Hi,
Let's see if this works this way: I offered improvement of MDB support in Kexi:

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/348 ... imary-keys



The solution will land within 24h after funding the project.
To support the project, registration is needed at bountysource.com but donations can still be anonymous.

Bountysource is a crowdfunding service like Kickstarter but aimed at free/opensource projects.

Maybe this is one way for users to accelerate development when there are many competing goals in the project?

Best regards.

A new fundraiser based on votes of Kexi users:

Support native SQLite 3 databases: https://www.bountysource.com/teams/kexi/fundraisers/596

These seem excellent initiatives that for some reason have not got the $$ rolling in as might be hoped for. I don't think that is the fault of kexi or is in any way indicative of it's funding worth.

The key surely is getting funds from parties perhaps not currently connected with KDE/Calligra/Kexi. Those must surely have been milked dry by now. How exactly does bountysource go about this. Is it solely up to the development teams to spread the word or are bountysource somehow exposing these issues more widely? I suspect their resources may not be up to the job. At present a duckduckgo search for kexi+bountysource does not return a hit (the entry on facebook is picked up though).

Small thought. Would it be possible for users of Kexi to have some form of 'Donate' button on their website? Maybe some well-worded link to a page with more details - perhaps the kexi page on bountysource listing all kexi bounties and fundraisers. Is there even a substantive list of corporate usersfor this purpose? We all know what the PayPal 'Donate' button looks like. An 'Open Source Donate' button linked to bountysource could help.

Kexi is of course not powering websites, it is an office desktop tool, and how does one get the word out about this. Is Calligra not the mainstay of user support for kexi or are most users using it independantly of Calligra, or even like me using it independantly of KDE?

I am totally ignorant about the useage of KDE, of which Calligra is the office suite, and of which Kexi is the database component. I see this as essentially a European thing. Who uses is? Has this replaced M$ in government offices EU-wide. Are therefore these users not the prime providers of funds for open-source software? I can hardly make substantive suggestions not knowing how the system operates. KDE must get funded, so must Calligra, so also Kexi a bit further down the line - or is it not as egalitarian as that? I can understand the push to a cross-platform kexi that could tap into the M$ market, but how is competition on that side of the river? The whole issue of funding for open source is darkness for me at present. Do Calligra, or even Kexi, provide paid support to produce an income, is that not one of the major ways of providing funding for open source projects? Don't, for instance, MySQL do this? But then that turns you into a corporate situation which is perhaps not where smaller open source developers wish to be.

Please enlighten me, probably that is +90% rubbish above this line.

Ian

Thanks for the feedback, Ian. You got it right, let me share some bits. For now the bountysource fundraising and bounties apply to a small fraction of needs. In Kexi inm a very typical way, most people need 10% more features and they would be really happy. What's the catch? Everyone needs different 10%

So why not to let everyone to vote with their time and/or pockets? Showing precisely the consequences: no funding (in any way) -> no feature/fix.

I give them right not to do so, but then there's right for other licensing options. Kexi is plugin-based from day one and licensing permits adding a wide range of extensions. After all, in practice, for many users restricted extension is better than no software at all. The intention is to still have everything landing in FOSS.

Regarding paid support as a funding option, I see this idea coming from the traditional industries when FOSS was strong: servers and services. For ad-hoc solutions such as desktop databases the advantage in users' eyes traditionally is in "zero initial cost", software that's relatively easy to master. It may be hard to find large user base willing to pay for support in this situation. Moreover, support takes time away of Kexi development; will the funds able to cover this loss; overcome distraction? It's less a problem if I am supporting a fix that goes upstream eventually. It's ideal situation.
I learned to ask these questions this in times of Kexi version 1 for Windows which was offered with priority support and sometime premium/priority features. I was a part of that team.
So there may be usual conflict such as "the software should be easy to use" vs "the software should require enough of (paid) support". No doubt, servers such as MySQL demand large pro support. But how many times did we pay for Excel support? Or a plain text editor?

I am trying to say, refusing paid support isn't a good idea but more value is needed. That may be extensions development, solutions development, education. Hopefully many of the add-ons will find their way back into the FOSS. To facilitate add-ons ecosystem strong scripting support needs to emerge in Kexi.

Regarding promotion, yes it has not even started outside of the internal circles. Funds are in the external ones, according to my theory, in Windows and Mac OS X and
maybe mobile crowds. I would see target of promotion in the MS Access/Filemaker circles when time comes, i.e. when respective versions of Kexi reach beta stage and there are convenient installation options.

For now, promoting kickstarter-like actions, to be successful, would take part time work, everyday. We're looking for help here, to reach local and global audiences.

I plan to add a fundraising link to calligra.org/kexi.

Regarding dependency on Calligra and KDE, it's a positive one: shared community, shared technologies (where it makes sense technically), shared infrastructure (a lot of it, great help) and shared release schedules. For users that are staying away of contributions this is a transparent and hidden detail.

Regarding demographics, whole KDE seems to be largely European and increasingly (recent years) also India-centric. And thus Calligra and Kexi. But there is no restriction and boundaries, and shouldn't be. Associations around MSA seem to be formed in the USA for example. Many of our future users are there.

Regarding the competition on the other OSes, there are not many Free Software offerings, and at a more closed side there's still MS Access and Filemaker and multitude of could-oriented database app creators, fragmented ecosystems. MS Access seem to head to a cloud-orientation and web interfaces (escape option from the original pseudo-web Sharepoint services), encouraging to migrate to MS SQL storage. Of course backward-compatibility is still Microsoft's DNA (a clear value for users), but on the other hand users seem to feel they cannot demand new large features in the traditional software. It's easy to google for differences between MSA 2007, 2010 and 2013, they are not dramatically big, and power users clearly express their feelings. These users are in a supporting legacy MSA solutions business, sure, there's a kind of benefit from fragmentation and complexity. In absence of extensions from MS, 3rd-parties develop them and a bit artificially glue using Access VB.

Here comes Kexi with development steered by the users...

I put a few dollars into Kexi and will put in more when I get some myself. Kexi is an incredibly important project and I struggle to understand why it has not taken off (Lack of support for concurrent users?). I do not use Kexi yet as I am a windows user. However I do use ms-access for most of my key business systems and each of these systems is developed with several thousand lines of VBA. Being in a forced partnership with a particular software product with an unknown future is a very uncomfortable position. Ms-access is critical to many professionals as it is the only database application development platform that you can install without grief and get going in minutes (there are other IDEs, particularly PureBasic, Lazarus and Visual Studio that install well, but they don't have the integration with a database engine that ms-access has). Ms-access allows professionals with the eyes on their own profession to do some programming.

Back to Kexi, my need is for applications development and not for directly accessing data tables. I would like to use Ruby and Postgres but SQLite is fine. It would be great if the back end could be upsized from SQLite to Postgres by running a wizard. The thing that makes ms-access great is that controls have lots of events, which provides fine grained control over when to run code. Other amazing bits are the ability to click on a screen control and create a new event handler on whatever event one chooses and the ability to change that code whilst the screen form is running. I have briefly played with Kexi and noted that for application development, it seemed rather basic in comparison with ms-access.

Obviously Kexi needs more developers and I am verging on being one but I need to be using Kexi for application development before I start fixing bugs and adding features etc. For this reason, I vote for the 10% of features that application developers need.

If I had to live without ms-access and had to run an open source substitute, the only cross platform application that I know of that comes close at this point is QGIS. In QGIS, I can create and manage SpatialLite tables, which is variety of SQLite. I can query data. Finally, I can easily design screen forms. In many respects, making a data collection application in QGIS is easier than it is in ms-access. Given that Kexi and QGIS share some technologies such as Qt, SQLite and Postgres, would it be possible to raid some of the good stuff out of QGIS. Also why are the QGIS folks not using Kexi for management of non-spatial data and reporting? QGIS is getting to the point where it is mature enough that their developers may start looking for new challenges, indeed handling of non-spatial tables is one area where they are currently focused.

Cheers,

A

Argophylla wrote:I put a few dollars into Kexi and will put in more when I get some myself. Kexi is an incredibly important project and I struggle to understand why it has not taken off (Lack of support for concurrent users?). I do not use Kexi yet as I am a windows user. However I do use ms-access for most of my key business systems and each of these systems is developed with several thousand lines of VBA. Being in a forced partnership with a particular software product with an unknown future is a very uncomfortable position. Ms-access is critical to many professionals as it is the only database application development platform that you can install without grief and get going in minutes (there are other IDEs, particularly PureBasic, Lazarus and Visual Studio that install well, but they don't have the integration with a database engine that ms-access has). Ms-access allows professionals with the eyes on their own profession to do some programming.

Back to Kexi, my need is for applications development and not for directly accessing data tables. I would like to use Ruby and Postgres but SQLite is fine. It would be great if the back end could be upsized from SQLite to Postgres by running a wizard. The thing that makes ms-access great is that controls have lots of events, which provides fine grained control over when to run code. Other amazing bits are the ability to click on a screen control and create a new event handler on whatever event one chooses and the ability to change that code whilst the screen form is running. I have briefly played with Kexi and noted that for application development, it seemed rather basic in comparison with ms-access.

