Money -- Open Source & TW

[boris]

Honestly @TW_Tones to support what TT is saying here — get a solid day job of some kind.

I know many passionate open source contributors (including myself) that have burnt out.

TW is NOT at a stage where there is an abundance of paid work.

It is amazing to be tied to a worldwide community like TW has — it is energizing and exciting (and sometimes frustrating) to be amongst this swirl of ideas, where a drag and drop JSON away leads to completely new functionality… that you can then tweak!

So absolutely follow your interests, but consider that a solid day job may be a good platform for a hobby interest in TW.

[TW_Tones]

Thanks for your advice, But, yes. I am not putting all my eggs in the tiddlywiki basket, just a few dozen

Never the less any job I do now or personal things I use tiddlywiki thoroughly. I do believe it is a tool that many professions and industries could make use of even if only to publish information within the organisation, but many documents, libraries and spreadsheet’s could be transformed into interactive documents. It is also a magnificent tool for innovation through analysis. and deep understanding.

[anon5541130]

1. notes

1. I thought about this idea everyone, you can fix it if you want… I just detailed some views I had reading the comments and writing.
2. I hope to help in some way

2. first of all an observation, observation 1:

1. Open core is different from freepremium, for example freepremium lasts 30 days of trial, premium is a paid solution with license copyright. But… open core… that is, I defend the vision ‘community’, ‘commercial’ and ‘business’ that is different from the simply freepremium vision - 30 days. In these cases the license is MIT/GPL/BSD. I’ll explain, is it a community plan? GPL License. And commercial? MIT License. Is it business? Copyright License. As plans are different for user types, there are license types for user types/business plans.
2. There are open core like ‘floss and foss’, ‘floss or foss’. That is, there are paid plans of the ‘foss’ software type. And there are paid ‘floss’ software-type plans. What differs from one to the other is the purpose of the money. If it’s something for developers (BSD/MIT), if it’s for society (GPL and variants).
3. As they’re talking about the subscription business model, it makes more sense to be closed and open. Open to developers and closed to users.
4. Freepremium is not open source. ‘It would be the same to say that Hegel’s view is equal to Marx’s, a conceptual error’.

3. First of all an observation, observation 2(overview):

1. Add… crowding-founding-investiment is regulated by the central banks of each country, what happens is that the way of investing is new, and that is why many people don’t invest with fear. It’s the same as for blockchain/bitcoin - a lot of people don’t invest out of fear. But money is the purpose of use: you can invest it for yourself, for the community or for the company.* → *‘you get profits if the community grows and hires more people, developers, volunteers’ is good *
2. Add… Integration with plugins, themes for companies → tiddlywikihosts or tiddlywiki-premium
3. Add… bugbounty - Get rewarded for finding technical bugs on tiddlywiki. (non-tiddly, my case)
4. Add… open finance - know what was done with each donation or sponsorship logs like RedHat (what I ask for is open governance) (future)
5. Add… NTF - receive an NTF if you make a donation, whether volunteer or company (future)

First of all an observation, observation 3 (specific view):

