fund cientifical projects, like AI, math/physics simulations and so on (and the money is short). Me and some of my colleagues once wanted to start a project to build a PSP game, but we couldn’t get the college to buy us a development kit and sony do not have projects to make that avaible to students. We were overwhelmed with all the bureaucracy and we gave up on our project. Indie PC games do not get attention anymore, we might as well go after web 2.0 stuff.
I’m surprised they haven’t been able to use it towards a new MSDN subscription for another developer or something like that. Those things do cost money, and it would seem like that would be the perfect fit for your donation.
Or a purchase of additional hardware to build a continuous integration / test machine.
I’m starting my own open source code project. Just as soon as somebody gives me $5000 and tells me what sort of open source project I should be conducting with it. No promises that the project will ever actually get finished, you understand…
maybe u need to send it to a project that needs money, my suggestion though it may be outside your area of interest, Blender (blender.org) they need more money for future projects and developments and I’m sure they wouldn’t let it sit idle
Concerning the idea of spending the $5000 on marketing:
I recently founded an Open Source marketing company and we in fact experienced similar difficulties with community-driven OSS projects. They either have a hard time collecting donations which allow them to invest in marketing, or, if they do have a budget available, they find it hard to come to a conclusion as to how a marketing strategy should look like due to conflicting visions concerning positioning of the OSS project.
OSS companies can much easier allocate their budget for activities that raise the visibility of their Open Source software, plus: they do have a natural interest in a focused marketing strategy allowing them to position themselves well against competitors.
I’m pretty amazed that they don’t know how to spend it. Use it to pay for flights and hotel so that all the involved programmers can meet up and discuss the project. Meeting face to face always gets an amazing amount done, but perhaps this isn’t obvious to a team that is always distributed.
I think you should strongly suggest that they get drunk and high and code in that state, i used to program for days on instant coffee and beer(one beverage, beware insane fizzing, part of the fun.) when i was bored the code is rarely worse off at the end of it.
