Kickstarter-like campaign for incorporating extension functionality?

[snupy]

There have been a few interesting threads regarding extensions lately. One of the topics discussed is if SW could/should incorporate the functionality of certain extensions (generally by coding it themselves rather than incorporating the extension original code). As many other users, I believe the answer to be yes.

As far as I have seen, the main problem seems to be that incorporating extensions functionality risks to be investing many coding hours without sufficient economical return. For this reason, I wonder if a kickstarter-like model where some functionality is going to be incorporated (and maintained obvs) by SW provided that a certain level of funding is reached could be viable.

I would be interested in opinions about this by both SW and fellow users. I can already think of a couple of potential issues.

- FG is not subscription based, and I believe we all want it to stay that way. General development of FG should not become paywalled, but imho there is space for a kickstarter format for more specific/niche features.

- The developing team at SW is pretty small I think. Funded development of niche features could risk delaying the not funded more general development.

- It is healthy to have external developers working on FG extensions, so SW would need not to step on their toes.

There are probably other issues which I am not seeing. Still, I believe that, if carefully approached, the system could work. How does the community feel about this? Would SW be willing to consider something like this?

[Laerun]

There have been a few interesting threads regarding extensions lately. One of the topics discussed is if SW could/should incorporate the functionality of certain extensions (generally by coding it themselves rather than incorporating the extension original code). As many other users, I believe the answer to be yes.

As far as I have seen, the main problem seems to be that incorporating extensions functionality risks to be investing many coding hours without sufficient economical return. For this reason, I wonder if a kickstarter-like model where some functionality is going to be incorporated (and maintained obvs) by SW provided that a certain level of funding is reached could be viable.

I would be interested in opinions about this by both SW and fellow users. I can already think of a couple of potential issues.

- FG is not subscription based, and I believe we all want it to stay that way. General development of FG should not become paywalled, but imho there is space for a kickstarter format for more specific/niche features.

- The developing team at SW is pretty small I think. Funded development of niche features could risk delaying the not funded more general development.

- It is healthy to have external developers working on FG extensions, so SW would need not to step on their toes.

There are probably other issues which I am not seeing. Still, I believe that, if carefully approached, the system could work. How does the community feel about this? Would SW be willing to consider something like this?

I like where you are going with this.
Potentially make a top 3-5 to include and go for it, as long as the original extension authors are able to sign away their code.

[Atua]

I like this idea too, seems that it may work

[Egheal]

I'd find it annoying to have official features that would be considered premium, i.e. not usable by everyone.
Especially with features that should already be integrated like Auras for D&D or better-looking character sheets (Big Portraits extension).
I'd certainly pay for them to be integrated via a kickstarter, but only if they become free for all users thereafter (considering kickstarter participants as benefactors of sorts, I suppose...).

[snupy]

I'd find it annoying to have official features that would be considered premium, i.e. not usable by everyone.
Especially with features that should already be integrated like Auras for D&D or better-looking character sheets (Big Portraits extension).
I'd certainly pay for them to be integrated via a kickstarter, but only if they become free for all users thereafter (considering kickstarter participants as benefactors of sorts, I suppose...).

I didn't make it clear in the initial post, but what I had in mind is exactly what you wrote: once developed, features are available to all users, not just the ones who participated to the kickstarter.

I also agree that some functionality should really be integrated without any need for a kickstarter, but that's a separate topic.

[anstett]

From what I see some of the reason extensions are not integrated by SW that many people use is a question of contract work and copyright.

If you develop an extension that fulfills what you see as a need in the system (using Auras as an example) most casual developers will write the code to match the ruleset they most often use, they will cobble together what works for them (Ruin has made this point several times) and leave it at that.

They are effectively not being paid by anyone, the small amounts made on the Forge are not going to even pay for someone's time of coding, and they likely do not do much of any notification about Creative Commons release. Smiteworks is a professional company designing code to be efficient to update and expand to use with hundreds of rulesets. They could (I would argue should) take such ideas as Auras and add them to the roadmap for integration into the core coding for all rulesets to take advantage of.

One way is to pay the community developer like a contract worker: build this bit of code to our standard, release all ownership to SW, and it get added to the code base. Many more detailed problems with that way of doing things including taking one of your current employees off of developing things and putting them on QA.

A good compromise is to have a space for updated code to be shared for any developer who wants to build extensions to test their code against the new updated code set about to be released. This gives the community the chance to develop what they want the way they want with almost no restriction and not offload the QA onto SW few employees.

