Sponsored App Creation

marcusquinn

Hey, big fan of what you're doing here!

Is anyone interested in sponsored App creation?

As a business, we can budget for this as a reasonable expense and happy to contribute to both the creator and the community with helping fund these things.

murgero

@marcuswquinn That's an interesting concept - are you specifically looking for an app to be built for Cloudron? Or just as a general question?

will

@marcuswquinn Im interested in this too! (Can I throw money at somebody to make a solid Cloudron app)

murgero

@will You can throw me money and I will make whatever app you need lol

girish

@murgero said in Sponsored App Creation:

@marcuswquinn That's an interesting concept - are you specifically looking for an app to be built for Cloudron? Or just as a general question?

Yeah, I think an answer to this question is important Is this about packaging an existing app for Cloudron or creating a self-hosted app in general.

marcusquinn

@murgero The App Wishlist section works well - but I respect that not everyone can do everything for free for someone else's need, I'm suggesting sponsoring Apps on the Wishlist.

Similar to GitHub Sponsored development - and maybe that would be the most appropriate place to do the sponsoring, that or quite simply Paypal. Developer gives an amount they could justify working on something for, sponsor maybe pays half up-front and half on approval or something.

It seems like the kind of community that is working well on collaboration, trust and reputation anyway, so it's just a way to respect the value of a queue jump for those of us that have niche needs that might not otherwise get enough Upvotes.

As an example, I'd like sponsor Directus and Odoo Apps completions.

If you thought I meant a Desktop App, that's easy enough to create with https://webcatalogapp.com for those that like their WebApps separated as I do.

marcusquinn

@girish I mean primarily sponsoring packaging an App for Cloudron - some people are obviously more experienced and capable to work on that, and some of us that can't yet could contribute respectfully to keep devs fed.

I think it is only right to sponsor in a way that the community benefits from the App, although I guess there could be scenarios where it might be a custom-version of an existing app, for which I don't think you should change your approval process just because someone paid for development as the curation of the App selection is part of your trust.

I suppose something to consider might be whether quoting is public or private to be respectful, I don't mind either way but it's your forum so that's for you to choose if you wanted to moderate or guide there.

I suppose if people didn't want the development to be contractual its worth looking at how GitHub Sponsoring works, whereby it is a donation but does not imply any warranty or support.

I don't think Cloudron itself should be a party to transactions as that's just overhead and risk I managing and implying warranties, so this is strictly about making it OK to donate for development or offer development for donations with respect to it being your forum and ecosystem.

marcusquinn

@murgero If you're serious; Directus, Odoo and some JAMstack variations with Ghost/Strapi/Netlify CMS & Gatsby/Hugo/Jekyll. Up your street?

marcusquinn

might be worth look: https://opencollective.com

girish

@marcuswquinn yeah, usually we don't usually take up packaging work even though we have done this for a couple of specific before (like jupyter hub).

(This is off-topic but I didn't quite understand why quoting might be considered (dis)respectful. Maybe there is some etiquette I am not aware of but NodeBB atleast has a Quote button specifically. Feel free to drop me a note at girish@cloudron.io, if you feel strongly about this).

murgero

@marcuswquinn I can do directus - PM if you would like to discuss further. Odoo I can probably do as well.

msbt

@girish i think he meant quote as in price quote, talking money in public or via pm

marcusquinn

@msbt Yup, new here and money is always a funny subject, so just didn't want to steam in to someone else's forum without some etiquette on seeing what's cool or not. PMs prob most appropriate but just thought better to be transparent about it than appear to be hijacking for recruitment or have others soliciting work without checking it's acceptable forum use. Certainly a fan of open-source, so it's just sponsoring to help the app suite grow, not owning. Hope it's making sense.

Will email @girish and PM @murgero to see how we can help.

marcusquinn

@girish said in Sponsored App Creation:

@marcuswquinn yeah, usually we don't usually take up packaging work even though we have done this for a couple of specific before (like jupyter hub).

(This is off-topic but I didn't quite understand why quoting might be considered (dis)respectful. Maybe there is some etiquette I am not aware of but NodeBB atleast has a Quote button specifically. Feel free to drop me a note at girish@cloudron.io, if you feel strongly about this).

