Donations for THREEjs Development?

[Marlowmz]

I work at a company where we make use of a lot of open source libraries and tools and where possible, we try to make a donation to their further development whenever we use them in our projects just as a way to materially contribute to the projects we love and need.

I was scanning around trying to find a way to put money in the pockets of THREEjs, but couldn't find anything. Is there a way to donate funds? or is that antithetical to the THREEjs project? I can see how there would be issues with how to share with everyone who contributes, but there are some fixed costs like hosting, etc that could be payed with donations.

Thanks for all the great work!

[mrdoob]

Yeah, I wouldn't know how to distribute the money... so I tend to stay away from these things. Also, hosting is free.

[pailhead]

Just hire three.js devs, and it will be developed :)

[fernandojsg]

I think I agree with @pailhead let's say a person is working/has worked on a feature you like, you could donate to him directly to thanks him for that or to help him taking time to develop more features.

But I understand @mrdoob concerns about how to properly distribute the money around the huge amount of contributors that are doing/have done a great work. What about using the money to host simple competitions from time to time? Like a competition of demos done with threejs following some specific theme or so? :)

[fernandojsg]

Or you could use the money to create threejs merchandising (tshirst, stickers...) and send them to the contributors :)

[pailhead]

Where would you host this though? Things like this already happen in forms of various hackatons, 3d web fest etc.

[fernandojsg]

Something more informal and simple. Let's say something like the ludum dare, to implement some effect or feature or demo with a theme and it could be even something that could be needed for the core itself.
No need to physical event of course, everything online.

[takahirox]

(BTW I'm still looking for a job 😅)

[makc]

I wouldn't know how to distribute the money

https://www.bountysource.com/ comes to mind

[jaygarcia]

@mrdoob have you considered making a business out of ThreeJS?

[pailhead]

@jaygarcia How would that work? Considering 800 contributors?

[jaygarcia]

@pailhead if there is enough demand, there are lots of models where ThreeJS itself could be monetized while staying open source. Monetizing ThreeJS would ensure that it has funding to continue development with N+ dedicated staff members.

[pailhead]

i dont understand, it seems like it already has N+ dedicated staff members, and probably a queue of people who'd be willing to collaborate. The user base is only going to grow. Could you give an example model of how this could work?

[makc]

I totally gave it right there above. Someone (shall we say 3js foundation) collects donations and posts bounties for issues. Case closed

[mrdoob]

@makc are you offering yourself for starting and running the 3js foundation? 😉