This is the sad story seen in numerous other industries and software. Proprietary software is limited by its vendor. Open source software is limited by its community.
Writing BIM software is really, really hard. To deliver a good open source solution requires dedicated resources over a long time period. OSArch is in a unique position across free software projects to be able to absorb overhead that would otherwise preoccupy individual developers and small startups.
Would love to see OSArch, thanks to the great work @duncan is doing, get an official funding strategy, a pool of money, and a collective decision on a goal on how we can help resource the progress of free software in AEC. One big pool is easier to grow than 10 smaller pools.
Hi, I would like to share my thought about it. Yes, this is the best option to start moving AEC industry as starting massive funding on developing a new platform for industry, that anyone would be interested in. The founding must come from government structures. Many governments issued new requirements to use BIM, however commercial software venders failed the process, unable to provide affordable software to improve BIM workflow in the country. After 10 years trying (at least this is what happens in UK) the best result was only ISO 19650. During this BIM journey between two major crises - financial collapse and COVID we are figured out, that Revit is expensive and poor quality and Autodesk not able to provide solid answer to everything, BIM teams don't know how to work together, all that expensive and complicated. As a result - the use of BIM today is not bringing enough efficiency to construction sites (that means do not cut carbon footprint etc).
Commercial software vendors cannot provide enough transparency how they are spending money they receive from their software users (who were forced, by the way, to purchase BIM software by new government regulations and suppose to be 'legal ticket' into BIM world), their also not able to provide yet advanced systems for construction process control - so we cannot know how efficient they are developing their platforms. The government request to use BIM was dictated by financial crisis, the crisis that showed to all the world, that the world cannot be corrupted and must start counting money instead of constantly counterfeit it. However BIM technology been turned into another machine for money printing.
Of course it is possible just be patient and wait for another 20 years until new tools will be adjusted and construction industry will start to feel lightness, but there is no guarantee that in next 20 years the situation will dramatically change. 30 years gone of active research and development and we are not getting working system yet (but to compare to that huge progress been done in imaginary, communication and firms productions).
Definitely various organisations like national architects and engineers institution, can be involved. Overpriced real estate market, crisis in hospitals, homelessness, climate change - these problems are directly related to construction and BIM technology, and are priorities number one for any government. I can imagine, with the right organisation of financial flow, some membership payment as 20 dollars per year can provide solid funding of Open Source projects around the country and even internationally.
I did hear, that European Union wants to launch new project as restoration of Bauhaus movement in Europe - as New Bauhaus, that would help to fight with economical damage made by lockdowns. Starting conversation in EU parliament about need of development new international open source platform - also can be important. Especially knowing how EU commission do not like monopolies set by IT companies.
Great to see you here @Podolsky, welcome
Money, unless we're talking about enough money to pay several full time salaries, is probably not what's going to fix this issue. For now my (our?) focus is mostly on raising awareness so that when big money does seem possible we're on the list of places to spend it. Before that is possible we need a robust organization capable of administering 6 figure sums and scaling up rapidly. Personally I'm a a bit of a loss on how to manage this and get overwhelmed each time I try and get into the details of it all. But we'll keep getting better at the basics and see how it goes.
Enjoy looking around the forum and wiki and dropping in with your thoughts.
Thanks @duncan.
It's complicated conversation about how to make AEC industry members (let say majority) to get interested in Open Source software projects for their needs and also what to propose to them. AEC industry is highly corrupted in most places of the world - anyone who is working there is aware of high level of charlatans appearing here and there and trying to steel money. Especially if talk about construction. Amount of direct thievery that happens of construction sites is unbelievable. Many business owners prefer to close their eyes to all that, be just stable on the market or simply busy about how to return 2 million load they took in the bank. Big well known engineering companies don't have time to train their stuff how to use BIM software, they prefer to get young people who know how to model (but don't know subject much) - so then there is a long waiting list of directors and project leaders hanged of Revit technician... In all that chaos Autodesk is positioning itself as global leader that able to provide the best solution for AEC - and many people, who involved into decision making in the companies, prefer Autodesk product, as Autodesk look promising. Also many directors are not willing to go into too much details - how exactly works one or another software and why something is better then another. For them is important long-term robustness and perspectives of software.
To beat big companies as AutoDesk with few tools - like BlenderBIM - today is impossible. So I think the overall industry must start moving into direction of new paradigm of universal system for all industry, with government and universities involved into creation process. Some sort of international Open Source BIM alliance or institution. The scale must be so global, that it would reach big corporations as Autodesk, Nemetschek, Google, Apple and Amazon to join the development. It most be as universal as internet today. Just imagine what non-sense would be if we had Internet from Google, Internet from Microsoft with very poor communication in between - when it's always problematic to send email from Apple device to Android etc. - but this what really happens in this world with BIM software today. I'm sure that telecommunication systems was always and is today under strict government control. But why nothing similar is happening in AEC industry? It's our houses, excuse me - it's even more important then food supply chains and water delivery systems.
