On Sat, 2003-12-06 at 05:46, Anahata wrote: > If the developers want some financial support, they should (as has been > suggested elsewhere in this thread) offer the software for sale in a > similar way. Instead of paying for the program, pay for the experience... Over a year ago I floated the idea that to get (friendly) support from these lists you really should pay some money. Just a very small amount like $1/month or $10/year. If you contribute a bit of cash, and ONLY at whatever level you're comfortable with, you'd get your name on a web site of program supporters, and you don't get cajoled when you ask for help. None of us would have to know what anyone else paid. If you pay a penny you're covered. You would still get support even if you didn't put up any money, but folks here or elsewhere would probably just tell you now and again 'Come on - you're using the program, so help out and be part of the group'. My experience with people is that most would probably pay a bit. This could actually be handled by the email server. It could accept the mail from anyone, but put a little message at the top 'This message from a person who will become a supporter of LAU in the future...' or something friendly but equally obvious. I'd probably make $25 contributions to my 5-10 must have programs, and maybe $5-$10 to another 20-30 programs. With 600 users on LAU/LAD (from Dave's article this morning) that adds up. With these Windows/Luxiouriosty people showing up looking for help, some would pay, and we'd start to move them to the truly free versions and up to date versions. Lists like LAU could take votes on where to contribute their money, while project specific lists get to keep their buck for the developers. I'll mention that I have tried contributing directly to certain developers and the experience mostly wasn't positive. Most developers didn't say thanks, and the features I was looking for didn't get added, so I'm not likely to go very far down that path again without other users really saying they got their monies worth from those they contributed to. (I'm not complaining here. I'm just stating what happened and I'm still happy with each and every contribution I've made.) Anyway, thought I'd just share the idea again as I think that there are better ways to get money into the developers hands on a long term and sustaining basis. Cheers, Mark
