[texhax] Crowd funding for LaTeX development

[William Adams]

Moreover, TUG is a recognized 501C3 --- you can donate using the CFC/United
Way as a payroll deduction and they'll get the money in $100 increments.

William


On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 5:51 AM, Joseph Wright <
joseph.wright at morningstar2.co.uk> wrote:

> On 25/09/2017 09:54, Brian Dunn wrote:
> >
> > Might it be worthwhile to consider setting up a centralized
> > crowd-funding system for LaTeX development?
> >
> >
> > - LaTeX is increasing in popularity:
> >       - Overleaf shows 750,000+ authors, 10,000 journals, 250
> >         advisers, and around 30 organizations/companies.
> >       - ShareLaTeX shows 1,300,000 authors, 30 partner institutions.
> >
> > - LaTeX may be a good candidate for crowdfunding:
> >       - LaTeX is a preexisting and growing collection of small
> >         pieces, instead of one large project.
> >       - Many authors are involved.
> >       - LaTeX packages have a long and useful lifespan.
> >       - Small packages/changes may be developed on spec, priced
> >         reasonably according to actual development time involved, then
> >         released when the funding is raised.
> >       - The results are immediately usable.
> >       - There are several LaTeX consultants advertised who presumably
> >         would have time to do some of the advanced work.  Any number
> >         of students may be interested in helping with documentation
> >         and translations.
> >       - The various publishers, journals, etc. may be willing to fund
> >         anything which would make their lives easier.
> >
> > - Things to be funded:
> >       - Bug fixes, updates, and improvements for existing packages.
> >       - Documentation and translation improvements.
> >               (Ex: floatrow, komascript)
> >       - New specialty science, engineering, humanities, and
> >               professional packages.
> >       - Modules for TeX4ht, babel, tikz, lwarp, bidi, etc.
> >       - LaTeX3, XeLaTeX, LuaLaTeX, ConTeXt.
> >       - TUG, DANTE, GUST, etc.
> >       - Web infrastructure such as CTAN, LaTeX Font Catalog, wikis.
> >       - Distributions such as TeXLive, MiKTex.
> >       - Editors, LaTeX syntax highlighting rules.
> >       - Font development
> >
> > - A crowdfunding platform should be chosen carefully and hosted
> >   independently for the long term.
> >
> > - Publicity probably requires the involvement of Overleaf/ShareLaTeX to
> >   spread the word to their users.
> >
> > - Anyone doing much work may have to form a business entity.  (One
> >   advantage of doing so in USA is the ability to use a FEIN instead of a
> >   SSN for W-9 forms.)
> >
> >
> > Thoughts?
>
> TUG already administer a number of funds, e.g. for CTAN contributions
> (https://www.tug.org/donate.html). Do you see the above as being
> significantly different from that? Perhaps alternative routes for the
> money to get 'in'.
>
> Joseph
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