Hmmmm, if only there was a space in the forums for that to happen......

[SilentRuin]

Some obvious problems with this...

A kickstarter with the goal for general adaptation of extensions at large?

What is the contract to fulfill the Kickstarter? What is "good enough" on extensions implemented? How do you address the extensions copyright safely and legally when its an unspecific set of goals for an unspecific set of extensions which all differ? While some of us are happy to kick our extensions to SW (me) - what about those who don't "play" their extensions but make them to sell? Who decides who gets the money and when and if there is any division?

I see so many legal dangerous morass of things in this unspecific general "lets get SW to take over extensions" that it does not seem practical to actually apply.

Gist being - great thought - interesting approach - but to unspecific with lack of details to actually solve the issue. The only real solution is if you could increase SW year to year revenue to point they could expand their developer base with permanent new hires - and that is not something solvable by an open ended unclear Kickstarter.

Just warning that this is not a simple solution. The reason extension support is a mess is not because SW won't take them over - its because they can't afford to take them over and in a lot of cases are such twisted pieces of code developed over time that not even the authors (if they are still around) know what was hacked together and spliced in to "make them work" release to release.

The ideas I've read on shared FORGE ownership of deliveries (there can only be one right now) or some approval process to easily switch owners of a FORGE output is by far the more practical solution. No money - not forced maintenance by SW - pure community driven. As soon as money comes into the picture it makes things dangerous for companies entering into an agreement without iron clad contracts and copyright statements.

IMHO only.

[snupy]

Some obvious problems with this...

A kickstarter with the goal for general adaptation of extensions at large?

What is the contract to fulfill the Kickstarter? What is "good enough" on extensions implemented? How do you address the extensions copyright safely and legally when its an unspecific set of goals for an unspecific set of extensions which all differ? While some of us are happy to kick our extensions to SW (me) - what about those who don't "play" their extensions but make them to sell? Who decides who gets the money and when and if there is any division?

I see so many legal dangerous morass of things in this unspecific general "lets get SW to take over extensions" that it does not seem practical to actually apply.

Gist being - great thought - interesting approach - but to unspecific with lack of details to actually solve the issue. The only real solution is if you could increase SW year to year revenue to point they could expand their developer base with permanent new hires - and that is not something solvable by an open ended unclear Kickstarter.

Just warning that this is not a simple solution. The reason extension support is a mess is not because SW won't take them over - its because they can't afford to take them over and in a lot of cases are such twisted pieces of code developed over time that not even the authors (if they are still around) know what was hacked together and spliced in to "make them work" release to release.

The ideas I've read on shared FORGE ownership of deliveries (there can only be one right now) or some approval process to easily switch owners of a FORGE output is by far the more practical solution. No money - not forced maintenance by SW - pure community driven. As soon as money comes into the picture it makes things dangerous for companies entering into an agreement without iron clad contracts and copyright statements.

IMHO only.

Relatively unspecific goals and what is good enough are excellent points, but I think you could make them for every kickstart. I don't think there is much besides trust, good faith and communication which can be done about it.

But for your main point: what I was proposing is for SW to independently develop certain specific functionality, which may happen to be implemented in some extensions, not to use the original extension code. Being able, say, to apply an effect when an attack hits is certainly not something which can be copyrighted, so there would be no copyright or legal problems (by the way, this is an example of something I think should just be in FG without requiring a kickstart).

Of course, adapting the original code if the extension author is happy to do that (and the code is up to par), or sub-contracting the job to the original extension author could be ways of doing it.

The problem would be for SW not to overly step on the toes of independent developers who sell their extensions - although the fact that a given software or extension may be made obsolete as the os or software evolve is something which cannot be entirely avoided and in fact routinely happens.

[Navigat0r]

I quite like this idea as well. A few thoughts that came to my mind when reading through this thread: Namely, how one would decide which feature(s) to kickstart. In my case, I primarily use FGU for PF1e and use LOTS of extensions for that system. The extensions I would like to see supported are likely different than those used by people playing other more popular rulesets. I know that the feature request page exists but I think the scope of said page is a bit too broad in this case as it covers a lot more than just extensions.

