FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Dear Community,
I have to inform all of you that we're approaching a critical date for all of us: Nokia is about to stop funding our infrastructure and board and council are busy to establish a new set of servers to run all the bits we need to continue with our daily maemo-life. First impact is on this very forum, which we need to either move to a new server until end of the year, or as a last resort find some 500 bucks to buy one more month of operation on the old one, until we established the move end of January then. There are other expenses the board is facing right now to ensure a smooth continuation of services like repositories, wiki, whatnot else.

So let me start a
fundraiser call for donations
here, asking you to contribute with a donation to keep this community alive.
To give you an idea what we're talking about: a 1000 bucks per month would for sure not be too much to ensure all the infrastructure and professional maintenance, so a twohundered users willing to donate 5 bucks per month on a regular basis would be needed to keep things rolling - unless we manage to find other (commercial) sponsors as well. Though this might happen eventually, we for sure won't find any such sponsor til the end of this year. If you can donate more than those 5 bucks, be assured it's appreciated.

So get your own x-mas present: help keeping tmo alive.

I guess you'll ask now "sure, where can I donate?" - well, wait a little, HF board is about to establish PayPal and other means for that, and I'll edit this post later today to include the links/data.
here's a BROKEN PayPal link Alas it's broken since PayPal can't verify the account (probably the account been registered as NFP, and for those you have to verify the NFP property before you can claim any donations).
Here's a temporary account that works: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...59#post1347859

many thanks for your support
jOERG (councilor)

[update] We finally got a quote for our current infra (VM on xen-grid, basic system maintenance): 1300EUR+2200EUR/month (+VAT). Of course we're trying to do further consolidation and search for alternatives like volunteers for sysops. Just a sidenote to let you know where we are right now and that we didn't exaggerate to the higher values with that initial ballpark figure of needed amount per month.
Oh, and while i'm already editing this: a big thank you to all donators.

latest status as of 2013-09-12: We have sufficient funds in our kitty to ensure hosting of the services. We will use any donations for eventual hardware upgrades (like a third blade, faster switch etc). Funds will NOT get used for new projects, coding competition rewards etc, rather they are strictly bound to maemo.org infra keep-alive (and, in case of donations to my account, for keeping alive the supplementary maemo related community driven infra like backup server etc). There's no immediate danger that maemo.org will vanish from starvation. IPHH is hosting our server free of charge til end of year still, and probably even longer. Thanks to all donors!

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Will there be a mean to donate other than credit card and electronic account like paypal?

I do not have any of those, don't want to have any but want to donate.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I'll forward that to HF board, suggesting they should enable moneytransfer and other alternatives to PayPal.

Many thanks for your contribution
jOERG

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

You may want to give the money to someone who has a PayPal account and ask him to donate for you.

I'm pretty sure you know someone who has an account. ;)

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I don't trust that kind of services (call me paranoid, i don't mind).

I don't see the point of not having an account if it is to use the one of a friend... Would not be very consistent with my belief...


EDIT: Sorry for off topic, i stop now :)

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

As much as I appreciate this board and would certainly be willing to donate some money, I also see the quality of the threads going down in a frightingly rapid pace.

Rules that once were normal are no longer applied consistently, use of (proper) english, no politics, name calling. And also it seems we have a deflation of etiquette, where people demand (figurative speech warning here) answers without even being able to do a proper google search. When they receive answers, it's being taken for granted.

For me to donate, would mean I also would want to get rid of annoyances like that. Rather than a service enabled by Nokia and provided by volunteers, the board would now become more of a real community effort that somehow needs to justify the money it spends to keep itself alive.

This is not meant as a rant, by any means, but I would like to hear what other people think about this.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Count me in for small monthly amount, more when I am able to.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

We're currently in the process of setting up a proper bank account for the Hildon Foundation.
Then you'll be able to donate directly to the bank account.
In the meantime we'll set up a (private) PayPal account just like for the coding competitions.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

anthonie,
sure you have some valid points there, but please stay on topic in this thread, and take the discussion about future to a new thread.
Thanks
jOERG

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Jaffa informed me that my first post might sound like we're concerned about tmo only, and plan to ditch some/anything else.
Of course that's not the case, there are like almost 20 service domains and we try to keep (almost) everything alive and as unchanged and free of disruptions as possible. It's just that tmo is the first victim suffering the impact, so next two weeks are first instance about keeping it alive without downtimes. While we deal with all the rest in parallel but expect 'doomsday' some days later for that stuff.
Thanks Jaffa for the hint.
/j

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

$500 a month is quite an expensive server for running a forum.

Couldn't you just switch the forum to a VPS from Hetzner, OVH or whatever reasonably priced company?

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

@thedead
done

On topic. if there can be some flexibility with donations, for example bi-monthly donations being welcome, than count me in.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Quite. It's just a forum...so even bandwidth shouldn't be difficult.

I mean, seriously: http://www.1and1.co.uk/VirtualServer...virtualservers

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

We already got 245$ just since the first post with the paypal link was published.

