I tend not to answer these emails, we receive many of these internally and you can find many posted here as well. Through all this time, we've always talked and mentioned about the need of having a sponsor for the project so far it has not been achieved.

Is the current income from donations or Carbon Ads very low to pay a fully-dedicated developer?

We appreciate all those who make an effort to donate. Donations received by the project are quite small and very infrequent. CarbonAds revenues are too small and are used to pay for hosting, AWS services and other minor costs.

How much income need a Phalcon team member to be focused on this project permanently?

I think this change from one team member to another, and it depends on the country we're currently living and its economy. In my personal case, being fully dedicated to Phalcon/Zephir I would require between 3000 and 3500 USD per month. Probably need to stop doing some things but I am open to the idea. I can not speak for other members of Team Phalcon.

Is it possible to create a fund where we can all help to pay these costs (small/medium/big donations)?

I think it's possible, not against the idea at all.

Do any of core developers is interested in working completely in the framework?

I'm interested, I think other team members as well :)

Despite this, Phalcon is an open-source project which relies on volunteer effort, one person just can't do all the work these projects do need even if he's paid.

@andresgutierrez what type fo VPS do you guys need, I may be able to get you a Free vps at steadfast in exchange for sponsorship. What do you think?

And I'm all for the funds. We are using more and more phalcon and it would be great to send support to the staff.

Thanks Max for your offer

@andresgutierrez what type fo VPS do you guys need, I may be able to get you a Free vps at steadfast in exchange for sponsorship. What do you think?

And I'm all for the funds. We are using more and more phalcon and it would be great to send support to the staff.

lol, that a no thanks?

Thanks Max for your offer

@andresgutierrez what type fo VPS do you guys need, I may be able to get you a Free vps at steadfast in exchange for sponsorship. What do you think?

And I'm all for the funds. We are using more and more phalcon and it would be great to send support to the staff.

Isn't there a posebillity for monthly donations - like a subscription. Or a donation call until the money is reached to pay a full developer vacency for one year? What about a crowd-funding project? I am not an expert with that, but maybe @walterwhitep can help ;)

I would be happy to donate each month and hope that others are too.

Thanks for replying Andres!

IMO, the best way to overcome this is to create a Kickstarter/Pledgie campaign where you ask an approximate amount you need for one year, and a set of goals you will achieve with this money, something like a roadmap. This will help those who want to donate being motivated and feel that they will not lose their money :).

For instance, implement subqueries in PHQL and other popular requests on Github can be there as part of the roadmap.

Once you put together the campaign we will be happy to make the first donation!

Great topic!

What about open a campaign on kickstarter?

If we are here 1000, then each one can send 100$, its 100'000$

3500$ per month....

I think that we are here more than 1000, then this become 3.50$ / month per user !

I can donate almost 5$ - 10$ / month without went in ruins :)

However, I believe that there much more developers who are following phalcon

ops... I see now... Going to donate !

Done! Good luck !

I share also on programming group with 158k members who will see your fund.

https://plus.google.com/communities/109728488971985783565

Hey Andres, that was really quick! :)

@raxan I guess, Phalcon Team members aren't located at USA and they are not allowed to use Kickstarter.

@andres I still think it would be good to specify which features will be developed with that money. What's the current method to determine if a feature is popular enough to be candidate for development? I see many +1 but they aren't still being developed or still assigned to anyone of you.

With regard to hosting, honestly, it’s not that costly to keep these websites running, you can take the opportunity that @MaxCastro is offering you, you might save some. I even think that there must be cheaper options out there instead of using Amazon.

I'm pretty amazed that this has not been discussed before. Anyway, I'll start donating 50 USD monthly next month, I hope others will do the same to achive the funding goal.

We all want to show thanks in a tangible, feel-it-in-your-pocket, kind of way. I'm positive Phalcon Team members love working on these projects, however these days is better to know that the project future is assured.

Keep up the good work!

I'll start donating 50 USD monthly next month

How much ppl can donate? If we are many, then we can come to get almost 3500.

Thanks for donating guys, I'm not active in Phalcon lately due to my job. I wish I could help more Andres and Nikolaos soon.

