[REQUEST] Jeremy - questions about the Tiddlywiki-on-Fission funding campaign

[dieg...@gmail.com]

Jeremy (and the community!)

Can you (or anyone) help clarify what the open collective funding project is for Tiddlywiki on Fission?

https://opencollective.com/tiddlywiki-on-fission

As in,

• Who are we paying?
• What are we paying for?
• Are you getting that money?
• If so, how much?
• Is that also for general TW improvements? Or is it specific to TW-on-Fission?
• Will this outlive the TW on fission project?
• Is this the only (or just primary?) way to support you, the TW developer?
  
• etc.

Im a bit confused, as I thought this was just another saver/platform for hosting personal TWs.

Thanks!

Diego

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Diego

Can you (or anyone) help clarify what the open collective funding project is for Tiddlywiki on Fission?

Fission have a vision around open source communities using Open Collective as a way for members of the community to financially support the people making the software, and the infrastructure that the community uses. A sort of lightweight version of Kickstarter for crowdfunding the ongoing development of plugins and editions.

It’s an area that has always interested me, but also gives me some nervousness. The challenge is that there is a paradox: at least speaking for myself, I’m not really doing all of this for money, the compulsion is deeper, and the true rewards are in the interactions I have with the community. But simultaneously, we all need money to survive.

Happily, move adventurous people than me have been exploring this stuff for many years, which is how Open Collective came into existence, and the model seems to be enduring.

TiddlyWiki on Fission gives us an opportunity to explore these ideas in real life.

https://opencollective.com/tiddlywiki-on-fission

As in,

• Who are we paying?

The money is being held ready for distribution.

• What are we paying for?

That’s for us to decide

• Are you getting that money?

Emphatically not Jeremy, or Fission. This is Fission bootstrapping infrastructure on behalf of the community for us to explore and develop as we see fit.

• If so, how much?
• Is that also for general TW improvements? Or is it specific to TW-on-Fission?

Our immediate goals are around TWoF, if things work well perhaps we’ll bring it to the main project.

• Will this outlive the TW on fission project?

Perhaps, it’s certainly really an independent initiative. 

• Is this the only (or just primary?) way to support you, the TW developer?
  

At the moment, my “business model” is to do custom development and support work for a small number of clients. The contracts I do are fairly long term arrangements, on an ordinary commercial basis. It’s working well for me, so it’s not really a priority for me to move to a different model at the moment. I think the opportunity is for the broader community to explore the model

• etc.

Im a bit confused, as I thought this was just another saver/platform for hosting personal TWs.

Yes, there’s a lot going on and I’m sure we could communicate it more clearly! The development work we’re doing on the saver is really the main story here at the moment.

Best wishes

Jeremy

[dieg...@gmail.com]

Hey Jeremy,

Thanks for your answers. Im happy to contribute to the TW community, and to you for all your work on TW. I just wasn't sure how exactly this Fission (backed? sponsored? held?) funding initiative related to the main project.

In other words, before people sign up to be a monthly or even yearly contributor, it might be worth clarifying that their contributions aren't just to a specific small part of the TW world (a saver), or to an entirely different project (Fission), but instead to the TW community itself!

Thanks again,

Diego

[Boris Mann]

Hey all!

I wanted to chime in and say that this is an experiment. I suggested we experiment with OpenCollective and Jeremy agreed as he stated. It's part KickStarter, part community bank account.

It's labeled as "TiddlyWiki on Fission" I guess because we didn't necessarily want to scope it to the whole project as an experiment. That is open for discussion -- and depends on both the community and Jeremy. Do we want to just call it TiddlyWiki OpenCollective? Who wants to help?

Roughly, this is how I see it working:

We'll look for features, plugins, and other work that people are interested in funding. Right now there is just the monthly / annual backing buckets, which is a financial vote that says "I like where this is going, I want to see more like this!". We may add other perks -- e.g. I want to get some stickers made if there is interest, and people who donate can get stickers for free / use OpenCollective to pay for stickers.

We can then add an additional goal to the page. I'll use an example that has been discussed before, created a TiddlyWiki Discourse forum. Professional hosting for that is about $50 / month. So, we'd want to collect at least $50 per month in ongoing contributions to pay for the costs of that. All those costs are transparent and listed as part of the platform.

Finally, the really interesting part (I think). Let's say there is a feature like ExternalImages drag and drop plugin (I don't know if this exists or not, so let's just say it doesn't). We can even ask ahead of time who has time / interest to do it, and determine that we should raise $1000 to pay for the open source creation of this plugin. We raise the funds, and a community member who is more developer oriented does the work. The community has a new plugin that is available to all.

And this of course extends to documentation, design, or any other aspects. Can we enable people who need to be able to commit time away from their day job to do paid TW work at a small scale? Could the community start funding a part time position on an ongoing basis to focus on the software, community tooling, or other aspects? Where in the world would $500USD / month be a way to have TiddlyWiki as someone's "day job"?

I had hoped we would dig into this a bit more live on the community call but we covered a lot. If people are interested, I'm happy to host a call just on this topic.