Today everyone knows about Greta Tunberg - some not really mentally healthy girl. But why nobody knows about any young person with Down syndrome who is talking about difficulties working on Revit, ArchiCAD, VectorWorks and about very high real estate prices and homelessness problem worldwide in United Nations. Or if this person is actually would be absolutely healthy clever person and if there would be several people like that in the parliament of each country. Today for many politicians real estate - it's another way to hide their money, sometimes stolen from government structures or received as a bribe. But it happens because of the lack of awareness of many people that all human civilisation is about buildings. As soon as know something about ancient civilisation - we in most cases know how they lived from ruins of buildings.
You touch upon a lot of subjects and I'm going to ignore most of them. What I'm interested in is creating this global Open Source BIM project alliance organization you speak of. This thread is for talking about how to fund osarch and how to fund opensource in general.
We want ambitious and innovative ideas to systemically improve the sustainability of the OSS ecosystem. Promising proposals that are selected might include mini-grants up to $10K or larger ($100K+) grants.
You can submit a proposal by making a PR or filling out this form.
You can get or give feedback and help refine these ideas through changes and comments on this GitHub repository.
We plan to provide further support, such as grants / funding, to promising ideas and proposals.
I'm not quite sure how we could make use of the funds. I was wondering about a project collecting success stories from companies using FOSS in AECO. I feel like that would fit their agenda from the angle of encouraging corporate involvement in funding and development. What do other think? If I could get a dose of money I'd be happy to spearhead such a project and take some time off to work on it with help. Maybe even a dedicated website to this topic could be good.
As I actually understand it, osarch as a whole is basically the kind of project they are looking for - a way to to improve a long term development and sustainability of oss projects by promoting reviewing and documenting them.
I believe we could apply, we'd just need to:
1. describe what we do
2. how it helps the oss sustainability
3. how it could be generalized to other areas apart from AEC
4. how exactly we'd use the money (two big areas here: doing what we do and measuring the effects)
I think it is a realistic idea, but as far as I know, the EU funding is mostly consortium based with several different stakeholders from industry and academia working together to develop a product, so I think a wider audience should be involved to apply for a project grant, something like BigDataStack. There is also an interesting European Open Source Initiative topic on the same site, seems like this is something OSArch could explore immediately, maybe the initiative could provide some kind of institutional support.
I am also in negotiations to become a contributor to an EU funded project that involves stakeholders from both academia and industry, and if I do get involved I will try and find out the best ways to get OSArch involved in something similar.
I have been thinking about funding and marketing, I guess this idea has been discussed before?
I would like to include the OSArch & BlenderBIM logo and some reference to supporting FOSS on my drawings however I want to pay for the privilege (hmm anyone else see the irony in that!) anyway I would like to contribute to the purse for the privilege.
I do have a tag line for the Logo, 'I support free and opensource software in principle and practice'
Am I asking in the right place? Do we have this already? how do I pay? is it a good idea? how much should it cost? who else would be interested?
Ata Marie @Duncan, I understand the conundrum now and why there is a project going on to resolve it.
I like the idea of just donating to a central fund and letting a democratic process work out how to distribute funds.
I was thinking of using these logos in my title block something like this
it would be good to include a QR code to OSArch.org so the inquisitive can have a look
@Nigel I've been away for 20 years, it's so great to see te reo being used so much on RNZ and official communication. Good morning to you (now that I know what ata marie means).
That title block looks great. If you haven't yet make sure to have a chat with @theoryshaw about his company and how they support FOSS and openness. http://openingdesign.com/
Donating to a centrally managed fund is definitely one of several options I hope we will be able to offer people. We've been talking about it for long enough :-)
Submissions for EU funding are a huge task. We really need some academics in the EU with interest in developing relevant projects like @topologic has been doing. Does IfcOpenShell have any external funding? @Moult ?
We would of course need to find a good way to manage having two financial organizations, but in the long term this is something we can't avoid anyway. I don't see it being a big problem if we keep the two in sync.
Comments
@bitacovir I moved your comment to this thread since this is the most relevant discussion. Hope that's okay.
No problem.
This is the sad story seen in numerous other industries and software. Proprietary software is limited by its vendor. Open source software is limited by its community.
Writing BIM software is really, really hard. To deliver a good open source solution requires dedicated resources over a long time period. OSArch is in a unique position across free software projects to be able to absorb overhead that would otherwise preoccupy individual developers and small startups.
