Idea with t-shirts is not bad, but project need something simpler, something which can generate more money. My idea is - maybe place on site google ad - http://www.google.com/ads/ . Larger number of users could help. I would buy t-shirt, but I live in Poland, so there would be a number of taxes. But if there is some ad, then I can click on it everyday. What do you think about it?
You mean place an ad on the website, and get everyone to come back once a day and click on it?
It might not bring in much, but i guess it’s something…
I mean place ad on the website. We don’t have to get everyone to come back once a day to click on it, because regulations forbids things like that, but an user which is interested Haiku will do it and make money for Axel.
Perhaps we could write a Haiku-related book using a wiki, and then publish it with all proceeds going towards the Haiku project. A computer manual versed entirely in haiku would be interesting 
I like the book idea. They could use LuLu to make books on demand: http://www.lulu.com/
Maybe start by turning the newsletters into a book?
Just an idea.
What about the amazon partner program?
Here is a free shop script
http://www.mrrat.com/aws/index.html
So Haiku fans could get their books and haiku some money
I would like to make a suggestion. I hope that someone considers it.
Perhaps a paypal subscription could be set up for the project? This way people can opt to contribute a fixed amount each month rather than just 1 donation.
I used to contribute in this manner to the freenet project. Not a huge amount of money but it adds up if you’ve got quite a few people signed up.
More info here:
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/subscr-intro-outside
I think the book proposals is a good idea.
I donôt speak englisch native, so I donôt know how good I could help, but I would try to help.
I think it should be a haiku user manual. Just saw one for zeta so it seems there is a market.
I donôt like the google ad idea, thats why i sugested the amazon partner programm. So I could buy my books at amazon germany and support Haiko.
The paypal subscription seems to me like a good idea, too. Ok I have no paypal, so I donôt know how it works, but it seems obvious that their could be people who want to support this project on regular basis.
I’m trying to get the HD image of Haiku working with XEMU, and when I do I’ll start writing the book with Wikibooks. Any help would be appreciated.
For each section, I’m thinking of writing a haiku relating to the subject. I might also include a zen-ish image if there are any artists interested in contributing.
I don’t know if we’ll get anything published, but we have a better chance of publishing something if we have something to publish
Vestifex:
You seem to write English pretty well. And because we’re using a Wiki, an English-speaker could help fix up any mistakes you make.
Edit:: I’ve started the Table of Contents
I took the liberty to write a draft of the introduction. I hope that was alright.
I recently sat down a minute to list all ideas to raise money to support Haiku fulltime devs. Some of them were already mentioned here or elsewhere. I really hope some of them are carried out:
- Put a donation meter on the front page to increase motivation.
- Open a CafePress shop for T-shirts, mugs, posters… knickers.
- On the donation page, put links to amazon (for different countries) to get referral fees from their partner program.
- Auction off sponsorship of certain classes/parts of the system. The donor(s) will be mentioned in the class header or about box or something.
- Sell email addresses @haiku-user.org for $100/year.
- If the Haiku site becomes popular (maybe only after R1 is out), offer one prime spot for a “sponsor of the month” ad on the front page.
More ideas?
Use the Be-To-Windows class files and port a number of applications. I’m sure people would pay to use them on Windows…
lichtgestalt wrote:
- On the donation page, put links to amazon (for different countries) to get referral fees from their partner program.
After calculating the referral fees haiku would have got through my christmas shopping I think this is a real great idea.
20â⬠would have been a nice christmas present to haiku.
I have a pet theory that the Haiku “administration” doesn’t actually exist. If they did, they would be active on the forums, listening to advise, participating in discussions, and most importantly, doing whatever it took to increase interest and donations toward the project. Not only should they have done everything possible to keep their fulltime developer, but we should have seen a visible effort to make enough to hire even more developers. For a stark contrast, just look at the skyos website. Not only is Robert the main, and mostly only, developer, but he contributes in the forums every single day and keeps the website poppin. If the Haiku admins don’t care enough to contribute, keep the website up to date, and actively garner donations… then why should we?