As far as I know, @sjinks and @xboston have also been very inactive in the last year. Currently, only Andres and Nikolaos maintain the framework, with the help of contributors, of course. Perhaps you do not know but Andres is behind @phalcon account (both this forum and Github). He's also the creator of Zephir. No one is more suitable to say what to do with the project than him.

If the campaign reaches its goal, it would also like to help, unfortunately I can't now.

Eduar, good to hear from you. If what you say is true, it is even more worrying, I thought the Phalcon team was bigger, not just 2 developers. I hope not to sound negative, but this project will survive with so few resources?

Thanks for donating guys, I'm not active in Phalcon lately due to my job. I wish I could help more Andres and Nikolaos soon.

As far as I know, @sjinks and @xboston have also been very inactive in the last year. Currently, only Andres and Nikolaos maintain the framework, with the help of contributors, of course. Perhaps you do not know but Andres is behind @phalcon account (both this forum and Github). He's also the creator of Zephir. No one is more suitable to say what to do with the project than him.

If the campaign reaches its goal, it would also like to help, unfortunately I can't now.

Well, I didn't say that, I never said that the Phalcon Team were only 2 members, I said that Andres and Nikolaos are more active than others (including me).

I also think that one more effective way to help the project would be hiring Andres. I hope he does not mind, but as far as I know, he is open to settle in another country where a company that uses Phalcon want to sponsor our work there. A sort of job where he partially contributes to the company objetives and the other half of the time he can continue developing Phalcon/Zephir. He has the final word in all of this.

Eduar, good to hear from you. If what you say is true, it is even more worrying, I thought the Phalcon team was bigger, not just 2 developers. I hope not to sound negative, but this project will survive with so few resources?

Thanks for donating guys, I'm not active in Phalcon lately due to my job. I wish I could help more Andres and Nikolaos soon.

As far as I know, @sjinks and @xboston have also been very inactive in the last year. Currently, only Andres and Nikolaos maintain the framework, with the help of contributors, of course. Perhaps you do not know but Andres is behind @phalcon account (both this forum and Github). He's also the creator of Zephir. No one is more suitable to say what to do with the project than him.

If the campaign reaches its goal, it would also like to help, unfortunately I can't now.

I think this is an amazing effort. I've only been contributing for a short while now and not as much as I'd like due to a baby thats in the final stages of testing before release (birth ;)). But, if there is funding I would very easily be able to free up dedicated days to support with development.

As far as a roadmap goes, this is a somewhat tricky effort, Phalcon's MVC structure is fairly complete and extra features to make it a full stack framework are easy to list but it's hard to determine where the communities interests are aimed at. This could perhaps be an effort to focus on in the earlier stages.

D'Oh. That surprises me even more. It seems that you are not as good in business as in programming. You have a large community of developers and are unable to obtain funds to maintain your own project. No offense of course.

Have you thought of offering professional services in support and training? I'm sure many here would like to have a good support without too much commitment. On the other hand, It's amazing how the authors of one of the trending current frameworks are not already hired by a big player in the industry (Facebook, Yahoo, Zend, etc), I'm sure you have the skills to work there, I mean, not many of us are in the ability to create something as powerful as Phalcon and a programming language as Zephir. Most of us are just spectators in the world of technology, you are the true heroes :)

I hope things get better for you overall

Well, I didn't say that, I never said that the Phalcon Team were only 2 members, I said that Andres and Nikolaos are more active than others (including me).

I also think that one more effective way to help the project would be hiring Andres. I hope he does not mind, but as far as I know, he is open to settle in another country where a company that uses Phalcon want to sponsor our work there. A sort of job where he partially contributes to the company objetives and the other half of the time he can continue developing Phalcon/Zephir. He has the final word in all of this.

First of all, thanks to all you that have already donated, we really appreciate it. We hope not to disappoint the efforts you're making.

@Stefan Of course we thought about that possibility, but in the current conditions, it is difficult without an investor who believes in the project and in us. This is the reason I agreed to create the campaign.

Two years ago, nobody believed in our project. During these two years, Phalcon has evolved to be a real alternative and a solution to real problems. Every day, all the technology is more and more performance-oriented, and Phalcon/Zephir can be a key piece in the whole puzzle of creating faster applications we all seek.

We hope that next year we have the resources and support of the community to move forward with this challenge. We appreciate the trust you put in Phalcon every day!

