Mudlet Sponsorship Plan

Funding Goal Ideas

Priority	Cost (yearly)	Cost (total)	Description
1	100 $	100 $	Apple code signing certificate
2a	500 $	600 $	Windows code signing certificate from digicert for 1 year
2b	475 $	575 $	Alternatively: Windows code signing certificate from digicert for 2 years
2c	400 $	500 $	There are more vendors listed, for example Certum at 360 € for 1 year
3	300 $	900 $	Additional windows CI job (would possibly allow us to create 64-bit windows binaries without delay, appveyor charges $25 per additional job per month)
4	?	?	Additional travis (macOS?) CI jobs (we'd need to contact travis support for a quote)
?	100 $	1000 $	Steam store listing? Cost seems to be one-time only. This may make obsolete the Windows and Apple store investments.
?	20 - 100 $	1100 $	Windows store listing? Cost seems to be one-time only. Cheaper price is for individual persons, higher for organisations. Not sure which fits. Guessing the latter.
?	?	?	Apple store listing?
?	?	?	Bounties for complicated projects?
?	?	?	UX critique from a professional? For example, let the connections screen become more "game like" instead of looking like a business app. Give Mudlet a fresher user experience after all these years :)
?	?	?	macOS is about to make it harder to publish there, as you have to [submit your software to their servers] to be scanned and notarized. This will be required by default for all software beginning in macOs 10.15
?	300 $	?	Mudlet server costs like hosting and domain, currently not as high priority as the more important certificates
?	?	?	Hosting inside China for better download speed from inside their firewall
?	?	?	Give some to other upstream projects that we've built Mudlet upon
?	?	?	Remote macOS in cloud - so Vadi and SlySven can fix macOS-specific issues in Mudlet
?	?	?	(enter new ideas here)

Contributor Tier Ideas

First proposal

1. $1: Discord role
2. $5: Private Q&A channel with devs. Participate in polls
3. $10: Stickers (we'd need to design and order them first)
4. $15: Coding livestreams topic selection (regularly, different topics, livestreams open to all)
5. $25: Discord cool role
6. $50: Mentioning on about page. Demonnic will turn you a pen on his lathe.

An alternative progression

1. 2 $
   • Discord supporter role
   • Access private Q&A channel
2. 4 $
   • Get listed on "About tab" (and Mudlet website both?)
   • Participate in polls
3. 8 $
   • Suggest small topic for livestream
   • Get listed on "About tab" in bold
4. 16 $
   • Discord advanced supporter role
   • Ability to join and speak in livestream
   • Get listed on "About tab" in bold with additional message in a tool-tip (need to ponder advertisements though)
   • Mudlet pen (limited offer only)
5. 32 $
   • Request large topic for extensive tutorial video
   • Get listed on "About tab" in bold with tool-tip and listed above lower supporters

Another joint proposal

• 1 $ - Discord title & user name colored (starting here, have them at every tier)
• 2 $ - Access to exclusive patreon content
• 3 $ - Shout out on twitter
• 5 $ - Participate in polls
• 8 $ - Private discord channel
• 13 $ - Improved Discord user name color
• 21 $ - Topic suggestion
• 34 $ - About page mention
• 55 $ - Pen (start lower as exclusive offer at the beginning)

Points from other creators

• Publicize it regularly
• Create a Discord role
• Have the $1 tier
• stickers :D
• Coding livestreams
• Coding Q&A videos
• Live coding sessions of Mudlet scripts

Come up with reward ideas

Interesting ideas:

• Discord role (or multiple tiered)
• Private Q&A channel with devs
  • Alternatively a half-public channel, in that all can read answers, but not all can write
• Stickers (we'd need to design and order them first)
• livestreams
  • regularly
  • different topics
    • Coding
    • Mudlet
    • scripts
• Mentioning on about page
  • Have this tiered as well? For example like this
  • Mention name
  • Mention name and image
  • Mention name, image and tool-tip shown on mouse-over
  • Mention name, image, tool-tip and be clickable/link somewhere (no 18+)
• Posters (same caveat as stickers above)

Anti-ideas we are not implementing:

• Getting your game listed
• Putting advertising on mudlet.org

Investigate other platforms

• Keneanung checked out other platforms that Github supports - none are all that popular and Patreon had the lowest fees.
  • which ones were checked? --> The ones mentioned in https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-button-in-your-repository#about-funding-files - That is: CommunityBridge, GitHub Sponsors, IssueHunt, Ko-fi, Liberapay, Open Collective, Otechie, Patreon, Tidelift

Be mindful of doing it wrong

• don't want anyone to feel left out - Mudlet is gonna be free, and we're not doing this to make people without money feel bad (practically speaking the amount that'll care will not be high, but still!)