Haha, the other type of "quoting"

marcusquinn

Just spotted this: https://cla-assistant.io

as a merge prerequisite on: https://github.com/outline/outline/pull/939

Just pinging I here for reference in case Cloudron wanted to incorporate a CLA for code contributions.

girish

Lol, . Sorry, I totally misunderstood. It's fine to discuss things here as long as it's not too off-topic and still Cloudron related.

plusone-nick

This is a very interesting and applicable concept, +1! We have the platform and the support on the Cloudron side, the gap is being able to tap additional talent in a uniform manner coupled with focusing the users/paying customers resources on said talent.
The same reasons companies/people flock to Salesforce.com for its "ecosystem" from the customer to the developer... The current feature set obviously but also because each time a customer pays for BASICALLY anything "custom" SFDC gets to re-purpose the efforts and make a "new product"..We can achieve the same or better =p especially since the upstream projects are already OS I have some additional ideas on this & would love to be involved N make this come to fruition =]

marcusquinn

Could be another way to do this or at least inspiration: https://www.bountysource.com

marcusquinn

We can sponsor the following for anyone wanting to get paid to package?

Need these to migrate over our current instances:

Need solutions for:

Looking at the current rate of App packaging and launch on Cloudron, I can only guess all this might take 5 years unless there's something I'm missing.

So many great Apps but I'm not getting any closer to app system consolidation without having a bunch of these. How can we speed this packaging process up?

Sorry, I'd love to learn and do but just can't neglect current duties right now. What I can do is divert a bit of budget if that helps.

If the community here is in a similar position, perhaps we can have a whip-round and contribute to recruiting for this?

I also have some seriously decent privacy-conscious client potential for all of this - but we have to dog-food anything before we can promote it.

Very happy with Cloudron - all features definitely going in a great direction - but how do we get more Apps into the Store faster? That App Request list is going up faster than down.

marcusquinn

The way I see this is that every App is free marketing for Cloudron. I can't be the only person that's got to many VMs and App requests from a team that just wants the Apps so they can focus on setups, development and usage.

Every App that gets added to the App Store, ask the forum community here to then go and post on those App communities to point their users at Cloudron to give it a try.

I can't think of a better organic marketing strategy beyond this forum TBH.

I'll happily post links all over the internet to Cloudron to help you grow - but I'm kinda stuck a bit while our infrastructure consolidation needs are in-limbo.

marcusquinn

@girish @nebulon I wonder if would help to have a Group for those that are willing and able to offer App packaging services?

https://forum.cloudron.io/groups

I'm a fan of role-based systems, and maybe the forum Groups can help make the community a profitable way to share business too?

girish

@marcusquinn Sure, can create one. What would be best way for a person in this forum to get into this group though ? I am happy to make you a mod of that group as well (if such a role exists in nodebb)

marcusquinn

@girish I guess just have a thread for it and let people request that role if they are into packaging.

Could be easier to @mention a group if there's Qs specifically for those with that experience.

Just thinking to work with what we have so your focus is preserved for your roadmap.

plusone-nick

Ive got a good conceptual grasp on cloudron but am not able to yet package. I AM able to sell and support and would love for this community to have the ability to pay for & reliably find engineers to package apps that clients want =]

marcusquinn

Noting none of the apps I've listed above are listed here: https://forum.cloudron.io/tags/wip

May I ask for some business consideration in the App wishlist priorities? There are some significantly valuable apps in my list but I'm currently without the spare capacity to assist directly.

Anyone else here interested in these apps? Particularly Odoo, Directus, NodeRed. All apps I think the community would find very valuable too.

plusone-nick

@marcusquinn i second Directus & NodeRED, Odoo would also be useful!

girish

I tried to get https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/directus-app going here, let's see.

marcusquinn

@plusone-nick Odoo has the best accounting module of any FOSS app I've ever tested.

It's a solid alternative to Xero / Quickbooks / Salesforce / Magento / Wordpress etc. I have a feeling it will be as popular here as Nextcloud seems to be, and it has Nextcloud integrations.

Pivot tables on everything is a killer feature — a surprisingly rare feature in other apps.

marcusquinn

@girish Sorry, re-reading, hope my comment didn't come across as ungrateful.

I just saw the list of WIP apps being more hobbyist focused but the best of the bunch business and framework apps on Cloudron I'd hope will also attract more developers and dev-ops brains to the community that should find the convenience and have more experience to help evolve these apps and new ones.

I realise each app is maintenance and experience for working through issues but they are the kind of apps I think you'll get more qualified assistance with that sort of thing.

girish

@marcusquinn No offense taken at all We get asked in support non-stop about all sorts of apps. I think many are even willing to pay for it but under estimate the actual cost of packaging an app.