Andres, can you confirm what I've said of your availability for being hired in a partial time company/open-source scheme? I think it would be a great fit for you and for the project.

First of all, thanks to all you that have already donated, we really appreciate it. We hope not to disappoint the efforts you're making.

@Stefan Of course we thought about that possibility, but in the current conditions, it is difficult without an investor who believes in the project and in us. This is the reason I agreed to create the campaign.

Two years ago, nobody believed in our project. During these two years, Phalcon has evolved to be a real alternative and a solution to real problems. Every day, all the technology is more and more performance-oriented, and Phalcon/Zephir can be a key piece in the whole puzzle of creating faster applications we all seek.

We hope that next year we have the resources and support of the community to move forward with this challenge. We appreciate the trust you put in Phalcon every day!

My two cents on the matter.

Small team Yes Phalcon is a small team. There have been instances that due to real life issues a couple of us were working on the project and some instances that we were all working on the project full speed ahead. Irrespective of how many people worked on the project we always moved the framework forward.

Complexity We knew from the beginning that C is not a very popular language in terms of the preferred language of choice as PHP or others are. As a result we knew coming into this project that the contributions from the community would not be many. This is why we created Zephir. To offer a way for more contributions to the main code base. With 2.0 things would become a lot easier for all of us since one only needs to know PHP and understand Zephir and thus contribute.

Work/Sponsors Since this is an open source project we work on it when we have time (as you all do). We wish we could have a company behind us by means of a sponsor but we do not have one already. If things change in the future and we get sponsorhip that would be great! We also investigated the option to create a new company ourselves and offer training, support etc. to clients but we haven't materialized that option yet. It is very difficult to tackle working on yoru day job while trying to build a Phalcon support/training company. If we do manage to get a sponsor or two that would free up some of our time and help us concentrate on Phalcon and its company then yes we can get something going.

The bottom line is this: Without you, our community, this project would have never reached the level it is right now. You are the ones that drive us forward and we thank you all for this. We are looking forward to a more productive next year and remember to spread the word about Phalcon anyway you can!!

/vr Nikos

Eduar, I can't confirm that, in the same exact words, I'm open to new projects involving the use of PHP/Phalcon/Zephir and allow us to continue the development and evolution. Also, I'm open to participate in projects that allow me to work longer to Phalcon/Zephir and at the same time help to achieve the proposed goals of the company that hired me.

Nevertheless, this option should be discussed between the parties and not to be taken lightly, If anyone has an interesting proposal you can reach me at [email protected]

Moreover, as Nikolaos says, and in general, the arrival of Zephir has allowed and will allow more contributors to help out with Phalcon (you can see this in the 2.0.0 branch), which is also necessary to ensure the future of the project.

Andres, can you confirm what I've said of your availability for being hired in a partial time company/open-source scheme? I think it would be a great fit for you and for the project.

Andres, if I understand you are the only who are working 100% at the project, others are part-time. If you found a company who can hire you, then you can work 50% on the project and other 50% for custom work of this company, please correct me if I said wrong. Sound like the project development will become more slow, in 1 year is 6 months. I think for the project is better that you focus full time only on core product.

But I full understand that right now the project need fund. Will be best (and I hope also other agree), to found fund thanks to community.

Eduar, I can't confirm that, in the same exact words, I'm open to new projects involving the use of PHP/Phalcon/Zephir and allow us to continue the development and evolution. Also, I'm open to participate in projects that allow me to work longer to Phalcon/Zephir and at the same time help to achieve the proposed goals of the company that hired me.

Nevertheless, this option should be discussed between the parties and not to be taken lightly, If anyone has an interesting proposal you can reach me at [email protected]

Moreover, as Nikolaos says, and in general, the arrival of Zephir has allowed and will allow more contributors to help out with Phalcon (you can see this in the 2.0.0 branch), which is also necessary to ensure the future of the project.

Andres, can you confirm what I've said of your availability for being hired in a partial time company/open-source scheme? I think it would be a great fit for you and for the project.

@raxan IMO, Andres is suggesting that as a plan B, however, it is a valid point, but I would like the option of funding more, so there could be at least one person fully dedicated to the project

Andres, if I understand you are the only who are working 100% at the project, others are part-time. If you found a company who can hire you, then you can work 50% on the project and other 50% for custom work of this company, please correct me if I said wrong. Sound like the project development will become more slow, in 1 year is 6 months. I think for the project is better that you focus full time only on core product.