I'd call that an amazing community.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

What about us, from countries without PayPall services (yes, there are few countries out) is that any way to use alternative payment services?

Count me in for sure.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Not at the moment. But we're currently setting up a proper bank account (takes a few days) so that much more ways will become possible. :)

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

This is what Nokia was paying up until now. We are considering other options, it just may be required to pay one month more in order to have enough time to migrate.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Are we there yet at the required limit for this month?
Is there a place we can check the running total required?

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I'd personally be willing to donate the 5€*a month to keep the infrastructure running.

But I'm frankly pessimistic that this would work in the long run. Even if somehow it'd work at first, people would start dropping. And getting replacements would be hard.

I hope I'm too pessimistic about that, but I do home some other more sustainable way can be found. Like some others have said, advertisements maybe, or sponsors. But I have no idea unfortunately what would be a realistic option.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Just a quick update:
Donations exceeded 1,000.00 (one thousand) USD in less than 24 hours.

Thanks a lot to you all!

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Zehjotkah, don't feel too happy, this is the initial success, and you'll never again see it happen like that. So consider the results until x-mas your funds for the next 3 to 6 months.

I'd like to suggest to board to get a webpage with all sponsors/donations listed, either with full name or "anonymous" depending on what the donor states in comment of her/his donation. Similar to https://spenden.wikimedia.de/spenden/list.php

And to all community members that are reading this and wondering: board still needs your donation, no matter how much you can give. Also ponder if you might want to donate the amount for next 3, 6, or even 12 months in one transaction, especially since PayPal generally doesn't offer automatic recurring scheduled transfers.

Thanks to everybody who already donated, is planning to donate, or would donate if they could afford. You're an awesome community and you clearly demonstrate that maemo matters and is not dead. :-)

cheers
jOERG

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I second what Joerg just said: it's exciting to see the number shoot up, and easy to see it and think 'oh, cool, 1000 usd raised, I'm no longer needed'. But the fact of the matter is that right now people are really aware of the issue of needed funding, so they donate willingly. But naturally, this will taper off, and likely never flow in again like this unless we're close to another infrastructure crisis. So any money that can keep rolling in, will help, if not now then in the months after.

I think, also, what might help keep community motivated, is if the Board keeps finances more transparent than typical non-profits do; give a monthly summary to the community of income, expenditures (and where those expenditures went), what the net gain/loss was, and how much money remains in reserve. If this was done, I think we're a lot more likely to see more sustained donation income. Because most projects' donate buttons/links are just an easy to ignore/forget issue. And regularly posted donation drive requests (like that of Wikipedia) often get annoying/tedious to see regularly for many people (not necessarily a rational behavior, but that's how the human mind works). But if the finances report comes out every once in a while (which wouldn't be too hard to put together, since a more detailed version would be getting put together internally anyway) to the community, the community members will have a regular reminder of how much money the Foundation has, how much it needs, and how much it's bringing in. Assuming this remains honest, this would serve as a much more psychologically motivating reminder for people to donate if they can spare it, in the long term. (Hmmm, I think I should make this suggestion on the mailing list and maybe to the Board directly as well.)

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I'd like to contribute to the funding but I'm one of those guys who neither have nor want any paypal account or other "modern" means of transfer.

I agree that $500 or $1000 per month sounds quite a lot. Can we have a detailed list please of where all that money is going? That would certainly increase my motivation to donate (and maybe that of others too) and would increase the chances to find cheaper alternatives.

As I already pointed out in another thread I like the way debianforum.de handles this. They have a list in their wiki for where the money is going to [1] and one for where it's coming from [2].

[1] http://wiki.debianforum.de/Debianforum.de/Ausgaben
[2] http://wiki.debianforum.de/Debianforum.de/Spenden

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I personally will donate once a proper bank account is available. My plan is to give some amount that would account for (my part of) a year.

However I still see the problem that has been mentioned above. Once the initial rush is over, there's no guarantee that the/enough donations will continue flowing. It would be a major disappointment if after 3 or 4 months the whole system disappears after having donated so much money.

I understand that a donation imposes no obligation of providing a service of any kind. That's why it's called a donation.

But in the context of Maemo, I don't quite see this as a donation, but rather as a collective support, or whatever you want to call it. That is, I want to support with some of my money, but I also want the Maemo infrastructure to stay alive in the long term.

However I don't see any obvious solution to this problem.

One thing that might be worth considering is what we really need. I don't think the autobuilder is necessary for anything. After all, developers usually have/use the SDK, so they there's no point in centrally compiling and packaging what the developer has already compiled and packaged.

Without having the full overview of what Maemo has *now* (would be happy if we were given such an overview), I think we only need the forum, the wiki (because forum posts link to the Wiki, but the Wiki articles could be integrated into a sub-forum anyway) and of course the repositories.

I don't own/rent a server, nor have I any need for that, but I cannot imagine that a few terabytes and the forum system would require so much money.