[Morenu]

I would toss in for helping integrate some extensions into Corerpg. Maybe reward forge coins or coupon at the store, art subscription... Things that don't really cost SW money or are overpriced to help a good cause. I would see it more as a donation to the community than actually buying something outright (Not sure of kickstarter's ToS )

The value of getting some of the more integral extensions to work at the time of an update (typically), taking some workload of extension creators, less chance of losing an extension to creators leaving... I'd go $50 with 0 issue and more if they happened to be hitting things I use in PFrpg.

I just have no concept of what it would cost to implement and then maintain.

[LordEntrails]

I don't get how this could work. I understand the desire, I don't understand the practicality of how it would be done.

If the money is simply to encourage SW to incorporate certain extensions into the base, then it adds nothing to the developer resources. i.e. I'm sure the SW devs are fully engaged with what they have already determined are priorities.

If the money is to buy existing extensions from community devs, then I would suspect in most cases the code would still need to be re-written to be compliant with SW standards. And honestly once an idea is known along with a good solution, I don't think you are saving much time from re-developing new code to perform a similar function. See above on developer resources.

If the idea is to use KS to fund new SW developers, that's not a very stable income for hiring purposes. i.e. how long would a KS be able to fund a developer for? I don't know what the jo b description would entail, but according to Google, the average S/W developer salary in the US is $100 - 130k. Add benefits, taxes, and employment overhead, you need to add 25-40%. And then you need to account for managing that employee, So Doug or John spends less time developing and more time managing.

Now, if the money were to pay for some consultant to work with SW and the community devs to develop a framework for community extensions or to enhance documentations or some other project/task-based effort, that might (maybe) work if SW were committed to such an idea. And the idea and project was well defined with measurable objectives and a clear mandate. But note, experienced consultants are generally more expensive than software developers (like $200-300 per hour).

Or the final way to look at this, do you all really think this KS could raise in excess of $200,000 USD? (Don't forget KS fees and costs).

[snupy]

I don't get how this could work. I understand the desire, I don't understand the practicality of how it would be done.

Fair.



If the money is simply to encourage SW to incorporate certain extensions into the base, then it adds nothing to the developer resources. i.e. I'm sure the SW devs are fully engaged with what they have already determined are priorities.


Yes, I guess my case rests on the fact that SW developers could find time to allocate to funded projects and/or shift their priorities in case of successful kickstarter. That may or may not be the case.

From what I have seen on the forum, SW replies tend to be on the line of "we are not going to do that because we are not sure of the economic return" rather than we think that's useless and there's no reason to do it. A successful kickstarter would send quite a strong signal about what users (or at least users willing to put their money where their words are) care about, and I've seen many posts here quite critical of the current development directions, for example the problems with extensions and the fact that not so many people care about 2.5D. In short, I like to believe that SW ideas on what represents a priority are not immovable, but need concrete reasons to be moved and I am try to provide a concrete reason.

The only feasible alternative I see is project type work (so not permanently hiring new developers with kickstarter money), similar to the one taking place in adventure/books conversion, but with the aim of coding a specific functionality/porting an extension. Seems doable to me but I may be naive.

What you propose in the last paragraph is a different thing which would also be interesting, but looks like you don't believe it's feasible. My answer to your rhetorical question is just what you would expect it to be.

[snupy]

I quite like this idea as well. A few thoughts that came to my mind when reading through this thread: Namely, how one would decide which feature(s) to kickstart. In my case, I primarily use FGU for PF1e and use LOTS of extensions for that system. The extensions I would like to see supported are likely different than those used by people playing other more popular rulesets. I know that the feature request page exists but I think the scope of said page is a bit too broad in this case as it covers a lot more than just extensions.

Haven't thought this far yet. Probably by users voting, as you say on something less extensive than the feature request page. Then starting the kickstarter (does not have to be exactly that platform) on the top one. Or maybe start the kickstarter for the top say 3. The first one (if any) to be fully funded starts being developed, the other ones are reimbursed (unless more than one thing can be developed simultaneously, which seems unlikely). Once one feature has been implemented reopen the voting and repeat.

Anyway, just what I came out with on the spur of the moment, haven't thought this through carefully.

[LordEntrails]

Yes, I guess my case rests on the fact that SW developers could find time to allocate to funded projects and/or shift their priorities in case of successful kickstarter. That may or may not be the case.
They certainly could. Though not blatantly obvious, they have done so in the past.