But I full understand that right now the project need fund. Will be best (and I hope also other agree), to found fund thanks to community.

We all hope that pledgie campaign give expected fund. Otherwise, we should think for a low monthly fee from each of us. Something that is really low for single, but since we are many, become enough. For example 10 euro / month, in 1000, its 10'000 euros

Andres, also I think that if you dedicate 50% to prepare premium tutorial accessible for a monthly fee, can be better for community and for project (and maybe also for you that can work from your current home/office).

I think many will be interested in such offer.

Then a marketplace of modules/apps for phalcon, you could think to take a small fee for each sales.

Unfortunately, I think that the campaign on Pledgie is not going to get any more money because this topic is not on the main page anymore. But let's say Andres will create a new topic with more visible link as he posted in other topic. He will stick the new topic to the main page so that more people will see it. Let's say 1000 people will see it! Still, they are not going to donate. Why? Nobody has any business interest in it.

phpDocumentator example

Ingewikkeld software house from Netherlands sponsors mvriel to contribute to phpDocumentor for 8hrs a week. There is a banner at the bottom of phpDoc page.

The Ingewikkeld page states:

With Ingewikkeld, you hire experts that are active and integral parts of the global PHP community, either by maintaining open source projects, by speaking at conferences worldwide or by organizing their own conferences.

Ingewikkeld do it because of clients. Clients know that the company that hires passionate people will do the best job. But this solution works for employees/candidates too. Candidates know that such company is "sexy" and want to work there, want to be part of it.

In my opinion this is the strategy that is going to work.

Solution

I would like to encourage Phalcon team to set up a program with the following rules:

Input Contributor makes a proposition to his employer and negotiates how many hours the company can afford weekly (e.g. 4 hrs/week, 8 hrs/week)

Specific All parties (Phalcon team, contributor/employee and employer) defines the goals and how will measure them. Phalcon team can address in advance some big tasks, big jobs that need to be done.

Baner. Phalcon team agree to place a banner (or other form of advertisment) on Phalcon's home page similiar to these on phpDoc page.

Regular evaluation. Phalcon team evaluates the contributor's input on a regular basis, e.g. each 2-3 months. This will keep calm the employer that he is not loosing his money.

Flexibility The cooperation is stopped at any moment if any part is not satisfied.

What is interesting is that with this solution the company is not supporting Phalcon. It is not supporting its employees too. The company is paying to improve its image as a good service provider and good workplace. Phalcon team and contributors are providing branding service.

@Conradaek, your proposal is quite interesting, I hope the Phalcon's team take note of it. Also, I think it sounds a bit negative at the same time, to me it is difficult to understand why the community would not donate. My understanding is that many enterprises and developers are using Phalcon to power their applications, and somehow they depend somewhat on the project evolving.

Phalcon/Zephir argument application speed-up is pretty insane, it does bring down performance issues many applications do suffer, so if the project has a solid funding background everyone wins. Having said that, IMO, as @raixan says, if everyone donates at least $10 per month, funding goal can be reached very soon.

In the bigger picture, if goals mentioned in the campaign are achieved it benefits everyone. Anyone, following your idea, could convince their companies to help achieve these goals by donating. I don't see why this would not draw the attention of the community.

The community is to small to find 300 people that each donate 10$ each month. I have a long text written why it is so but decided to put shorten version (my previous post). I will try format this long version and post it tomorrow.

Being a member of the community from the beginning of the project I can tell you conradaek may have reason. I have witnessed how phalcon team constantly sought collaboration in many ways and most of the time the answer of the community is very low.

Since fixing a simple error in the documentation, fix an error in the forum or help to test a new beta/alpha version, not many volunteers want to do these very simple tasks. This has disappointed me for a long time, I would like an open source community where all work together to achieve great things, but ultimately it requires falling in funding or have long waits to get new versions as well.

