Hello,
today, the IPFire websites got a small facelift. Along with these changes comes IPFire Wishlist – The IPFire crowd funding platform.
What is this and why do we need it?
Well, the IPFire project is an Open Source project. We don’t have any companies that support us with a sponsorship. We are only a team of people who are working voluntarily on this project.
The IPFire project isn’t a small project any more. We have a lot of infrastructure that is needed to run the project. We do two developer summits per year to exchange new ideas and stuff, which are also expensive. The IPFire developers are putting some money into the project. It is used for various things like paying for our hosting server and paying for some hardware that is needed to build an ARM port of IPFire for example.
Donations, which have never been enough to pay for the needed things, even have declined in the last year.
We figure that more than a half of all IPFire installations are running in companies. Companies which would have to pay a huge amount of money for a commercial solution that has got the same power as IPFire. You got IPFire for free. That’s okay. But if you want progress the slogan is:
Now it’s your turn!
The IPFire team is capable of doing a lot of wonderful things, which make our lives a lot easier. Personally, I wouldn’t want to miss my little IPFire box anymore and I guess so do you. But to proceed our mission, we often hit the same limitation: money.
We would love to enhance our activities in many ways. One problem in the past was, that the community was not aware of our plans and visions. As of today, this has changed. This is your chance to give something back.
The IPFire wishlist is a tool, where developers put up things they would like to do. Along with a description of the project goes the required funding and a deadline. The goal is to collect the needed money in the set span of time. See? It’s very easy!
So, I would like to invite you to have a look around every once in a while and check out what kind of ideas we have you would like to support. You could also tell friends which are searching for a certain feature that there might be a chance to get it. If you have go an idea on your own, please tell us.
Let us all use this opportunity to make the IPFire more awesome!
Michael