DeleD Community Edition

[Grandmaster B]

mySQL also have a commercial and a open source version of their database. This is not a bad idea.

[adr]

Not sure how much deled spends, but I would have to say $30 a month for storage, bandwidth, and upkeep. Thats around $360 a year, but you also have to take in off months or years where no one buys the linces. Pluse I would think deled would still like to make a little money off it for being the owner and founder of the product... or I would anyways if I was software writer.


Or have just one lince, and maybe charge a monthly fee of .. idk... $1-5 to get the most "open sorc" updates? That'll help with both upkeep cost and maybe add a little more back to the commuity with contest prizes.

Aka, at $5 a month for the updates to pay back the $360 would only take 6 people and any people plus is green for the commuity to use for contest (and maybe 5% for the deled team?) (Also, I mean the most up to date updates, other wise they turn free after 2 month?)

So for example:
20 ppl did the updates at $5, thats $1,200 a year - the $360 = $840 divid by 4 contest = $210 cast prize for the winner of any of the contest (or $200 and the $40 goes back to the deled team for software use.)

[Starnick]

That sorta defeats the purpose of open source, if you have to pay for the "latest" source updates.

The mySQL idea I think has more merits, but isn't the idea of not having enough time to develop the PRO version the whole reason for releasing deled open source? If that's the case, I'd see the free open source version having eventually more updates/features than the PRO version.

[adr]

[quote="Starnick"]That sorta defeats the purpose of open source, if you have to pay for the "latest" source updates.

The mySQL idea I think has more merits, but isn't the idea of not having enough time to develop the PRO version the whole reason for releasing deled open source? If that's the case, I'd see the free open source version having eventually more updates/features than the PRO version.[/quote]

Not really, all open source means is your letting other people work on your code. A lot of them go free due to own rights cuase the "owner" of the project can't just go out and send people that are working on it money, so they go free.

So my idea would sorta take that into account by in a way allowing people that work on the code to have free updates. This would get people more involved with the code and not want to wait 2 months just for some sorta old update while the next build would have something they want. So they would tend to spend or want to work with to help get that feature inside faster and have the free updates to it.

**Note, this is just a setup, all cost or amount of time to pay can change**

Also, I never said anything about a pro version- just a pro linces. The "pro" linces would let user have more freedom vers the free one. What that would be, I'm not sure yet.

[Starnick]

There'd be riots if large open source projects like Ogre or Irrlicht forced you to pay to get access to their code repos, it's not common.

And if you have to pay for a license where there's a version that doesn't even exist...then that's even worse. "More freedom?" in this case just means access to code that is supposedly open, which is less freedom.

Now costs are a problem, but if they're going to make deled open source - either don't do it due to costs, or go all the way. Taking the middle ground and still trying to make money off of it probably isn't going to do well for either concerns (make money, and increase development). Except maybe among those already here who would've already donated...but I doubt any external developers.

Donations to keep up the hosting is a good idea, but Delgine can always go the route of Ambiera/Irrlicht. Where the main product (the irrlicht engine, some of the tools) are opensource/free, but there are premium add ons developed by the main developers which are not open source/free. Something similar I could see be done with plugins perhaps (so maybe not have the Torque plugin made free?).

Of course, the possibilities for plugins would be much greater if you could do more with them (most of them are just importer/exporter addons). Anyways if you want to make money, do it through the addons, not the core project that is intended to be open source.

[adr]

Haha, don't get upset with me Starnick. I'm just trying to get people into thinking about it more .

I'm not sure about any of the ideas that I came up with. They're just ideas to help (I hope) grow the community and to see the project move a little faster.

I'm also looking at it on the other side, too. I know the cost of setting up things and making sure they are running 100%. Plus I like to see more people here, so having contest where you can win something nice would bring in all sorts of people, or if nothing, get more people inv. and looking at what deled really needs to make thos grand scenes to win! I don't just mean new people, I also mean the "grand" people that know the program inside and out. Those people will want to help more to if they are comming to the site more.

Downside to donations is, unless people have a need to, they wont... thats just human thinking being drove there sadly.

Anyways, I'm not sure about you, but one-five dollars for updates is a perty sweat for having contest where you can win something to. (Just look at the contest threads we've had and you'll see what I mean.) I'm not saying the deled team has to get any of this money; it'll just go to the community bank to help run everything. Aka everything would be run by the community, not the deled team.

[Starnick]

I'm coming at this from a *developer* point of view, and from someone who's worked with open source projects. This has nothing to do with being a PRO user, I'm interested in maybe furthering the code development.

Your latest post makes me think that something wasn't articulated, where "if you work on it, it's free, if you don't then you need to pay a donation for newest updates".

As a developer who's looking for an open source project, I'm not going to be interested if I have to pay money to see the code. But that doesn't sound like what you're saying, its the end user who has to pay this fee. Big big difference.

I don't know how that would even work to be honest, because if the code's free to develop in, there's nothing stopping you from just downloading it and compiling (and using it) yourself. Unless if you only have certain developers access to the code, and the code itself is private.

But that's not open source - it's still closed source with volunteers helping out the delgine team.

To me, the idea of fees for contest usage is a totally separate issue, and is more of a fundraiser than anything. E.g. collect a fee to enter, first prize is a % of fees collected, rest goes to paying down hosting costs.

I'm not trying to be mean or anything, I'm just saying that if they choose to go open source, don't have gimmicks attached to it. Stuff like that probably will build a bad reputation, which is bad when you want to attract a lot of people to the project. Also I'm not saying fund raising initiatives are a bad idea, just don't tie it with code development.

[trucker2000]

Sorry guys, been busy with other things lately so haven't been following this thread as closely as I should.

[Starnick]

Yeah, open source hosting is free and readily available. The real question is what about the site and forums hosting.

[adr]

Also, I for vote BSD or GPL, both are nice....

Heres a example of a BSD one:
http://www.panda3d.org/license.php

Hmm... idk, unless the website supports ads to help pay a little off? I mean we could turn to a free web hosting, but you lose your domain name for a silly one...

[Paul-Jan]

We've put aside enough cash for 5 years of continued webhosting for delgine.com from the past PRO sales, so that's basically covered. If project popularity goes through the roof and bandwidth becomes an issue we'll figure something out then and there...

@adr: thanks for the creative input, it's nice to see a discussion brew up like that. However, be assured that the DeleD sources are definitely going to be 100% free.

@Starnick: I like the idea of fundraisers for contests, but I'm not sure how much that "donation" button in sourceforge gets clicked for any project. It all depends on how popular we can make the project. If we can get some people with people/marketing skills on the team to talk to sponsors, and have enough internet presence for the sponsors to actually know DeleD to begin with, direct sponsorships would be a way to facilitate contests. We obviously need more than just developers .

Now I'm off to compare the licenses once more, and make a final decision on which one to use. Oooh, the tension.

[G_Freeman]

Has there been a final decision made yet regarding the choice of a license?

(can't find license info on SF nor the SVN repo: the files COPYING.txt and readme.txt seem to be dummy).

[Nocturn]

[Paul-Jan]

And thanks for the heads/up about the COPYING.txt, forgot to update the file, will fix right now!