Tony Baechler here.
Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization. I
wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once the word
gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but it can and will
happen. What we need is a grant writer. The government issues grants. There
are many private companies who put lots of funding into Linux. Most major
projects have outside funding. If Mozilla had to survive only on donors,
they wouldn't. Debian gets lots of money and servers from HP Enterprise and
many other companies. You're right that the Windows guys get their money
mostly from the government, but not all. Schools are a lot of the market.
As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and young
people are and show them that there is another choice besides Windows and
the Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are potential users. One of
the reasons why the Apple II became so successful was because it was given
to so many schools. How many of you grew up on the Apple II in the
classroom? There was a company called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and
sold Bex and other programs. They were a commercial business. When they
started, they had no money. All of their newsletters are online and well
worth reading if you care about the history of technology for the blind.
They hired a grant writer. After getting several grants, they were able to
fund development of their software, like Braille Edit which became Bex, a
program to make AppleWorks accessible and eventually Mega Dots for the PC.
The point is it can be done and it wouldn't be that difficult, especially
with a good social media presence.
On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
Kelly Prescott here.
The reason Windows has better accessibility, is that the government has
largely funded it. FS and all the other players get a large percentage of
there purchases from VR dollars which is the good old tax payer!
So while a private company developes it, Uncle Sam really foots the bill!
I only say that to show how hard it is to get accessible software built and
maintained.
I am working on a UEFI boot loader that talks from bootup. I am going to
release it as open source.
The thing is: I have to feed me and mine durring this effort.
This means that I work on borring normal projects most of the time, and my
boot loader when I have spare time.
I think there are several developers me among them who would do this full
time, but if there is no money in it, then we must continue to work on our
normal jobs/projects until we either have time to work on it or we find some
good funding to pay for it.
Unfortunately, I do not know of good ways to obtain lots of money for
part-time developers. There is only so much free time and free work to go
around.
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