What do you think about adding an “official” section on the website/forum dedicated to requests made by users willing to fund skilled developers for new plugins development? Something like “Ehy! I’d like to have this particular amp simulator, if someone else is interested let’s start a new reverse crowdfunding campaign”. By reverse I mean the campaign is started by the customer instead of the developer/creator/producer (like traditional crowdfunding campaigns).
Sign me up!
But it’s not without a few well known pitfalls. Basically it’s like hiring a freelancer. There must be some kind of specification process. The developer and all backers must know what exactly the plugin should do. If you’re not careful in this specification, there’s one essential thing missing and the developer could refuse to implement that. And what about bug fixes and such?
It is intended for well known developers like those that have already published plugins here. It could be a process defined by several steps. If target is not satisfying, the developer could still take a percentage of the campaign for the effort. Like freelancers sites, a developer should have a honorable portfolio.
I LOVE this idea! I was about to suggest the same thing (well, I kind of already did in March), but I only just found this thread.
I agree with @Klaustrophil that some level of specification would help, and also with @redcloud that an existing track record would help increase the trustworthiness of this approach.
If MOD are too busy to implement this process, we could potentially just use an existing FLOSS crowd-funding platform like https://gitcoin.co/ or https://www.bountysource.com/. For example I’d happily contribute to a bounty for someone to finish Freeze pedal on the horizon?.
Agree. I think well known MOD devs as well as anyone with a good reputation (like devs who maintain a well known PC plugin) could be a good scope. Maybe this could be also used as a motivation for devs to port their existing plugins to the MOD. There are tons of good plugins out there and it would save us from the specification hell.
The more I think about it, the more I think that this is not just a “nice to have” thing, but absolutely essential for MOD’s continued success. I’ve started a new thread on that here: