Re:Jellyfin: We're Good, Seriously
by roenxi on Monday July 22, 2024 @08:31AM
(#41033641)
IMO they should probably put their thinking hat on and try to find a way of spending more money. If the community says they want $20,000 spent on some project; then spend it. Buy some ads or something. In theory a project funded by donations is best run at around break even. This is a signal from their supporters that they should be spending more.
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$20000 isn't a useful amount of money. If they are getting $20k/month they can think about hiring a developer to work full time on the project, but at their current donation levels they could hire a developer for maybe 3 weeks before they run dangerously low on money.
Remember, Jellyfin is a fork of Emby which was a fork of Plex - both those projects were open source and then went paid. After being burnt twice like that I think it is understandable why many Jellyfin developers have had enough of that and will reject anything that even slightly could be seen as going paid. So while hiring someone might be possible and in the best interest of Jellyfin in a different world, they cannot do that in this world without losing support.
Emby was not a fork. Plex server has never been open source.
That is assuming people are donating money to change the project rather than support the project as it already is.
The money doesn't have to be spent just because it's there. Personally I'd be a little annoyed if I donted to a project and the only change they made was to burn the cash on advertising that they otherwise didn't do.