1. tiddlywiki self-hosted
   • self-hosted server with community license plan: you can use tiddlywiki server with minimal usage features. (It doesn’t have long support or even training/technical assistance, but the code is open for you to use at home. The source code is released as MIT/BSD), it has no backup schedule or custom plugins and themes.
   • self-hosted server with license plan: you can use tiddlywiki server with full features for ‘1’ or ‘2’ or ‘3’ or ‘4’ years. (the famous long support with training/technical assistance. The difference is that it would be installed on the company’s server either remotely or physically (going directly on site to do the physical installation)) The source code is not released, since it is an exclusive contract from one company to tiddlywiki. However, it has custom plugins/themes and full scheduling throughout the contract term).
2. tiddlywiki community
   • community plan: No technical support/technical assistance and little technical training. It is used for end users, home. The source code is released under GPL. It has no storage limit as it is the user who manages it.
3. tiddlywiki cloud
   • commercial plan: tiddlywiki members can usually sign up for a subscription program. In this sense, they do not have technical training or do not want technical training, this does not mean that there should not be technical support. It turns out that technical support is not something exclusive as it happens in the business plan that I will comment on next. What there is here is a lack of technical training and not technical support. The big advantage is the synchronization of different devices, in addition to the scheduled backup but limited for a period of time (1 week, 1 month etc), it has 5GB of storage space. License is closed*
     • Plan limits include ‘number of devices synced to cloud’,
     • ‘source code without technical support’
     • ‘2gb limited storage for your tiddlywikis’
     • ‘change of contract term’
     • ‘source code license is usually GPL, this to avoid commercial products for the same type of software, given that the company can distribute the commercial product with an exclusive license under exclusive terms - in this case as schools, institutions, individuals, non-governmental organisations’. Or can even GPL license can be applied to cases that the person who install by himself the famous self-hosted.*
   • enterprise plan: has customization, integration, technical support, storage space around 10gb, exclusive support, but there is no technical training/technical assistance. The license is closed, the great advantage is the number of synchronized devices, greater storage space and price that does not change, and there are discounts for those who are on the plan and continue on the plan*
   • non-governmental plan: license distributed under the BSD license, this allows everyone in the community to be remembered, to have their authorship linked. This license is exclusive to NGOs and there are restrictions such as proof that the NGO exists legally to have access to the tiddlywiki-non-governmental plan. It does not have technical support, technical assistance - but it has a discount program for those who are from non-governmental organizations, in addition, it offers free courses and certifications and a specific server for this purpose of use only for the established contract and its renewal
4. tiddlywiki On-Premise
   • business plan: specific features (customizations, storage space, integration, personalization) to be developed by contract, exclusive support/assistance and technical training closed license. Everything is in the tiddlywiki cloud specific to the shared hosting contract company
5. tiddlywiki Private Cloud PMS
   • organization/governmental plan: specific features (customizations, storage space, integration, personalization) to be developed by contract, exclusive support/assistance and technical training closed license. Everything is in the tiddlywiki cloud specific to the contract company with its own remote server without shared hosting
6. tiddlywiki Sales
   • “you can participate in the training program and become a tiddlywiki consultant. You earn commissions on sales of the ‘tiddlywiki cloud’ and/or ‘tiddlywiki on-premise’ and/or tiddlywiki-private-cloud-pms plan”
   • "You can earn money as a security analyst, checking vulnerabilities in our products and solutions.
   • “can be licensed to take tiddlywiki courses and certifications.”

4. reflections

1. To avoid these problems I mentioned we can clarify whether tiddlywiki will be something like self-hosted or on demand.
2. If tiddlywiki is self-hosted, this might be what I call an enterprise plan.
3. If tiddlywiki is on demand, this might be what I call a business plan.
4. We can have exclusive plans for NGOs and companies, in which case we can have the corporate and social plan.
5. We should parse tiddlywiki with device types:

• mobile(android/ios and/or linux smartphones/different operating systems)
• browser extension(mozilla firefox, opera, chrome, edge)
• desktop(windows, linux, mac).

6. License diversity is a good thing for any open source project.
7. The idea of ​​licenses for the business plan type is “the same idea as mysql(community(gpl), premium(closed), companies(closed))”
8. “This allows you to measure tiddlywiki in different contexts in people’s lives.”
9. The sky is the limit
10. “Add testimonials from people using tiddlywiki”
11. “Give bonuses to people who use tiddlywiki in different ways”
12. If there is training/technical support/technical assistance, the tiddlywiki trademark must be registered this would be a legal requirement if the tiddlywiki project is a company in the legal sense of the word or is a non-governmental organization. In any case, being a company or non-governmental organization, you need documents that prove this. Not just a product/service license.

[TiddlyTweeter]

@Tiddlybob

Maybe we could make donation goals and improve the visibility of the initiative?

I think that a good idea.

Proactive visibility. Would be a start.

One thought I had was on the Right Sidebar, at the bottom, there be (by default) the …

Though rephrased as something like “powered by your donations to …”

The point is how to get money needs a clear route.