Obviously Kexi needs more developers and I am verging on being one but I need to be using Kexi for application development before I start fixing bugs and adding features etc. For this reason, I vote for the 10% of features that application developers need.

If I had to live without ms-access and had to run an open source substitute, the only cross platform application that I know of that comes close at this point is QGIS. In QGIS, I can create and manage SpatialLite tables, which is variety of SQLite. I can query data. Finally, I can easily design screen forms. In many respects, making a data collection application in QGIS is easier than it is in ms-access. Given that Kexi and QGIS share some technologies such as Qt, SQLite and Postgres, would it be possible to raid some of the good stuff out of QGIS. Also why are the QGIS folks not using Kexi for management of non-spatial data and reporting? QGIS is getting to the point where it is mature enough that their developers may start looking for new challenges, indeed handling of non-spatial tables is one area where they are currently focused.

Thanks for your support, Argophylla!

Regarding QGIS, yes, we tend to "bookmark" ideas of joining forces with projects like that (there are enquiries like that). It would work if the guys can also contribute to Kexi, not the other way round. Otherwise we have even less time for core Kexi development. Speaking of which, it includes Windows version because there are many reasonable requests like "I'll move my business apps to Kexi if Windows is supported (again)". BTW, I know how to well (natively) support Windows, Kexi has been in development on Windows primarily for ~3 years in its history (with commercial support).

A good thing is also that technical barriers for joint projects like the QGIS/Kexi become lower these months as Kexi becomes mostly a Qt app/environment without large dependencies on KDE libraries. Which, by the way, is now a general trend for KDE software.

I am so grateful you contacted us. Environment for business apps is not something that can be developed/maintained in spare time. When we succeed, benefits for businesses will be enormous, we in particular need to escape from the "chicken and egg" situation when everyone waits for everyone else to perform the hard work. There are programmers willing to work, I am looking for ways to pay them for their full time dedicated work. Perhaps resources from porting/integration projects would pay the bills like these.

In addition to MS Access users (I am ex power user too) actively looking to secure own I noticed another interesting community is the Borland/Delphi one. People think about supporting Firebird db.

Regarding the upsize scenario, we're really close to having it. You're convincing me to have it for 2.9... Currently supported scenario of exporting from server to SQLite is probably rarely used even if still a showcase of what Kexi can.

I am also collecting opinions if people can stand it if scripting will "only" support JavaScript (promoting good parts of it only - not through the browser, rather natively, transparently via QtScript). With all the events exposed, and rich family of features coming from Qt and KDE Frameworks etc (according to needs, most voted features come first). As usual, realistically, there are no resources to implement and (worse!) maintain multiple language options. (even if python is still my personal preference)

Thanks.

This is no longer a good way to collect donations to kexi. Please put a simple PayPal donate button on the front page.

sam_tuke wrote:This is no longer a good way to collect donations to kexi.

Could you elaborate what has changed since the last time? It's a PayPal account with entire infrastructure to collect feedback from the users so they can influence direction of the development.

So far works great assuming there are no full time marketing people hired (fund-raising activities work best if you work full time, ask the Krita team). And actually as already announced on Kexi social media, number of options increase: aside of one time general support, requesting specific feature or fix and monthly contributions is now possible via the Bountysource Salt.

More info about options, again: https://community.kde.org/Kexi/Contact#Donations

Yay! a donation!

Question, is it possible to create a simple starter DB with Kexi and sell it for donation towards the Kexi project?

Yes, that's always a good idea and a form of joining the project. Books, paid tutorials, samples would be all part of the project.

Like our sister project Krita doing in the shop: https://krita.org/en/support-us/shop.

I think we will have a shop and more resources sooner than later...

BDX98 wrote:Question, is it possible to create a simple starter DB with Kexi and sell it for donation towards the Kexi project?

Moreover:
- For some people it makes more sense to pay for the project in exchange for helpful material than just donating
- Creating paid content is completely legal with FOSS apps such as Kexi; in case of Kexi it's also legal to offer paid extensions (plugins) like e.g. for Firefox or Chrome

That sounds great,

I have a simple DB in mind, I just need to transfer the field names from my PSQL model. Make a nice form and its good. I can present the model to my graduate class program starting this fall. Maybe a few students will be interested in purchasing a simple DB model that simplifies there lives.

(p.s these are non-tech students).

Very good.

PS: Many ideas for must-have examples are the ones offered by our competition (MSA or Filemaker), e.g. Contacts database, inventory, photo/media manager... One day all of these examples would be a go-to resources when starting with Kexi too.