pwgl-users: <MusicXML for PWGL>

Hi,

as most of you probably know in our team we have currently two
full-time developers (Mikael and Mika) and two more or less part-time
members (Vesa and Kilian).

We do get an increasing amount of features requests that are not part
of the PWGL main development track. We have done our best to fix user
reported bugs and add minor features by requests. To allocate our
small resources for bigger and more specific user-requested projects
has proven to be very difficult in practise.

We would like to offer an alternative approach for dealing with new
feature requests that we get from our users. This is to introduce the
possibility for a sponsored feature, like this is commonplace in
LilyPond development, for example.

We feel that this kind of arrangement would serve best both the
developer and the users: It would more easily allow us to allocate
resources to develop specific feature sets aside the main track
(possibly urgently needed by a single person), and it would allow us
to develop bigger modules that we currently don't have the capacity
for.

Of course, we hope that this will be received positively by the user
community, but we also would like to know about any critical comments
you might want to make.

Nevertheless, let us emphasize that we have a strong commitment of
keeping PWGL as free software.

Regards,
 the PWGL devel team


THE PILOT PROJECT

To test the idea of a sponsored PWGL feature we would like to propose
a pilot project: MusicXML export/import.

This has already been requested several times on our Mailing list and
also privately, but it is not a trivial task. Therefore, we would like
to ask for donations in order to allow us to allocate a full-time
developer for it over one month (concretely, Kilian Sprotte is going
to take over this project).

As a first step, we have set up a web page at
http://pwgl.homeip.net:8080

Currently, there is no way to make a payment, we only would like to
know, who would be willing to support this development. You'll find
more details and a simple form to fill in on the web page.

If there is enough feedback, we would then enter a second phase and
actually ask you to proceed with the payment (credit card with
PayPal).