Best, TT

[anon5541130]

@TW_Tones

• I am not sure anyone can be this philosophically and ethically. Even if someone is funding an open source project, but especially if they are not, they are in my mind obliged, to add value to the community, otherwise they may be, or are a “freeloader”.
• I even expect users to contribute to the community where possible.
• One way open source is similar to Marx is “From each as to there ability, to each as to their need”. Then we personally all try and give as much as we can so we are in a position of surplus. I feel I am “in Credit” with my contributions non-monetarily at least.

part 1

1. Nobody is forced to do anything and/or even if people are forced to do something, they may not do it. The point I want to make here is freedom of choice, a point defended by the very idea of free software.
2. Free software does not oblige you to pay anything for any project, nor does it oblige you to charge for an open solution.
3. Therefore, the free software movement has an “anarchist”, “anarcho-capitalist”, “social-capitalist”, “liberalism”, “capitalist” base etc. “It’s a great system where different worldviews are in the same place, something very similar to capitalism that some critics a lot.”
4. The critique corresponding to the critique: You saying that I should pay something with a donation even if I don’t want to or can I not pay? So… if yes… reinforces an “unrealistic” and “illusory” worldview that doesn’t follow the free software license. So… I’m not saying it here to offend, just a comment.
5. So… answering this criticism I will put philosophical arguments, arguments from experience here.

parte 2

1. The point I want to get back to the issue is this: people can choose what they want, this does not exclude people’s moral and social conscience or the responsibility that each one has.
2. What I said was ironic and sarcastic. A common figure of speech, when you want to create a long discussion and I think this is applicable to what we should consider fair or not within the context of free software. And I think it worked in its sense, because we arrived in good conclusions here about service/product/value of tiddlywiki(community, tool, business).

part 3

1. But… my philosophy of life is epicurean, that is, I try to do things with a certain responsibility.
   • So… if I’m a tiddlywiki user, I don’t need to donate if I don’t want to.
   • But if I want to help, I can.
   • I have 2 possibilities, and I can choose 1 or the other or both.
   • For example… for a while I might be the kind of person who doesn’t want to donate, but as soon as I can I can help the community or the tiddlywiki tool in other ways. As you see, my point of freedom is crucial.
2. “People often have a wrong worldview because they are influenced by people”. But let’s go:
   • Software is a tool.
   • Open source is not just foss/floss.
3. Is it wrong for someone like me, who can’t afford software, to pay for software?
4. Generally, whoever says what is right or wrong is always wrong. “In my view/opinion”

part 4 - final reflections

1. What I mean is that there are different social, philosophical positions - just decide the one that suits you based on your logic, principle.
2. For example, you cannot be against something that is contrary to what you believe. Here the license is BSD and not GPL, in that sense there would be no reason to criticize me.
3. Even because BSD is less restrictive than GPL in terms of freedom for developers. For example, there is authorship/intellectual property for those who develop in BSD and not in the GPL.
4. In theory, you couldn’t judge anyone for not having money, not even someone who has money and doesn’t give. “One can judge the action of the person and not the choice of the person”, in theory a Marxist would say that the “It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.” - What I’m talking about is just that in another way, from a liberal socioeconomic perspective..
5. And… for example, Linux is a social product, but with a trademark. That is, linux has intellectual property as a brand. But the product itself is social, but the brand is not. In other words, donating to software may not make any difference. Given that there are other ways to monetize other than by donation, for example: courses, lectures, corporate events, certifications.
6. When speaking of this ironically, I was talking about how different people analyze the concept of value and price. This analysis that I speak here refers to this idea of ​​"conscious capitalism". That is, the consciousness of capitalism is born with the idea of ​​value and price, this is remarkable when analyzing Marx. Why? Because… it’s the foundations of capitalism, it’s what gives voice, space. “Given that social relations are mediated by images, as seen in the work ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ by the Marxist Guy Debord”. The image of capitalism is this: “value” and “price”.
7. In this sense, there are situations where value is not always linked to price, price is not always linked to value and price and value are not always corresponding or co-relational. “Each person views capitalism in such a way that it is impossible to say that it is not a real system in the sense of the word spectacle. As an image, visual reference.”.
8. The problem here is the different types of image people have of capitalism for something good or bad.
9. Therefore, referring to the concept of value and price, it is essential to understand this vision to develop the business model of tiddlywiki.
10. Faced with the time of the information age along with various media such as tv, radio, internet, podcast etc. In other words, in the face of “the era of conscious informational capitalism” - that is, “capitalism in people’s minds today”. As I said, knowledge is not always something that will make you a programmer, it is necessary to have the image of a programmer and, in addition, to have a price at which you give or the market gives or the price at which you are inserted: freelancer (you charge for your services), contract (they pay for the amount they think is most correct for you), volunteer (work for free or work being paid).

