Money and CHDK

[intrnst]

Everybody has ever thought, some have even commented... Now, let's fell the fever!

[acseven]

CHDK is under GPL, from what I know. Money should not even be involved in a discussion.

[PhyrePhoX]

i'm with acseven here. if anything, money should be paid for hosting servers, forums, etc. this is something the value can be "calculated/estimated" of.
giving money to the devs will not neccessariliy spoil them, but create lots of difficulties. i happened to be involved in at least two free projects which tried to go "commercial" or "donation-ware". no good experience. it can be possible with a very very small number of people involved (e.g. dcraw, one developer, he also has a "donate me" button). i dont think i am a chdk "developer", but i still contribute & contributed for chdk. i dont want money off of this, but i guess i wouldnt like someone else (who also contributed "little") to get money from this too (keyword: envy). it would prevent people like me from coding for "free" (when the core devs get money, why should _I_ do it for free?).
But imo the main problem will be the expectations of people. "I spent 5 dollars for this project, it's about time they port my camera!".
Or "I spent money on this software, and still they didnt iron out all bugs - what the hell are they doing all day long?". It would create pressure.
by the way my opinion on this would be the same even if i was not involved with chdk so much (mod, "small contributor"). sounds easy, donating money for a free project, but in reality it creates lots of problems.
my 2 cents

[fudgey]

GPL is not incompatible with money.

But I do think the complete lack of commercial effort in this community helps us keep Canon from getting disgruntled. We certainly help their business by bringing ideas and implementations for their product development to review and try out and direct people to buy their products instead of their competitors'), but attempting to take the money they think deserves to them might not be a bright idea.

Direct camera donations or joint donations to buy a developer a camera for porting are something I could very well see happening.

[mrproper]

When you receive money for a product/service you create a sense of trust and value.

The downside is... pepople will start nagging you to fix their problems and requests related to product/service and you CAN'T refuse that...

[intrnst]

Far from the ethics of GPL's philosophy -- To money or not too money? --  observing the pool in growth, it seems that the client is willing to give back. This leads to the following question:

- Is the customer wrong?

[databoy]

There are two issues at stake. Money and motive. If your motive is to make a quick buck, there are better ways of earning a living than writing and selling software. On the other hand, there are some bright software developers around. Consider projects like CHDK as an apprenticeship project to learn and perfect your craft. The knowledge and experience gain has a more tangible value when used on a job CV. The degree gained at university is only a piece of paper. Practical experience is what employers are chasing. Anyone who can disassemble and value add to a commercially manufactured product is probably worth their weight in gold. If you have those skills name your price; you will have the skills to develop innovative technology.

[intrnst]

As dormant resources already existing in photographic cameras currently available (witch were exploited and enhanced by CHDK), in the same way I see potential interest in us, users, to reward what has already been done.

I think donating is not buying a VIP pass into this forum, but a thanking (a tip, if you like) what already was enjoyed. Registering the fact that NONE voted to BUY the software and the majority has an interest to donate, it seems that I'm not so outside the Gaussian.

Few will deny that problems to structure and manage this task does not exist. But as spoked above, it's a resource that could reverted on the development of more CHDK.

Besides that's a good practice for who wants to develop Bill Gates's skills.

[databoy]

People need to earn an income to pay for food, shelter, clothing and indulge in their hobbies. There are a lot of aspiring Bill Gates on the net out to make their fortune. Most will fail dismally. Bill Gates was a brilliant programmer when he was younger. He also came from a wealthy family with generations of business experience. It is very rare to have programming skills and business aptitude.

I was reading an article written by a professional photographer who sells mediocre photos to advertising agencies for $2000US each. His philosophy was that his substandard photos are more than adequate when blown up to billboard advertising size. Over a year he earned a substantial income on photos which would normally end up as trash.

The issue I am addressing is that you need lateral thinking otherwise good financial opportunities are missed. 

Regardless where you live in the world, different people can contribute to projects in different ways. I have no aptitude for programming. I am a hardware person. I spent hours downloading electronic control circuits of the net. I try to source components locally. I came to the conclusion that making the printed circuit board is what will kill the project. The PICaxe approach would be the cheapest and most economical way to approach electronic interface controls to a camera.

Open source projects are good in that many brains to can achieve a desired outcome and the design can be approached from many persectives which may be overlooked when one person is working on a project. I have an application where I want to control a stepper motor to step the camera in the horizontal axis. Shoot a picture, zoom and shoot. When finished, step the camera and repeat the sequence. It can be done on a tripod; I would like to automate the process mainly due to my hands are not as steady as when I was younger.

Australia has strict controls over using radio remote devices. They have to be certified for radio control spectrum use. Importing RF controllers is prohibited. The local market devices are limited to model planes, boats, cars.

I read an article a few years ago where a guy hack a Playstation controller and used it as a servo controller. The Playstation controller or equivalent is an ideal hand piece if it can be interfaced into a PICaxe chip.

Currently I am collecting all the technical information. I will post my full concept at a later date. I have an oscilloscope, digital multimeter, power supply, breadboards. If there is someone who can write a basic program, the project can be posted on the wiki site. 