Let me provide some numbers for clarity. Each app is usually atleast 1 week of full time work for us including packaging, testing and writing automated tests etc (and of course maintaining it forever). So, we have to justify the cost on our side before we start packaging an app. We have to factor in how much we think the app will be used and whether we can support it at all.

To bring some closure to this topic, if an app is required urgently and if you are willing to sponsor the work, please factor in for atleast 40 hours of our time and then feel free to reach out to us at support@cloudron.io. Otherwise, rest assured, we will continue to package new apps primarily based on how many votes it gets in the forum, it just takes time. If you can rally users on the forum to vote on the app you need (maybe interesting info about it, use cases etc), it will already help getting it packaged soon

robi

If you thought I meant a Desktop App, that's easy enough to create with https://webcatalogapp.com for those that like their WebApps separated as I do.

Ooh, thanks for mentioning Webcatalog. I tried using Rambox but it didn't inspire me to use it.

Surprised the Webcatalog guys don't have it in their table matrix.

marcusquinn

@robi Yeah, love it for separating responsibilities and head-spaces, it's not a full browser, so expectations accordingly. This is how I have my Cloudron stuff in WebCalatog for interest:

Screenshot 2020-09-26 at 13.52.57.png

Also, recently changed to using Vivaldi browser as my daily workhorse, and very happy with that.

marcusquinn

@girish That's very fair. I'll see what I can do this end, I've also kept 10 devs busy with a long ticket backlog, so just trying to get some projects closed off to free them up.

Seeing a few new active devs here working on proof-of-concept work is great to see too, so doing what I can on the share-the-joy mentioning to try to get more involved too.

jdaviescoates

Anyone up for packaging 4minitz?

Seems @marcusquinn up for sponsoring it:

https://forum.cloudron.io/post/13804

marcusquinn

@jdaviescoates Sure, I have an awkward situation to handle at the mo, while going through a business review, otherwise I'd be much more budget happy — but I can sneak our a few pounds/euros/dollars here and there through Paypal to help the cause if anyone needs to justify their time on these things.

Odoo & 4minitz would help a lot, and I think be very good for the community.

NodeRED is a bit more specialist but useful to many developers.

Trying to avoid distracting the core team because their roadmap is equally valuable, so don't want to jump the queue on that.

Lonk

@marcusquinn Send the Git links of Odoo + 4minitz and I'll take a look! ️

marcusquinn

@Lonk I think @samir started something with Odoo but it needs work:

4minitz is a new request but more detail here:

https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/2763/4minitz-free-webapp-for-taking-meeting-minutes

I can probably sneak out a few hundred bucks in compensation but I have to be a bit respectful at the mo on that since I should be giving my own team bonuses that are waiting on a few business developments.

robi

if you get a gitpod link to the various WIP apps, i'm sure more folks will pitch in since it's easy to collaborate.

marcusquinn

@robi Sorry, is Gitpod something different to here? https://git.cloudron.io/explore/projects

Lonk

@marcusquinn Sounds good to me, I like to learn and think this is a great learning opportunity for me! Do you have any special requirements aside from converting it into a Cloudron app? And do you need both apps converted or just 4minitz?

marcusquinn

Seems to be 3 x Odoo:

https://git.cloudron.io/explore/projects?utf8=✓&name=odoo&sort=latest_activity_desc

2 x Directus:

https://git.cloudron.io/explore/projects?utf8=✓&name=directus&sort=latest_activity_desc

Nothing for 4minitz yet but I think I just reignited interest in that.

marcusquinn

@Lonk Just that I have to focus on my day-job and family-care needs at the mo, so really just getting things Cloudron App Store approved, launch and go. Forum chat I can manage as it's just another chat app in my chatty day. My days of getting to dig into anything more than that are long gone I'm afraid, that's the price of getting old, you have more people relying on you not being on a computer

For that to happen they need the unit-tests written:

https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/2850/writing-automated-tests-for-packages

marcusquinn

@Lonk Sorry, didn't answer fully. Yeah, Odoo & 4minitz would help a lot right now. Odoo I have a load of work on another VPS I could shut down if I could migrate it here.

4minitz I think will help anyone with a company or team.

I'm hoping for Direcutus too, which @murgero kindly started. I detailed more on the forum thread for that as to why.