[TiddlyTweeter]

@TW_Tones

I am not putting all my eggs in the tiddlywiki basket, just a few dozen

Good. So long as they are bakers’ dozens.

TT, x

[boris]

Hi @anon5541130 — we’re not ignoring you, but (I think you know) you write a lot. And secondly, I think what you’re discussing is a bit off topic.

This thread isn’t really about creating a business around TW. “The community” (I’ll put it in quotes because of course I don’t speak for it) isn’t interested in becoming a business a business and potentially

Money -- Open Source & TW

In summary; Open core with to subscribers Hosting Support Services Product or service Tied support Training Bespoke solutions White label solutions Branded Solutions

It’s a good list and many of them could be possible.

You are TOTALLY WELCOME to try these things and make a commercial success of it — but this is separate from the community layer. This is the same as Jeremy’s income as providing consulting services around TW.

If we made a list about generating revenue in a direct community oriented way — it would look very different than your list.

Maybe more like a band or an artist. For example, selling stickers and t-shirts. Or sponsorship links. And so on. I think that could be a good discussion to have in the #projects:opencollective category.

[boris]

So TT and @Tiddlybob this is where we come from discussion to action again.

Do you want to volunteer to explore these ideas in #projects:opencollective?

I invite you to write up your thoughts and get involved if you’d like to help increase donations.

I’m happy to host a live call to facilitate this in the next couple of weeks.

[TiddlyTweeter]

@boris

explore these ideas in #projects:opencollective?

Sure. Though I doubt I may be useful.

Tell me what to do.

TT

[Tiddlybob]

Thank you for the invite, but I don’t have the bandwidth to commit to another project at this time.

[TiddlyTweeter]

@boris

from discussion to action again

I’d also ask @telmiger, he might have time, even though not in this thread, to make a few comments. He is very clever and has marketing savvy.

TT

[telmiger]

@TiddlyTweeter

he might have time, even though not in this thread, to make a few comments.

Not sure, if my thoughts are helpful. But TT asked so kindly …

Acutally I have thought a lot about money and marketing in connection with TiddlyWiki and I have tried some action too. Other ideas that also popped up here in this thread I have never put into action.

Money and Other Rewards

My own attempt to get financial rewards for my not so unpopular plugins was highly unsuccessful. After I added a “support” tab with info on how to send me money I got one or two one time donations. Not enough to take my wife out for dinner here in Switzerland. So even if the user base of TW was magnitudes bigger than today, writing plugins and hoping for donations would not be the way. – Or I am not that good at marketing as TT thinks.

So there must be other kinds of rewards already available and working in the TW ecosystem. Non capitalistic rewards where you give, but also get valuable things for free. Community rewards like appreciation, applause or even fame. Free feedback for your ideas and help when you get stuck. Interesting discussions with like-minded individuals from all around the world. All this means a lot more to me than money.

Altruism and Egoism go hand in hand. I published many plugins in the hope that others would use the stuff I had invested so much time in. And I am a bit proud whenever I see a TW solution that uses them or the color palette I donated to the core or a Twitter account with an icon I made. These signs tell me that some of my time was spent well. And many of my solutions got better because of the expectation and ambition that others should use it too and thanks to the feedback from other users.

Product and opportunity cost: TW is a great and flexible tool that needs an investment for learning. – I had to take an online course offered for free by the SUNY Polytechnic Institute/@Steve_Schneider to wrap my head around the most important concepts. – Then I was able to use plugins and code examples from others for my own projects. Finally I was rewarded with the tools I wanted and needed with incredible features. Maybe I would have spent less time if I had evaluated more alternatives or developed my own small web applications from scratch or learned React or … but I would probably have missed most of the non-capitalistic rewards mentioned above.
Entertainment: When I was active in the community helping others, I saved a lot of money I otherwise could have invested in Sudokus, mobile games or other commercial entertaining stuff. And I would not have had more fun.

To bring these philosophical and rather anti-capitalistic thoughts back to the central questions of marketing and money-making: Marketing needs money too. So we have a chicken and egg problem here. The best thing that could happen might be if we could find a main sponsor, a foundation or so, who say: Here are three million bucks, hire some talented folks and make TW more popular. As long as we can’t afford a core team of devs and a marketing team working together full time, we will stay a bunch of (mostly) amateurs spending more time discussing than doing.

