I see.
Still, I don’t even use discord or even know anything about this stuff.
I thought what I posted was an excellent way to leverage contributions for more money. They even use patreon for the pipeline.
Jmonkey also would qualify for free hosting at Oregon State. They also don’t require you to give up any funding streams.
Can’t really add more so I will just watch from the sidelines.
Yeah, it’s good information with that explanation.
…I try to avoid discord, too. Giant time sink. Couldn’t avoid it today, unfortunately.
It’s not related to your comment @mitm. I have no issue with you at all. Sorry for the confusion.
I explained several times @RiccardoBlb on discord that I would speak to the accountant that I already have personally on how to deal with the monetary legalities and begin proceedings from there. A perfectly normal course of action.
Secondly, I seek advice from those that are knowledgeable enough to provide it and those that should be part of the decision, and I did as you are well aware. None of these people are you, however. My entertaining you in the discussion is purely out of your curiosity and my politeness, not permission or validation, which I also made you very aware of after suggesting it was all very shady.
I’m still not happy at all with you or oxplay2 and your destructive attitude. It appears to me that If you didn’t write it or make the decision then it’s no good. I have no idea what to say to that kind of attitude other than good luck.
I really have nothing more to say to either of you. I am disappointed at best.
So before you said i was accusing , now you say i was suggesting… while i was actually talking about the clarity of what was proposed in the page. I actually said specifically that you are not shady but outsiders that do not know you, might have the impression that the page is shady.
I think we should make decisions together rather than having someone deciding for everybody.
Let’s just admit this was a big misunderstanding on all sides and move on.
Like mitm, a little caught off guard by whatever this is about… Whatever’s going on, I hope everyone takes some time to cool off before burning any bridges. This text-based communication stuff has a way of coming across in ways that weren’t intended…
This means there are limited solutions.
One is to fork and move on with a new name. There are better paths forward if the “keys” are turned over though.
Truly the only real way to survive is by becoming a company and no one is going to do that without the assets or ability to monetize by donations. As a company, sponsorships may be easier to come by since there would be structure to the project.
I’m much interested in the longevity of jmonkeyengine, but have been reluctant to participate in the recent discussions due to extremely limited spare time. I commend @jayfella for taking on the task of structuring jmonkeyengine’s organization. But I also feel it’s a bit inappropriate to channel the funds through a private company (even if with the best of intentions). At the very least, I think the money will be taxable as income. I also see it as a legal risk for both entities to be tied together.
Truly the only real way to survive is by becoming a company and no one is going to do that without the assets or ability to monetize by donations. As a company, sponsorships may be easier to come by since there would be structure to the project.
It’s not the only way. One thing I juggled in my head a couple of years ago was the foundation (or other not-for-profit organization) route, similar to how the Blender Foundation works. Similarly, I also had an idea about sponsoring work through the donations (like @jayfella, too).
A foundation can usually get some tax relief if it acts in the public interest.
If it has limited funds the accounting can be simplified.
Transparency can be constituted.
A board can be democratically elected.
Separate bank account can be set up to allow various forms of donations.
But, I guess the most pressing issue is funding for hosting the next couple of months. What figures are we talking about?
Here’s the thing. None of us are specialists in any area of the business related obligations. Everybody is offering their advice on how to go about funding. Everybody is concerned about funding.
I had all of that covered. It was actually happening. There were no issues. The bills were being paid. People educated in this field were being consulted.
Now there’s nothing and I’ve wasted months of work and time because people that are not educated in these fields and should not be party to the discussion are dictating the state of play and actively ridiculing my efforts publicly.
I think that @jayfella should be credited for his job of keeping jme alive. And that deserves respect.
Therefore:
I understand your point, but it would have been completely different if you said for example: “I suggest that you write “XXX” on the patreon page, so that it become more transparent and clear”. See the difference in being constructive?
I personally think that people that “talk rather than do” tend to give a big contribution to these misunderstanding. I humbly suggest that you apologize.
Having said that, I’m out of this discussion.
i wrote a realy nice, polite post…
but… first you attacked me with words “have been very vocal in explaining to me that pretty much every key I’ve pressed was a bad idea”
i only i know 2 things i had different/criticism opinion about.
now you attack with “people that are not educated in these fields and should not be party to the discussion”
Why you attack so much?