They are the kind of apps I can quickly help a bunch of people with, in our own business and others.

Also they are the kind of apps that I think will give a lot of features that just any user or developer would find inspiring, either working with them or replicating features from.

Lonk

@marcusquinn Completely understand that! I have a yearning to learn tho so, just list out your priorities (so I know what app to work on first), and as I convert each one and get them approved to the Cloudron App Store, we can talk about doing the next one (if needed, other people might be working on the other two for their own reasons)?

Thanks for the automated test forum link, I didn't realize that was needed and will add that to my OpenVPN Client app as well! ️

marcusquinn

4minitz (it just jumped the queue as I could use that for my biz and friends biz straight away)
Odoo
Directus
NodeRED
Take ya pick: https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/2798/sponsored-app-creation/12

marcusquinn

Maybe a better link for seeing what's what: https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron

For some reason it's a few clicks from the home page to find that list. I mostly use GitLab.com so the CE version is a bit different to me as I usually have the Activity feed as my GitLab home page.

Lonk

@marcusquinn Thanks for sending me those extra resources that I'll likely need to get my first app into the App Store; I'll let ya know as soon as I make this Cloudron App Store ready!

robi

@marcusquinn said in Sponsored App Creation:

@robi Sorry, is Gitpod something different to here? https://git.cloudron.io/explore/projects

Yes, you can google it or just visit the gitpod site for more.

marcusquinn

@robi Interesting, not seen that before, we're mostly Atom / Jetbrains & GitHub Desktop / CLI. Is git.cloudron.io already setup with GitPod or is that the proposal?

robi

@marcusquinn
Have you tried it? Use the "Try it Now" button and feed it a github/gitlab project link.

Self hosted it would be adapted to the git.cloudron.io domain. https://www.gitpod.io/blog/gitpod-self-hosted-0.4.0/

https://www.gitpod.io/docs/

Lonk

Yeah, it's an interesting tech. Incredibly useful on the go and for people that don't have dedicated software license for professional code IDE's. I really liked playing with it, but my Desktop apps just run much faster.

robi

@Lonk
Perhaps you could describe and show a how-to setup your desktop app dev environment for those looking to get started.

For everyone else, there's GitPod, plus the ability to co-create with others (up-to 5 people) in the same environment.

Lonk

@robi I plan doing a complete run through for getting a Cloudron Development up and running on your desktop (a tutorial post on the Custom Apps forum category). But, right now, mine is pretty hacked together since I just started developing for this platform 1.5 weeks ago. So, my setup is not something I'm proud of rn, despite it technically working (inefficiently).

marcusquinn

Meant to post this here:

Be good if there was a way to make Upvotes developer sponsorship pledges!

$100 = 10 App Wishlist Sponsorship Upvotes. I don't mind sponsoring a few things here and there - but developers have to eat, so I think if everyone wants specific apps, start pledging some Paypal dollars in the Wishlist threads to feed the hungry

jdaviescoates

jdaviescoates
jdaviescoates 5 minutes ago

@marcusquinn I think my ideal scenario would be something like

Cloudron 6.0 fully open source again
Cloudron sets-up an Open Collective
All subscription monies get paid into the collective and all monies coming in/ out totally transparent (this is one of the really nice features of open collective) - sadly in reality this might not make much sense because of default %'s taken out - although OC recently started trialing 0% fees (still payment processor fees, obviously) with pay it forward option for contributors.
Option for people to pay more money into the collective should the so choose and have the means. Either lump sum or regular amount (both are already supported).
Developers who make wished-for apps can also be paid out of the collective and everything is totally transparent.

Or something like that. I open source and I total transparency (Buffer, for example, are really great on this, see https://buffer.com/about#transparency )

marcusquinn

Sure, in the meantime, knowing how business can stretch developers thin - let's help them with the PR around the interweb as more subscribers equals more funds to recruit

https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/2877/upvote-and-review-cloudron-on-all-the-alternative-to-type-websites-to-help-grow-the-team-and-community

marcusquinn

To conclude this thread, new forum section to get involved:

https://forum.cloudron.io/category/104/help-wanted-or-offered

marcusquinn

Can't edit any comments after a time now, so adding this to the sponsoring wishlist:

https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/1202/restyaboard-trello-like-kanban-board

girish

@marcusquinn I made you a mod for this category. Can you check if you can edit now?

marcusquinn

@girish Danke, that works

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Sponsored App Creation