From what I have seen on the forum, SW replies tend to be on the line of "we are not going to do that because we are not sure of the economic return" rather than we think that's useless and there's no reason to do it. A successful kickstarter would send quite a strong signal about what users (or at least users willing to put their money where their words are) care about, and I've seen many posts here quite critical of the current development directions, for example the problems with extensions and the fact that not so many people care about 2.5D. In short, I like to believe that SW ideas on what represents a priority are not immovable, but need concrete reasons to be moved and I am try to provide a concrete reason.
That makes sense, i.e. clearly indicating what and how much the community values certain aspects. SW certainly do change their priorities based on feedback. My own current experience which seems to be mimic'd by what we see as users is that SW run using Agile Methodology with planning increments. Typically these increments are quarterly and is where the team reviews the backlog and determines what project they will work on that quarter. It's bad practice (inefficient, demoralizing, etc) to change objectives within an increment. But I expect whenever their next increment is, we see subtle signs of such a shift.


The only feasible alternative I see is project type work (so not permanently hiring new developers with kickstarter money), similar to the one taking place in adventure/books conversion, but with the aim of coding a specific functionality/porting an extension. Seems doable to me but I may be naive.

What you propose in the last paragraph is a different thing which would also be interesting, but looks like you don't believe it's feasible. My answer to your rhetorical question is just what you would expect it to be.
It's not meant in a negative light. I spent a couple decades doing product development process consulting, very similar to what I'm proposing here. So I know its hard to be successful with such projects. The potential is very high, but getting a cohesive team and "user adoption" to be effective is very challenging. Such efforts almost never work when driven either from the top or the users alone. They are most effective when the objectives are clear and everyone understands exactly what will be delivered. And the objectives and deliverables are agreed to be correct. Even more importantly, when everyone throughout the organization believes in the initiative.

It's not impossible for such a project to originate from the user community and be successful, but its seems exceedingly challenging.

But going back to the idea of influencing future efforts, that is certainly achievable and worthwhile.

[Morenu]

OK, maybe not a kickstarter, maybe like a patreon.

I feel like I have seen patreons where once a certain amount of money is brought in they make another "thing". so if only a few subscribers, it may take months, or if there are a lot, it may be 2 a month. So it could be something like any patreon member gets to vote on the next extension picked (with SW deciding what gets on the ballot), an estimate of cost is done (or its done before) and once the goal is hit, the coding can start. it could be handed off to a trusted coder who wants the extra cash, or done in house.

I know I have seen this with web comic authors, 3D printing modelers and map makers.

And the patreon could offer member only sales / give aways / behind the scene things... to different levels.

Or hell, just add 1 crowd sourced addon to the store that can be "bought" and until the goal is hit, no one gets anything, but once its hit, it gets created and it gets added and everyone gets it. essentially thats a kickstarter but no one gets money back if unfunded, not time limitation on time to fund, and everyone gets the product once funded, Oh and no money leaves SW.

I know a lot of people hate subscriptions to play, and I respect SW for that. BUT some us us have adult money and don't mind giving back or paying in to help everyone.

[Ludd_G]

OK, maybe not a kickstarter, maybe like a patreon.

I feel like I have seen patreons where once a certain amount of money is brought in they make another "thing". so if only a few subscribers, it may take months, or if there are a lot, it may be 2 a month. So it could be something like any patreon member gets to vote on the next extension picked (with SW deciding what gets on the ballot), an estimate of cost is done (or its done before) and once the goal is hit, the coding can start. it could be handed off to a trusted coder who wants the extra cash, or done in house.

I know I have seen this with web comic authors, 3D printing modelers and map makers.

And the patreon could offer member only sales / give aways / behind the scene things... to different levels.

Or hell, just add 1 crowd sourced addon to the store that can be "bought" and until the goal is hit, no one gets anything, but once its hit, it gets created and it gets added and everyone gets it. essentially thats a kickstarter but no one gets money back if unfunded, not time limitation on time to fund, and everyone gets the product once funded, Oh and no money leaves SW.

I know a lot of people hate subscriptions to play, and I respect SW for that. BUT some us us have adult money and don't mind giving back or paying in to help everyone.


I like this idea and I would be up for supporting an ongoing patreon, to improve free to all implementation of automation/functionally of the FGU base client.

Cheers,

Simon

[snupy]

@ddavison
I can imagine Smiteworks not wanting to take a definite position on this straight away, but some indication on whether or not they consider something on the lines of what has been discussed feasible would be great.