Sponsor a feature

[Claus Reinke]

| > Trawling my OCaml folder I came across this useful pointer.  The Vim
| > people prioritise their bugs and features by inviting people to
| > contribute financially.  That's a good indicator of interest, although
| > I have no idea whether it's enough to pay anyone's salary (I rather
| > doubt it).
|
| > [1] http://www.vim.org/sponsor/index.php
|
| So this is actually paying to be able to vote, rather than the more
| common "pledging money for the fixer of particular bugs", as I
| understand it.

>Just so.  I'm not actually advocating it, but I thought it was an 
>interesting model, and I'd like to know how well it works in practice.

While I can't answer that, here is some background info (inofficial,
from a Vim user, please refer to the urls for details;-) that might help:

Vim has always (at least, for as long as I can remember?-) been 
Charityware - free to use, but Bram would like users to support 
his favourite project, in which he has also invested his own time 
and funds, beyond directing Vim and Vim book/book advertising
"income" there:

http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/uganda.html#license
http://www.vim.org/sponsor/faq.php

He reports on the status of the project fairly regularly on the
Vim announce mailing list, including visit and financial reports 
(Bram is treasurer at ICCF Holland). See also:

http://iccf-holland.org/

Back in 2004, Bram added sponsorship for his own work,
apparently while going from a fulltime to a parttime job and
spending more time on Vim development:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vimannounce/message/120

Voting was added as an incentive for sponsors. Sponsorship 
is also alternatively known as registration, for commercial users 
whose bosses would accept the latter but not the former.

In 2006, with Vim 7 nearing release, Bram went back to a 
fulltime job, redirecting all sponsorship and registration income 
to the charity project:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vimannounce/message/152

Hth,
Claus