 

[RaduP]

There are a lot of Open Source projects that make money, usually from donations, advertising, or all kinds of other deals.
Firefox, Php, Mysql, Linux, and many other projects make a lot of money.
Personally, I think the CHDK project is very nice, and the developers could at least use some money for stuff such as hosting and, more important, buy equipment (new cameras).

[dzsemx]

money will cause only problems...
the feeling of the success is priceless
i'm hobby developer too and i made a freeware thing... only i made it for my taste and i published it (without source)...

[adcz]

I think that Devs should at least receive a free camera to experiment on. It's only fair. And if somebody like's a particular build, they should be able to donate to the creator.

I posted about this in Helping Get CHDK More Popular:

Next up, is money issues. A lot of you might be thinking, this is open-source, so no money should be involved. Ideally, that would be the case. However we live in a capitalist world, making this quite hard, especially if this project is going to become popular. There are expenses everywhere - servers space, bandwidth, advertising (yes, advertising is a must!). Also, the devs of CHDK need money to buy cameras to take apart, and work with. I doubt that they would want to throw away $300 for an S5, just so that they can write a program. DataGhost did Smiley but not a lot of people are like DataGhost. We need a way to make money for these Devs, so that they can be able to continue their work. Also the selection of cameras this is available for is not too big. It should definitely be expanded, to other brands even. All of this takes money.

I am not saying to start charging money for CHDK, that would be awful. Would destroy the advantages of Open Source. I suggest taking an "Ubuntu" alternative Smiley. Ubuntu offers its OS for free, support for free, however it also offers paid support (for companies), and PRECONFIGURED COMPUTERS. I suggest we do one of the following:
* Start Selling Memory Cards with CHDK pre-configured for a certain camera
* Start Selling Memory Cards with certain features pre-configured (customers say what they need)
* Start Selling Canon Cameras with MemCards w/CHDK
* The standard merchandise - shirts, pants, cuts, hats, buttons, etc

If you think about it, all of these options are good for both CHDK AND the public. Have you ever gone to RadioShack, with their $40 1GB cards (a few months ago). People are willing to pay $40 for a gig at their local store. Everybody knows that now, you can buy 4GB for $15. I suggest selling 4GB cards for $20. Newbies will still save tons of money, and we get our $5 bonus. Same thing for selling cameras. Stores overprice...a lot. At a BestBuy (a normal store), a Canon S5 costs $350 + tax (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8297513&type=product&id=1172881524725). I bought my S5 for $270. That means they overpriced their cameras by more than $80! I don't think it is fair to trick people like that, into buying expensive cameras. I suggest we team up with Canon, buy a few of their cameras in bulk and start selling them, with CHDK pre-installed for say..$290 in the case of the S5. I assume they will sell it for around $250 to us, so that is $40 earnings right there. We are not tricking the customers, it is fair. We are the lowest price on the market. $60+ savings. Plus we give the extra bonus of CHDK preinstalled. A lot of people don't want to mess around with their cameras. This way, we mess around with them for them. And of course the standard merchandise will get people interested "ooh? CHDK? what's that? oh cool! I'll go download it!". You might call me a capitalistic, but I am just trying to help the general public!

[acseven]

There are lots of Developers out there. Who is going to choose to which is a camera "awarded"?

It is not that simple, I guess.

[reyalp]

GPL is not incompatible with money.

But I do think the complete lack of commercial effort in this community helps us keep Canon from getting disgruntled. We certainly help their business by bringing ideas and implementations for their product development to review and try out and direct people to buy their products instead of their competitors'), but attempting to take the money they think deserves to them might not be a bright idea.

I agree with this. The GPL philosophy doesn't prevent you from asking for money, or even selling binaries (long ago, the FSF used to sell tapes), but CHDK runs less risk of pissing canon off if it is clearly a hobby without money involved.

edit:
One alternative is the charityware like vim.

[databoy]

From a commercial point of view, Canon has one up on their competition.

Think about it. Manufacturers work on turnover.

The more features your product has for the same price over the competition, what are camera are you going to buy?

In my part of the world; Perth, Western Australia, The camera retailers I have spoken to have not heard of CHDK. We are a population of just over 1 million people with a resources boom and disposable cash. I have seen people walk out of the shop because the salesman did not know how to operate the camera he was demonstrating.

If I was Canon I would be dumbfounded. I would be telling salesmen about CHDK. A person with a budget of $500 is not going to buy a $1500 DSLR. Let's face it; if we had the spare cash we would all love to own a DSLR.

Sales is about making money. Computer manufacturers do it with all the crapware preloaded on the computer. CHDK is free. Load CHDK onto SDRAM, demonstrate all the features and make a sale. You have a happy customer and you have earned a sale.

A few of the guys at:
KAP Discussion Page - All Discussions
have businesses selling kites and accessories. They supply CHDK as part of the package. Without CHDK they would not make a sale.

The moral of the story is: give a person something for nothing and make your money on the accessories.