Fact is that that you said:
I explained several times @RiccardoBlb on discord that I would speak to the accountant that I already have personally on how to deal with the monetary legalities and begin proceedings from there. A perfectly normal course of action.
I will not explain my life, but i have a lot experience with “accountants” and i know they DO NOT know law. They only know little part of law about taxes.
so if you base your knowledge on accountant who dont know law, its wrong IMO.
And now you say i dont have experience after i speak a lot with lawyer and i also speak a lot with accountants, and i know things. So i do not really know why you say that and why you attack me overall since my post was very polite and just explained my opinion.
So this words hurt a lot, since its just not truth what you say. its otherwise trully.
To be honest I just can’t be bothered anymore. I don’t even get paid. I don’t need this. Everyone seems to know what they’re talking about. I’ll leave it to you guys.
Thanks James, you are great monkey!
See this is why most Open Source Projects have a BDFL, because with democracy it’s all endless discussions and you can’t make it everyone right.
Add in the fact that textual communication transmits the meaning of things over the careful choice of words, which non-native speakers probably get wrong all the time.
Here we are again with the same “you are wrong”, “no I am right” discussion continued from Discord, which essentially is irrelevant.
Apart from that we speak of laws, which depend on the country you are in and while at least eu-law is harmonized, the individual countries have some headroom to play with, especially when it comes to non-profit organizations. So talking about illegal/legal only rarely applies there.
My Opinion:
Jay could’ve asked on the hub how the community envisions funding, true. But I am certain he never thought of this as being a problem. I didn’t see a problem either, I only had the impression that all funding goes towards the store, which for me wasn’t a problem either. I can only speak for the SDK, but money wouldn’t help there at all anyway. Time would, which you can’t buy.
Now for the concern of it being illegal to collect funding as a team member for a non-registered legal entity: Let this be jay’s problem. If he states what he does “I am a member of jme and I manage the funds, which I plan to spend on bug-bounties, hosting expenses” then it’s fully legal, in my opinion. The Donator knows who gets the money. Taxes and others are handled.
Actually: Someone has to do it, we have no other possibility right now (Foundation is too expensive, large, unnecessary), and also in the scale of jme, it won’t even cause attention from any authority.
So what is your actual problem? The fear of getting cheated on? For this I guess jay could export/screenshot/whatever the patreon withdrawal thing quarterly with a small list of what it’s being spent on, so one could track what is on bank. No one spoke that one out, but I feel like this could be some concerns?
Is your actual problem the way the resources get spent?
Sorry for getting into the discussion again, but now that we’ve hit the bottom regarding the future of jme, I think that we can at least try to solve this finally, because otherwise there will be discussions going round and round.
Like “Who is jmonkey”, I guess we all know that but the point is that the patreon page should state that this money is used on: Webhosting Expenses, Bug Bounties (for core devs, for contributors and even for first-time-contributors).
I mean I understand that if this thing would skyrocket we’d have to limit who gets the VR-Headsets, the Gamepads and other equipment, but I think it doesn’t have to be stated, that a good use would’ve been buying @pspeed an Xbox-Style-Gamepad, so he could solve the issues there (a fellow monkey donated him one, iirc).
“And i said that this plus the fact that the page was the repurposed asset store patreon page, might not look right for the random person that doesn’t know you.”
This one holds truth, though, with the goal being money added into the asset store, however it just may be the next goal after we can pay for hosting, so it would only depend on the goals afterwards. Let’s just make this more open in the future (after hitting the store goal, let’s collect ideas, simple as that).
Now that we got over that, I’d like to focus the discussion on the real future:
The thing with the keys. How can we do that? The problem is giving everyone access but not giving it to them. I was thinking about some homepage where you can claim it when the original owner doesn’t confirm an email within 30 days, but that sucks. Maybe as simple as a “google doc” or multiple and a few core persons (paul et al) having access and sending the links to the new contributors.
I mean those people don’t disappear from today to tomorrow, it’s more like they disappear and 2 years later their replacement is here, so as long as someone has the access (an intermediary person), think like the olympic torch, there is no problem. The problem is though, when paul vanishes, who would be trusted enough to carry on the light.