Forming a legal entity to support Mudlet development

Reasoning

• Some funding platforms (GitHub sponsor for organisations, OpenCollective) require a legal entity
• Avoid going through a private bank account, where the use of fund is intransparent
• Avoid contracts on the name of individuals

Research about German laws regarding organisations (ideally for non-profit)

this is a log of discord chat

keneanung I work for a non-profit, but from what I gather there's a lot of rules what you can actually tax-reduce and what not and the tax checks seem to be pretty strict.

Vadi Should we worry about tax reduction? I just mainly want to be able to open a bank account in Mudlets name so we can use that instead

keneanung I'm not a lawyer, but I see it like this: If we make money (and patreon counts as making money, I believe), at least in Germany you have to pay taxes on that money... There's another institution called "registered association" (eingetragener Verein), which can act as a legal entity (you can open bank accounts for them) and more in league withwhat we are. I believe MorgenGrauen is financed through such an association. But there are some laws about regular meetings and legal documentation for those http://mg.mud.de/verein/index.shtml (only in German, though...) Though it looks like there are some banks in Germany that even allow opening accounts for non-registered associations :thinking: There exist some restrictions for members from non-EU countries, though. You must be able to visit Germany unrestricted to be able to become a member. And being part of the leadership used to require Germany as a residence, but this seems to change slowly

Vadi Oh. Alright.

keneanung Still reading on about possible legal entities...

Vadi Thanks for researching into this! Perhaps we can also ask some people from other OSS foundations about this too.

keneanung But it seems our international body makes this pretty hard For associations, we need at least 3 members and for registering, we need 7. To avoid taxes on donations (which is probably what patreon counts as), we need to be accepted as a "charitable" association (and must be registered), which needs extra care when crafting the charter but creating a registered association is far cheaper than I thought. It's commonly 100-150€, if you don't use a lawyer to create the charter for you

Vadi I am confused

keneanung ?

Vadi Are you saying there's 2 different kinds of organisations?

keneanung actually, there's 3 kinds of associations. The simple ones are not registered, but have a leadership and a charter. They need at least 3 members. But since they are the least formal ones, it's hard for them to get bank accounts and so on. And their leadership are personally financially liable, in case something goes wrong. The second form is a registered association. They need 7 members for registering, afterwards not less than 3 members. But since the leadership is put into a formal registry, they have an easier time to get bank accounts and other legal activities. And the association is only liable up to what they have in assets (from what I gather). Otherwise, they seem to be mostly the same as the non-registered version. these forms all have to pay taxes on money they make outside of membership subscriptions. If you want to avoid taxes on donations, you have to request to be considered a charitable associations by the finance authority. For that you need to be a registered association This is what I understand from my research, but again, I might have gotten some details wrong Maybe @Leris knows more about that since MorgenGrauen is financed by a registered association. But reading through the publicly available records of the members' meeting they are not charitable anymore, but still don't pay taxes because they have a revenue of less than 18000€ another source talks about 5k€ limit on revenue to avoid taxes... all in all, I think we don't have enough EU members to have a registered association huh... KDE is a registered association as well. Never thought they were based in Germany Further research doesn't really shed any light on what structures or legal entities is best for an international small open source project. I'm giving up for now

Incorporation in the United States

Research done by demonnic

• Getting a 'non-profit' designation is largely for charities, not necessarily companies which do not seek to turn a profit.
• From what I can see the best fit is an LLC with core members who desire to take part in the LLC itself being member managers and equal 'owners' of the company.
• Company would have its own bank account and keep its own books, which would allow them to be even more transparent as they would not go through anyone's personal accounts
• Would limit liability of the members themselves in the event of issues
• Would require that any income not expensed each year appear on a tax form sent out by whomever is handling the books to each member manager to be reported as income; however, it is our intent to spend all monies coming in on expenses for the company and thus have no tax liability.
• I (demonnic) am willing to spearhead the process and handle the paperwork/book keeping if this is the route we decide to go.