Would love to see OSArch, thanks to the great work @duncan is doing, get an official funding strategy, a pool of money, and a collective decision on a goal on how we can help resource the progress of free software in AEC. One big pool is easier to grow than 10 smaller pools.
I moved the follow up to this discussion, which quickly moved into organizational matters about how we can accept funds, over to the organizational-structure-and-governance-of-osarch thread starting here: Comment_8086
I think I screwed up the flow a bit, but I hope we'll manage.
Hi, I would like to share my thought about it. Yes, this is the best option to start moving AEC industry as starting massive funding on developing a new platform for industry, that anyone would be interested in. The founding must come from government structures. Many governments issued new requirements to use BIM, however commercial software venders failed the process, unable to provide affordable software to improve BIM workflow in the country. After 10 years trying (at least this is what happens in UK) the best result was only ISO 19650. During this BIM journey between two major crises - financial collapse and COVID we are figured out, that Revit is expensive and poor quality and Autodesk not able to provide solid answer to everything, BIM teams don't know how to work together, all that expensive and complicated. As a result - the use of BIM today is not bringing enough efficiency to construction sites (that means do not cut carbon footprint etc).
Commercial software vendors cannot provide enough transparency how they are spending money they receive from their software users (who were forced, by the way, to purchase BIM software by new government regulations and suppose to be 'legal ticket' into BIM world), their also not able to provide yet advanced systems for construction process control - so we cannot know how efficient they are developing their platforms. The government request to use BIM was dictated by financial crisis, the crisis that showed to all the world, that the world cannot be corrupted and must start counting money instead of constantly counterfeit it. However BIM technology been turned into another machine for money printing.
Of course it is possible just be patient and wait for another 20 years until new tools will be adjusted and construction industry will start to feel lightness, but there is no guarantee that in next 20 years the situation will dramatically change. 30 years gone of active research and development and we are not getting working system yet (but to compare to that huge progress been done in imaginary, communication and firms productions).
Definitely various organisations like national architects and engineers institution, can be involved. Overpriced real estate market, crisis in hospitals, homelessness, climate change - these problems are directly related to construction and BIM technology, and are priorities number one for any government. I can imagine, with the right organisation of financial flow, some membership payment as 20 dollars per year can provide solid funding of Open Source projects around the country and even internationally.
I did hear, that European Union wants to launch new project as restoration of Bauhaus movement in Europe - as New Bauhaus, that would help to fight with economical damage made by lockdowns. Starting conversation in EU parliament about need of development new international open source platform - also can be important. Especially knowing how EU commission do not like monopolies set by IT companies.
Great to see you here @Podolsky, welcome
Money, unless we're talking about enough money to pay several full time salaries, is probably not what's going to fix this issue. For now my (our?) focus is mostly on raising awareness so that when big money does seem possible we're on the list of places to spend it. Before that is possible we need a robust organization capable of administering 6 figure sums and scaling up rapidly. Personally I'm a a bit of a loss on how to manage this and get overwhelmed each time I try and get into the details of it all. But we'll keep getting better at the basics and see how it goes.
Enjoy looking around the forum and wiki and dropping in with your thoughts.
Thanks @duncan.
It's complicated conversation about how to make AEC industry members (let say majority) to get interested in Open Source software projects for their needs and also what to propose to them. AEC industry is highly corrupted in most places of the world - anyone who is working there is aware of high level of charlatans appearing here and there and trying to steel money. Especially if talk about construction. Amount of direct thievery that happens of construction sites is unbelievable. Many business owners prefer to close their eyes to all that, be just stable on the market or simply busy about how to return 2 million load they took in the bank. Big well known engineering companies don't have time to train their stuff how to use BIM software, they prefer to get young people who know how to model (but don't know subject much) - so then there is a long waiting list of directors and project leaders hanged of Revit technician... In all that chaos Autodesk is positioning itself as global leader that able to provide the best solution for AEC - and many people, who involved into decision making in the companies, prefer Autodesk product, as Autodesk look promising. Also many directors are not willing to go into too much details - how exactly works one or another software and why something is better then another. For them is important long-term robustness and perspectives of software.
To beat big companies as AutoDesk with few tools - like BlenderBIM - today is impossible. So I think the overall industry must start moving into direction of new paradigm of universal system for all industry, with government and universities involved into creation process. Some sort of international Open Source BIM alliance or institution. The scale must be so global, that it would reach big corporations as Autodesk, Nemetschek, Google, Apple and Amazon to join the development. It most be as universal as internet today. Just imagine what non-sense would be if we had Internet from Google, Internet from Microsoft with very poor communication in between - when it's always problematic to send email from Apple device to Android etc. - but this what really happens in this world with BIM software today. I'm sure that telecommunication systems was always and is today under strict government control. But why nothing similar is happening in AEC industry? It's our houses, excuse me - it's even more important then food supply chains and water delivery systems.