Hosting: I know it has been said that you want to stay with DO for ease of use, I’m just saying that I know an employee of Hetzner (one of the biggest german hosters) and asked him about a sponsorship. They do have sponsorships, but there are no general terms, so one would have to request it. It would probably be one of the “cloud” products though, just like DO: Truly thrifty cloud hosting - Hetzner Online GmbH . If you like to stay with DO (at least for now), that’s fine, I am just offering that so the excess money could be spent “better”.
Edit: But we should really remove the “powered by digitalocean” from the hub, though.
Just to clarify: nobody in their right mind would donate to what I’ve done after all of this. I know I wouldn’t. It’s a public shit show. My Vision is dead and that’s the end of that.
Somebody else needs to re-imagine a new strategy and put the time in to make it actually happen.
Hosting and whatever else needs to be sorted by whomever wants that task.
I wish only the best to whomever that may be.
For what it’s worth, you have my thanks for your part in maintaining the site for the past years.
Having read through this debacle on discord I suggest @RiccardoBlb and @oxplay2 be put in charge of paying for the server and running a community pateron since they are apparently obsessed about this little issue so much, and oxy can use his army of lawyers to figure out every detail. Then the rest of us can give them unbased criticism every day. Win-win.
When making decisions, there is always someone who blames you for that. The entire life is like that. Easy example? Go to university → Working Class sees you as “arrogant, not working”. Don’t go there? Stupid worker.
Every vision will get criticism, but that’s why it’s a vision and not a finished concept.
Yes there were unnecessary repetitions and emotions, but that doesn’t make the vision nor the criticism invalid. Visions only die when giving up by the slightest problems, caused by a minority.
I mean I can say that, I’m used to that. 90% of the posts is like “Don’t use the SDK, it’s shit”. “What you use the SDK? No wonder does your game suck”, “I don’t have the SDK installed since the last 10 years” etc etc, but that’s usual. On the other hand I have a few people who told me the like and rely on the SDK and I know that all the others, everyone beginner and a lot more people, also use the SDK and don’t hate it.
Like this post even summoned Moff, who didn’t post here ever since his game was released, roughly.
Anyway I stop right there or it will get another wall of text.
I agree with this. If my post came across as negative, I apologize for that. I may not agree with everything, but I still applaud @jayfella’s effort and support it. (I just wish there was a way to donate without using Patreon, but maybe that can become a stretch goal.)
Also @Darkchaos: I’ve used the SDK for the last 10 years. I use it almost every day.
I think it’s common habit among us all to sometimes focus a bit too much on the negative, instead of lifting up the positive.
I agree with this, since these two genius’s have torpedo’d the best attempt yet to breath some life into this project. I look forward to seeing what they come up with. Thanks for volunteering guys!
Wobblytrout
(I revived the topic… even if Jay never comes back to it, I think there are still things to say here.)
Keep in mind, Jay’s spent a couple of years now on the JME store idea. It’s been on the table since Normen was still around, I think… but it’s certainly been at least a couple years since he started it.
Now come to today and it’s finished but JME is almost completely dead. Almost nothing moving forward. Shrinking community, etc… We went from me thinking of posts per hour to posts per day to posts per week. Some days we have no posts at all.
If I’d just put a few years into something for the community, I’d be looking to do what I could to try and revive things… and that’s what I saw Jay as doing.
If I saw something that I disagreed with, I took the stance of “He’s making it work so my input should be advisory at best”. If a message was unclear, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. It’s an unbelievable amount of work.
I hope cooler heads prevail in the end.
I’m reminded of a saying, though, paraphrased: “The folks that say something can’t be done should stay out of the way of the person actually doing it.”
It’s difficult to respond because I’m not really comfortable with overt sympathy and I feel like if it went on any longer it would just be riding the sympathy train and continued bashing of those two. I actually feel like they’ve had enough tbh. I deleted the thread.
There has been overwhelming support, and in my heart I’d like to put this right if I can. One of the things that did strike me from the conversations is transparency. I have to admit I’m not very well versed in having to answer to people. I just do things and they get done. Honesty and trust has never been an issue. In fact I’d be hunting bounties just like everyone else to make any money.
I’d like to put this right. I think I need a day or two to think sensibly and spin some kind of positivity into how it moves forward.