Funding TurboCASH Development
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Funding TurboCASH Development
Introduction
TurboCASH has a very wide base of application. Development requirements are endless. We can never be everything to everyone. Those that download it for free and it does exactly what they want without any changes are the real beneficiaries. Many installations bring with them new ideas and new applications. These require further development.
How we fund Development will be a key component of the success of the TurboCASH. We have Users willing to pay for development and we have developers willing to develop. While the GPL is a fantastic licence, it does present some obstacles. You have all heard the statement that Open Source is Free as in Liberty and not Free as on Charity. I think that they are well laid out in these two articles:
Who Pays for TurboCASH Development?
Please leave your comments at this Forum Link.
The Myth of Open Source
Currently this leaves us with the position that the first person who wants the development, pays for it, everyone else after that gets it for free. This flies against 300 years of economic theory. The cost of the first persons required payment is more than he wants to pay, and the cost of producing the feature is not attainable without the payment, the other users get the product for free, which is less that they are prepared to pay.
Solution : Commercial Plugins
The first way is for us to develop Commercial Plugins. These are addons to TurboCASH that are for sale. The development risk is financed by individual project members and the users purchase these from the individual project members. Bank Online is one such example. The many EBooks are similar.
Solution : Collaborative Development
The momentum of TurboCASH is such that there is usually many more people than one that require a feature. What we need do is structure a method of collecting funds from interested users and giving them some from of benefit for contributing.
Contributors purchase Support tickets and this is added to a fund that we use to pay developers.
That way for example if a development is going to cost $ 100 000, we woud collect $ 100 off 100 people or we would collect $ 1000 off 100 People.
Costs of Development
Development works with a minimum of two developers, a programmer and a project manager. The project can require more than this, but two is the minimum required. Currently development costs are $8000 per month for this facility.
So if we are working on a minumm contributions of $ 150 it means that we need 50 contributors to begin a project. This provides for one months work and we either require 50 more or require the contributors to continue to pay $150 for a line of development.
There are currently 40,000 registered TurbOCASH users and this grows at over 100 per day.
