Raising money for Mageia

[jimg]

I love using Mageia and want it to flourish, but I'm worried that there seems to be an unmet need for volunteers. There was the recent request for QA volunteers, and also I've run across a number of issues that are either not getting fixed or lagging other distros. I would like to help, but with a demanding job, a family, and limited Linux expertise, I can't roll up my sleeves and make a change directly. But, I could, and would, contribute some money to help someone else do it, if a suitable mechanism could be arranged. I don't have enough money to make a difference on my own, but if there are others like me who could chip in, could something be set up that would be meaningful?

I think there's potential for turning general community support and goodwill into financing, because Mageia has been in the top 5 of DistroWatch's page-hit ranking essentially since Mageia launched. How can there be this perennial interest, yet we lack volunteers? I attribute this to Mageia's focus on a newcomer-friendly distro, and lack of a corporate patron. (Note, lack of a corporate patron is part of Mageia's appeal.) I imagine that lots of technical experts, when looking for a community-developed distro that's not attached to a corporation, wind up with Debian, which caters to experts.

I haven't figured out a good answer, but let me toss out some ideas for discussion in hopes that someone might refine it into something better. Nothing stops anyone from donating money to Mageia now (and I do), but if donors know that money will go directly to development in some manner, we might raise more. The question is the mechanism.

1. Mageia could provide a "marketplace" where people could post donations for specific projects (bug fixes, specific packages). Other donors could add to the microfund. Developers could bid. The original poster would select the bidder to do the work, based on credentials and past experience. There would have to be an objective criterion for whether the work was completed, and/or an arbitration process.
2. Mageia would raise funds from donors to hire a developer to work full- or half-time on projects of Mageia's choosing.

I know there are web-based marketplaces that function along the lines of the first idea, whose names I forget. Any experience with those?

Of course, if we manage by some mechanism to fund some Mageia development, we must be careful to retain our current extensive volunteer base, and not poison their relationship with Mageia. For this reason a mechanism that would allow current volunteer developers to occasionally collect some money for specific contributions seems preferable.

Any other ideas?

Best regards,

Jim Garrett
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

[doktor5000]

1. Mageia could provide a "marketplace" where people could post donations for specific projects (bug fixes, specific packages). Other donors could add to the microfund. Developers could bid. The original poster would select the bidder to do the work, based on credentials and past experience. There would have to be an objective criterion for whether the work was completed, and/or an arbitration process.
2. Mageia would raise funds from donors to hire a developer to work full- or half-time on projects of Mageia's choosing.

Hi there,

your support is appreciated. For a similar topic, please have a look at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Archive:Paid_projects
So in general that is a good idea and well-meaning, but the devil is in the details.

So best donate via https://www.mageia.org/en/donate/ or otherwise try to help, check e.g. https://www.mageia.org/en/contribute/