If you read carefully, all of the goals in Pledgie can be achieved by a more collaborative community:

Develop the most popular requests from the community on Github in a short and realistic time frame. Provide high-quality answers and support in forums and StackOverflow Release new versions constantly Improve documentation covering a larger number of subjects in depth Create more tutorials and examples focused on a novice, intermediate and advanced audience Extend test-suite achieving greater coverage and increasing framework quality

A more engaged community can achieve all this and more. My impression is that everyone wants a top quality framework for free without giving anything in return to the project. I would like to not depend on Andres or any member of Phalcon Teamor any paid developer to accomplish these goals. For this reason, I also think that donations will lower each time.

@conradeak I think that you know what you are talking more than me, however exist project which are found fund from developers without existing a real business around this.

Example Ghost which get 200k fund: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-blogging-platform

There is also dummy project like this one: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad which get 50k only for a potato-salad

Why phalcon can't get only 30k from all us it's hard to think.

Software houses. Small software houses and freelancers that are building small pages for companies and organisations (e.g. QuidditchUK). They are not donating because Phalcon is not a must for them. Current speed of Phalcon's evoluton is completly enough for them. If Phalcon project will be killed they will simply switch to other framework. It does not matter to their clients (e.g. QuidditchUK) if their page was made with Symfony or Phalcon, they even don't know what "PHP" and "framework" is. I guess this is about 98% of companies using Phalcon.

Current speed of Phalcon's evolution is enough, but I will be happy if become more quick, like everyone others. A software house which make a product for their customers, can't switch later to symfony quickly. Firstly because they need re-start from scratch build their skeleton apps. If they build an application for a customer, this app should be also maintened, and we can't said to customer that now we need buid app from scratch.

Both software houses and small providers could also think: "My 100$ will not determine future of Phalcon project so I am not going to donate. What if I make a dontation but other people don't? I will loose 100$!".

I think in this way: "I am happy to donate 100$ to phalcon team. I think they deserve it for all the work done. My app is the fastest of the others. And if these $100 can help them in development even better. For me it's never lose, because its go to people to whom I am grateful."

As it stands, I will probably in the near future end up donating a day per week of my own time to the project. I have projects pilled up right now that I need to work through first but I'm looking into making this possible by keeping a day blocked. Donations can come in a lot of forms, remember that.

I don't particularly agree with the premmise that employers suck because they don't give back. A lot of people have a hard enough time staying afloat as it is without donating time or money back. I don't provide open source to force people to give back, I provide it because I enjoy it and hope it helps improve lives.

There are plenty of projects out there that run without any official backing or support but simply on the strength and will of the core team. Phalcon CAN live without donations. It CAN live without Andres working full time on the project. Would it be nice if Andres got paid to work on it? Hell yes. But if you don't donate any money it doesn't make you evil, or any less than the people who do donate.

Instead of the current approach, Andres (and the rest of the core team, I suppose) would do good to start considering a more business-like approach, where they build a business around Phalcon and zephir and through this are able to support themselves and the community. This business model works, it's just a fair amount of work and Phalcon needs to become more publicly accepted for it before it would be really capable of supporting them.

Ghost got 200k funds because it had a head of UX from WordPress behind it. You know, WordPress, that thing that runs 40% of all the interwebs. If I pick up the phone and call a random company they'll know what it is, if I ask what is Phalcon they'll say it's a bird. Phalcon is simply still a very young product and frameworks are simply not a marketable product. Not unless you start holding back features that are only available in a "premium" setting. senseo, the guys behind Symfony, are also not marketing the framework, but tools and services around it.

The potato salad thing was just stupid and there's always idiots to back other idiots just for the fame it brings.

Am I saying not to donate? No, not at all. Donate, by all means! The more the better. BUT, if you can't, don't feel bad. If your company doesn't, it doesn't mean it's a bad company. It might still be, but it's not a given fact. If you can't donate money, donate time. Write unit tests, write improvements to the documentation. Be an envangelist by writing blog posts about Phalcon, the more the world hears about it, the better it is.

o/ We need a campaign to survive the storm of negative thinking :) That sound like bad news. I guess other projects also have these problems. It's not an easy thing to find developers willing to help. A community to achieve great things sounds great, but a small group of developers committed full-time to the project is a safer bet.

In my case, -- to convince my company of using Phalcon -- I need to show that there are people committed to the project. I know it's going to be hard to find an unbiased identification of the strengths and weaknesses of Phalcon. These kinds of things tend to bring out the definition of bias. However I think the project has great potential, and it has to move forward either depending on founding or having a solid community.