MySensors Budget / Finances? Healthy?

[TRS-80]

A thought just occurred to me while responding in another thread, so I went looking for this sort of information, and only found one very old thread (2014) so I thought I would make a new thread (with title keywords of my own choosing ).

I certainly don't recall any of the main people ever asking for any funds, and from other communities I have been involved in I am aware this is often a sort of labor of love that they support out of their own pocket. And some times more is going out than is coming in.

I have no idea what the situation is here at MySensors because that information does not seem to be published anywhere. Now it is certainly the main people's prerogative whether to publish such information or not, but in an open project some times transparency is best, particularly if the project is hurting financially. I know it must cost something to keep these servers going, and I suppose I just got curious whether the (what I imagine is small) income from affiliate links and ordering boards, etc. has been enough to offset the costs.

I have also seen (in other communities) when the main people came out and said they were coming up a little short, an outpouring of donations from many of the members.

I have just come to really appreciate this resource, and I personally would be distraught it if it were to go away for any reason, financial ones being only one of many that could cause such a thing.

Further, I personally am not a wealthy person, but I do manage to contribute resources (time, money, etc.) wherever I am able towards F/LOSS/H on a sort of "need" basis. For example, I do not contribute anything at all to big and well-funded projects like Firefox, Wikipedia, etc... and prefer to contribute more toward the "little guys" wherever I see more of a need.

Again, I have no idea what the financial situation is here, and I will re-iterate it is certainly the prerogative of the "main people" ( @hek, others (?)) whether they want to disclose this information or not. Feel free to tell me to go get stuffed, you have certainly earned the right by virtue of what you have created and shared here already.

Just my $0.02. Discuss! Or not.

[hek]

Hi @TRS-80,

We have no problem beeing open with the financial situation. The revenues has declined the last couple of years. Both donations and affiliate/ad vise. But I have tried lowering our monthly costs by consilidating servers and making backups of forum/openhardware.io db to my home NAS. The total cost of running things is now ~$100/month excluding domain/mailgun fees etc.

We had a short burts of donations in April this year from some germans that added up to almost $60.

The monthly google ad revenue is ~200/month so we're floating without me having to use my companys as a sponsor.

The MySensors community will not shut even if revenue goes below income (unless I go totally bankrup ).

[TRS-80]

Thanks hek for being so straightforward. I for one certainly appreciate it.

Great news! It sounds like we are in the black (at least for the time being).

By all means, please update us if the situation starts to change!

I think a lot of people (myself included) would be willing to chip in few bucks here and there to help you offset the costs.

For example, I donate few dollars per month on an ongoing basis to Armbian project. Now they have decided to use PayPal directly which I don't like, however there are lots of other options nowadays to set this sort of thing up including many that are specific to F/LOSS/H (perhaps with less fees taken out?) which I think this project certainly would qualify for.

Actually the first one that came to my mind was https://liberapay.com, however looking at that page it seems that ultimately they do use PayPal also. So perhaps more research would need to be done on the right "fit" of payment platform.

Anyway, even though it might not be needed, right now, perhaps something to consider? I am willing to continue doing research in this direction, if you are interested.

[hek]

Thanks.

Yeah, PayPal are blood sucking leeches. I hope more merchants will boycot their service for other alternatives and let them die.

[TRS-80]

I couldn't agree more! If only!

In fact, I had originally in my post (edited out) something along the lines of how, quite predictably, PayPal have become "too big for their britches" with all sorts of obnoxious behaviour as many people assume they are now the only game in town (and maybe they are). But it is not good for anyone (other than PayPal) when one single provider controls that much of any market. Unfortunately that is all too often the case these days...

[tbowmo]

@TRS-80

PayPal has certainly earned their share on mysensors as well, every 3 months we get commissions from the sensebender sales at itead (sensebender micro and gw) the payments are split in two, 50% to the project, and 50% to the creator (me). Both paying fees to PayPal, for receiving the money.

Sensebender sales are also slowly decreasing, but the micro is also 5 years old now. (they stated shipping the first batch end of May 2015). I never thought that we could sell the amount that we did (I'll have to look at the numbers when I'm at my pc tomorrow).. To be updated

/Thomas

[tbowmo]

Had a look at our itead dashboard, total number of ordered units until today is:

Sensebender Micro: 3575
Sensebender GW: 587

which, if I remember the figures right, has given the project something in the order of 5330$ (before paypal get their cut).

[TRS-80]

Wow, I would have never thought that many either! Well done, guys.

I was satisfied when hek said we were above water, and should remain so foreseeable future. But thank you for the additional disclosure @tbowmo, I am sure anyone searching for such information will appreciate your forthrightness.