Amateur means something good, it has the latin word for love in it. So if the best thing would not happen, that would not be bad in my eyes. But it would probably mean that more people will have to accept that they have to have paid jobs that do not depend on TW. If they are lucky, TW can be a part of it. If not, TW has to stay a hobby.

For me, that hobby has to fit in amongst other projects and hobbies. I might find time to make a few comments now and then, but much more is not in it at the moment.

All the best,
Thomas

Marketing is product, price, place, promotion and people.
TiddlyWiki is an incredible product with no price, online and offline, almost no promotion and fantastic people.

[simon]

I didn’t read the whole thread, but it seems like sharing this link wouldn’t be entirely off-topic: https://tiddlyhost.com/donate

(Please excuse the self-promotion and do let me know if I’m violating any policies or unwritten rules here… )

[boris]

Is TiddlyHost open source? Just charge for hosting!

If it is open source — we should get you added to the Open Collective as a project to support.

[anon5541130]

@telmiger

So there must be other kinds of rewards already available and working in the TW ecosystem. Non capitalistic rewards where you give, but also get valuable things for free. Community rewards like appreciation, applause or even fame. Free feedback for your ideas and help when you get stuck. Interesting discussions with like-minded individuals from all around the world. All this means a lot more to me than money.

1. That’s not smart…sorry for saying that. But what’s worth the money! Red Hat, Ubuntu - etc have a community reward system, but capitalism is required!
2. If you don’t trust government or corporate money, use bitcoin etc

[anon5541130]

@boris

Is TiddlyHost open source? Just charge for hosting!

It’s a good idea! Make a community plan and a paid plan.

• for community members (internal community people) → community plan.
• and for non-community members (people outside the community) → paid plan.

[boris]

So do you want to volunteer to help find sponsors? Put words and theories into action?

Most of my time here is now spent trying to spur others to take action

Open source is not a mystery in 2022. We have ~30 years of history even though new stories get written.

If this community wants to do more — it can. But it will need to start with more volunteers.

[anon5541130]

1. Without money there would be no social projects
2. Without money I wouldn’t have what I have today
3. Money is important, whoever says it’s not… is probably out of money or is still in a complicated stage of life…
4. These two life stages: no money, complicated life stage… I’m - that’s why I’m working as a freelancer
5. And besides, I look for open source products to save on my pocket
6. But as far as possible I help the tool and not the community
7. Because I believe that a good tool is more important than ideology
8. I believe in individual and collective responsibility, as I said earlier
9. So build good tools and people will see! *Example: I’m on tiddlywiki (I’m because of the awesome tool)
   • I believe that a good tool draws attention
   • but it is not just to attract attention, it must be a tool that is necessary for people’s lives
   • what makes the tool available is: volunteers, companies, governments, users!

• we have to come together to do something amazing, and if there are forms of capitalism in that, there is no harm
• Marx himself, as he said, is not against capitalism, but the way it is used
• let’s use “open core model” or test about 3 months to see if this is interesting

[anon5541130]

Non capitalistic rewards

• crowdfunding (social capitalism) etc.
• bugbounty - Get rewarded for finding technical bugs on tiddlywiki.
• NTF(representational capitalism) - receive an NTF if you make a donation, whether volunteer or company “”

Community rewards

• likes
• tiddlyhost free(account) etc
• “I think there are some interesting options around memberships — eg only people who donate can “vote” on something”
• gain recognition, scoring, more recommendation, open badges, courses, certifications

[anon5541130]

@telmiger

Marketing is product, price, place, promotion and people.
TiddlyWiki is an incredible product with no price, online and offline, almost no promotion and fantastic people.

1. Bitwarden doesn’t invest in marketing, what works is word of mouth
2. That is, tell a friend about an open source product, this friend of yours tells another friend etc - this infinitely up to the proportion of the neighborhood where you live, then the state and then the whole country. example, concept
3. “Word-of-word marketing, also known as word-of-word advertising or word-of-mouth marketing, is a form of unpaid promotion where customers have another company or product. , a service or an event.”
4. The key point is that this marketing takes time to happen, but over time you gain trust from users.