So I'd like to have a clarification of what exactly we are (or will be) paying for now, and which systems we plan to maintain/remove in the near future.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

The first 2-3 comments in this thread mentioned that there may be cheaper ways to get this done. I hope that there is a way to migrate the current system that costs $500/month to something that costs less and is just as capable.
Can we get some insight into how and when this will happen and what it will take to make it happen?

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Sure, by no means I meant something like "oh, we've 1000 USD, that's enough, thanks for all the fish"... ;)

The intention was to be as transparent as possible. As we don't have a site to list all donations just yet, I thought it would be good to simply mark some milestones.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

just for a ballpark figure to give you an idea:
http://www.df.eu/de/server-hosting/m...roduktdetails/ "managed server pro X8" 230EUR/month.
Currently maemo infra is using 5 servers of that power class (actually quite a tad higher: http://www.fujitsu.com/fi/products/c...gy/rack/rx300/ with 64GB RAM)
Of course we hope to massively consolidate that, but that's as well some job somebody has to do fulltime.

For operating such infra you need some professional administration 24/7 that's not for free either. For sure you need some experts to set up and configure the new infra and port the whole stuff from old servers to new ones and possibly new software (see e.g. vBulletin vs alternative solutions)
For now we have no hard numbers yet, but be assured $1000/month is for sure not a high guess when we plan to run all the maemo.org services on same level as they are right now (or rather been until some months ago when deterioration kicked in)

@reinob: we'll scale the infra to what we can afford, with wiki, tmo, and repos top priority. If money doesn't suffice to get powerful servers, you'll have to live with slow response times and "sorry, try again later". If we can't afford professional support, the whole system is on peril, due to threats from net and whatnot else. Please assume that board and council are doing their very best to ensure the infra for longer than just 3 months, but we can't give hard numbers yet since we're just starting. Buying another month for Reggie's server to allow painles migration to a cheaper server will cost ~500, a licence for vBulletin ~200. getting any new server may cost ~100..200 setup fee. And we still don't talk salary for a professional administration that does all the migration and bugfixing pending.

/j

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Of course that problem exists and it will always be there.
My experience with debianforum.de is that there is a core group of users who more or less carry the forum on their own. And since the current financial situation is always transparent if it's getting critical usually one or two of them jump in with a donation.
On the other hand of course we're talking about very different amounts of money here. So the core group would have to be much bigger if we actually need $1000 every month.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Great idea to work from donations, but as metnioned previously, will it be enough to keep things going?

I'm not a great lover of advertising, not the way the big concerns do it anyway. I wouldn't complain if TMO decided to run a few ads to keep the revenue flowing, as long as it isn't intrusive and doesn't follow me around the world wide web like a lost dog sticking it's nose into my shopping baskets.

Maybe a collaboration with a few other tech sites, Old School Nokia sites, Linux Forums that sort of thing.
Contact Jolla even, see if they want to help us out for a bit of extra exposure.

Just a few thoughts and ideas.

P.S In the meantime I'll see what I can afford to donate sometime.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I really want to help but sending money out of here is impossible by any way ( if you know what i mean )
is there any possibility of using ads ? like adfly links ? this is the only way i can help and bring on the clicks ;)
thanks for everything !

./Sifo

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

@stickymick
HF Board is already pondering all that, and is about to contact potential sponsors. As mentioned in my #1 post in this thread we hope to find some commercial sponsors that make fundraising a bit less of an uncertain monthly adventure. But that will take time which right now we don't have if we want to keep this forum running. For repositories, wiki etc we got a month longer aiui.
Nevertheless thanks for the suggestions

/j

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Think also that companies do not start any sponsoring activity in just a matter of days. That would take time and it's obviously the long term solution.

For the short term solution we need to get some funding to pay basic hosting of TMO.

All other Maemo related services are in a more tricky situation, being hosted by Logica, administrated by Nemein and sharing servers with Nokia stuff. We are trying to solve all the problems but, indeed, it's being painful and slow, even when Nokia has been very clear about it's intention to help and provide support.

That's why backups and listing of any needed stuff is also important at this moment.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Perhaps we could put up a banner on the side, replacing the Community Council logo?

It could be kept updated monthly, with stats like "Maemo.org needs funding! We have EUR1000 in the coffers, plus 500 reserved for this month's servers."

That should get Maemo.org enough cash to tide over until a Kimsufi/OVH/etc. server can be purchased.

Theoretically, a single server would be all that's needed to run the Maemo infrastructure.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I've been thinking of that, I will do a quick one during the weekend.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

im also willing to donate about 15 dollers per month. but i can't donate via paypal as its not currently available in my country.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Donation done. Could we know goal stat?

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Donation done. Good luck with that.

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

Current status:
1989,37 donated
-93,86 PayPal fees
1895,51 in total

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

I know the goal is met, but donated 25 bucks anyway.

This Forum and everything that surrounds it means a lot to me, i hope whe can keep it alive and kickin' for a long time.

Many thanks to all the people who is fighting to keep this going

Re: FUNDRAISER - roof on fire
 

donated (& bumping thread to the top)

thanks and good luck to HF team