Their need to "buy" something is the crucial point; donations fall in a totally different "account" with distinct rules. Sponsorships may be the ticket but you need to actively reach then as they won't come spontaneously (I think specifically of "that" unicorn :))

Not sure about support, maybe better to leave that to the myriad of contractors that form Django's ecosystem.

Maybe I do not know some important details, but why DSF (Django Software Foundation), does not do Django consulting in the first place. They very highly likely can do the best Django consulting in the world.

Secondly, maybe DSF could bake some great products for/from Django? The first ideas I have is Django specific, and user friendly:

- PaaS;

- analytics (as in 'new relic');

- crash and performance logging (as in 'sentry' and/or 'opbeat')

- CI;

DSF can just simply make business, by making great infrastructure stack around Django.

It's important to remember that the DSF is a non-profit foundation registered under US laws, which restrict what it can do. Many types of "just act like a business and sell things" ideas are automatically illegal for a non-profit foundation.

Can they open/own a for profit consulting company, which is taxed as a normal company but gives all profit/dividend back to foundation?

Yes they may. The proceeds of that company would be paid to the foundation.

Shame tbh. If they invest they could see their businesses doing even better.

We need to be communicating this to them, quantifying how their business could potentially be doing better, and offering products that they can spend money on. It's that last part that I think most OSS projects are having difficulty with.

Yeah I understand it's not as easy as i'm suggesting and I have no idea how you guys manage to do as you do even :).

I'm wondering (and of course I know little about this) if it would work doing things like: - community voting on the direction of the project or new features to be added and the top 5 get selected if there hits say 50k votes. - costs say 2-3 dollars to cast a vote. But if it's enough cash it means it won't dictate the direction of django by money or businesses and some of the cash can be spent elsewhere not just on those top 5.

So a feature could be something like "seamless upgrading from 1.8 to 1.9" which businesses might want or be willing to pay for.