Paul writes: “I’m trying to setup the Ardour Foundation as a 501c(3) non-profit but that takes a little bit of time. In the meantime, I’m experimenting with different ways to raise money to support myself+family until a proper foundation is set up. All donations are much appreciated. Please keep in mind that repeat donations will mean much more for the long term than larger amounts right now. I’ll keep you up to date as I figure stuff out.”
It might be good to provide a way to “subscribe” to Ardour, and have a certain amount billed via PayPal monthly or yearly. This would encourage repeat donations, while making inertia work on Ardour’s behalf.
agreed - i was searching for that kind of option on paypal
I like the fact you have placed a target and are showing how much you have received so far. It made it easier for me to give you money for the first time! Good Luck
I have added a subscription feature. It has some things that need modifying (I’d like to make the amount per month selectable by the subscriber, and make it work for people who are not registered with the website). For now, its a good start. I hope to add a visible subscriber count at some point in the “financial” block, but will likely delay that until I switch to “# of subscribers” goal for our monthly targets.
Fantastic… thanks for the option…
Done, let’s hope this takes off.
I will be donating via PayPal, as soon as
I get the info on that from my wife. In the
future US tax non-profit status will help me.
I’m wondering if there are any multimedia
Linux distro’s out there that might kick in
a bit of change to the cause? Some are listed here: http://linux-sound.org/distro.html Maybe the folks at Fervent would help out since Ardour is a
big part of Studio to Go? See http://www.ferventsoftware.com/
Of course, it’s always easy to point to
other people as the ones who have the money,
and I really don’t want to put anyone on the
spot. I’m just wanting to find a thousand
trickles of money to make a river full.
Thanks to Paul and the team for many years
of work on Ardour and its cousins!
I’d prefer to signup for a yearly nag-a-gram to donate. Consider my donation as a yearly subscription - don’t spend it all at once Paul 
Its been great to see Ardour come so far over the years. Glad you kept the faith.
Paul,
I thought you were loaded and didn’t have to work.
I though the dot.com era was extremely good to you.
What happened as you are now trying to support you and your family??
Good but not that good. I only worked at Amazon for 1 year. I spent several years as a stay at home parent raising my daughter, went through a divorce that split the money, and then spent 5-6 years without any notable income of any kind writing Ardour, JACK, RME drivers and other stuff (Quasimodo, Softwerk). I got remarried, bought a new, larger house for us to live in. I figure I probably would have been earning anywhere between US$50k and US$150k a year had I been in the workforce, and when you spend 10 years or so without income but with kids, it burns through any dot.com residuals pretty fast. I don’t carry a mortgage but in most other respects I’m in pretty much the same position as other 40+ year old software engineers would be if they had just been laid off: no immediate crisis since there are some savings, but certainly no way to work on Ardour full time without someone paying me to.
I hope this clarifies the situation. The community has been extraordinarily generous in the last couple of weeks, and I think it incumbent upon me to be open about what my own financial situation is.