You might find those people more active on the mailing lists. Something of a letdown for those of us who prefer forums software, but they are there.
EDIT: That said, some sign of activity on the website every now and then would be nice.
togs_01 wrote:
You might find those people more active on the mailing lists. Something of a letdown for those of us who prefer forums software, but they are there.EDIT: That said, some sign of activity on the website every now and then would be nice.
Yes - the mailing lists and IRC channel - that’s where most of the devs hang out/post.
I think part of the problem is that most of the “administration” is done by mphipps himeself - and he doesn’t have a lot of free time. I wonder if he would be willing to “delegate” some of the admin tasks to a volunteer that has both TIME and motivation to keep things going.
I would volunteer for this myself, except my time is somewhat sparse due to RL. I already spend more time than I can afford here in the forums 
Sikosis does frequent the forums, and is fairly active in keeping things “managed” here.
segador wrote:
I have a pet theory that the Haiku "administration" doesn't actually exist. If they did, they would be active on the forums, listening to advise, participating in discussions, and most importantly, doing whatever it took to increase interest and donations toward the project. Not only should they have done everything possible to keep their fulltime developer, but we should have seen a visible effort to make enough to hire even more developers. For a stark contrast, just look at the skyos website. Not only is Robert the main, and mostly only, developer, but he contributes in the forums every single day and keeps the website poppin. If the Haiku admins don't care enough to contribute, keep the website up to date, and actively garner donations..... then why should we?
Doesn’t Robert just do SkyOS? Not to be rude, but it isn’t really fair, either, to compare Haiku and SkyOS - they’re very different projects with different intentions and philosophies driving them.
Haiku is and has always been a spare-time project. As such, it has limitations. As a longtime Haiku developer, I can easily say that it’s not that people don’t care. A few things currently prevent Haiku from going further in a more visible manner.
Time is the biggest constraint, which is why I’m thankful that Haiku was able to hire Axel for the two months that we were able to. It freed up his time to do just Haiku code and the progress that was made is evident. In the last four years, I personally have moved from an apartment to a house and have had two wonderful children. Between family and work, I generally have about an hour of free time a night. Sometimes I just don’t have the energy to do something thought-intensive like write code. I could say something similar about most of the other guys on the project. If the rest of the guys were to do as you say and be active on the numerous mailing lists, IRC, wikis, newsletters, forums, and the rest of the website, very little coding would get done.
In addition to time constraints, there is also the lack of manpower. There aren’t many of us, and not everyone is able to check code in all the time. More than anything else, we need dedicated people. I can’t count the number of people that have said, “Hey, I want to help and I can do such-and-such.” In response, someone says, “OK, then we need this, this, and this done,” and more often than not that person is never heard from again. Maybe there is the assumption that quite a bit of this stuff is easy – which it isn’t – or maybe not. I don’t know. To compound the manpower problem, Haiku needs people familiar with what needs done, which right now is tough stuff - kernel, networking (which involves the kernel), and the app_server.
I can’t say I blame you guys for the lack of news on the main page of the site. The last real news post was halfway through last November. This is not to say, though, that nothing is happening. At the same time, there really isn’t much that is overly special enough to post about. This is especially the case if you don’t want to have posts about really technical stuff. If you’re curious, check the Haiku Weekly blog at http://haiku.blubinc.com/svn/ . The guy that writes it monitors the code checkins closely and puts them together into something a little more coherent than just watching the checkins themselves.
I hope this clears things up for you guys as to why things happen or don’t happen. 
I believe that Robert has a day job, but then again he’s been at SkyOS since about '93, I think. It also seems that he’s part machine, judging by the way he makes the code fly. I prefer Haiku though. One man bands are a worry in the long term for me. 
That weekly blog needs more advertising.
Otherwise, thanks for that most informative post, DW.