Today everyone knows about Greta Tunberg - some not really mentally healthy girl. But why nobody knows about any young person with Down syndrome who is talking about difficulties working on Revit, ArchiCAD, VectorWorks and about very high real estate prices and homelessness problem worldwide in United Nations. Or if this person is actually would be absolutely healthy clever person and if there would be several people like that in the parliament of each country. Today for many politicians real estate - it's another way to hide their money, sometimes stolen from government structures or received as a bribe. But it happens because of the lack of awareness of many people that all human civilisation is about buildings. As soon as know something about ancient civilisation - we in most cases know how they lived from ruins of buildings.
You touch upon a lot of subjects and I'm going to ignore most of them. What I'm interested in is creating this global Open Source BIM project alliance organization you speak of. This thread is for talking about how to fund osarch and how to fund opensource in general.
An interesting opportunity here:
https://github.com/PlaintextGroup/oss-virtual-incubator
I'm not quite sure how we could make use of the funds. I was wondering about a project collecting success stories from companies using FOSS in AECO. I feel like that would fit their agenda from the angle of encouraging corporate involvement in funding and development. What do other think? If I could get a dose of money I'd be happy to spearhead such a project and take some time off to work on it with help. Maybe even a dedicated website to this topic could be good.
As I actually understand it, osarch as a whole is basically the kind of project they are looking for - a way to to improve a long term development and sustainability of oss projects by promoting reviewing and documenting them.
I believe we could apply, we'd just need to:
1. describe what we do
2. how it helps the oss sustainability
3. how it could be generalized to other areas apart from AEC
4. how exactly we'd use the money (two big areas here: doing what we do and measuring the effects)
Maybe it's a ridiculous idea, but might osarch be eligible for subsisdies from the European Union?
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/finance-funding/getting-funding/eu-funding-programmes/index_en.htm
https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/accessing-funds/
I think it is a realistic idea, but as far as I know, the EU funding is mostly consortium based with several different stakeholders from industry and academia working together to develop a product, so I think a wider audience should be involved to apply for a project grant, something like BigDataStack. There is also an interesting European Open Source Initiative topic on the same site, seems like this is something OSArch could explore immediately, maybe the initiative could provide some kind of institutional support.
I am also in negotiations to become a contributor to an EU funded project that involves stakeholders from both academia and industry, and if I do get involved I will try and find out the best ways to get OSArch involved in something similar.
I have been thinking about funding and marketing, I guess this idea has been discussed before?
I would like to include the OSArch & BlenderBIM logo and some reference to supporting FOSS on my drawings however I want to pay for the privilege (hmm anyone else see the irony in that!) anyway I would like to contribute to the purse for the privilege.
I do have a tag line for the Logo, 'I support free and opensource software in principle and practice'
Am I asking in the right place? Do we have this already? how do I pay? is it a good idea? how much should it cost? who else would be interested?
Hi @Nigel (fellow kiwi here) for now we're not actually equipped to accept money as osarch since we don't have a legal organization.
What we do have is a curated list of projects & individuals you can support.
https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=Donation_Directory
If you want to add a little graphic which one are you thinking of using?
Here are the ones we have now:
https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=Open-Source_Architecture_Community
Ata Marie @Duncan, I understand the conundrum now and why there is a project going on to resolve it.
I like the idea of just donating to a central fund and letting a democratic process work out how to distribute funds.
I was thinking of using these logos in my title block something like this
it would be good to include a QR code to OSArch.org so the inquisitive can have a look
@Nigel I've been away for 20 years, it's so great to see te reo being used so much on RNZ and official communication. Good morning to you (now that I know what ata marie means).
That title block looks great. If you haven't yet make sure to have a chat with @theoryshaw about his company and how they support FOSS and openness. http://openingdesign.com/
Donating to a centrally managed fund is definitely one of several options I hope we will be able to offer people. We've been talking about it for long enough :-)
Submissions for EU funding are a huge task. We really need some academics in the EU with interest in developing relevant projects like @topologic has been doing. Does IfcOpenShell have any external funding? @Moult ?
Maybe we need to hurry up and make an EU based organization. There is one on OpenCollective we could join. https://opencollective.com/opensource
We would of course need to find a good way to manage having two financial organizations, but in the long term this is something we can't avoid anyway. I don't see it being a big problem if we keep the two in sync.
A good article on the pros/cons of bounties
https://ondsel.com/blog/software-bounties-are-a-dumb-idea/