RFC - Doing a crowdfunding for QtWebEngine in qutebrowser?

[Florian Bruhin]

Hi!

(Warning, somewhat long mail ahead - tl;dr: I'm thinking about doing a
crowdfunding to work full-time on qutebrowser for a while, and I'm
trying to collect thoughts and opinions on that)

As some of you might know, over the past few months I've mostly been
working on qutebrowser's testsuite to prepare for the upcoming
integration of QtWebEngine, the new backend based on Chromium.

Since last year, I've brought the test coverage up from something like
20% to 77%, and now I hope there won't be too much left until I feel
confident starting to work on QtWebEngine support.

QtWebEngine will bring many improvements to qutebrowser in various
areas - compatibility, stability, and security. This is due to it
being based on a modern Chromium instead of using an oudated WebKit as
backend.

However, this is a major undertaking. While I had plans to switch to
QtWebEngine since day one, I didn't anticipate it would be as
backwards-incompatible as it is (and I think neither did Qt people,
back then).



Right now, I can only work on qutebrowser quite fragmented. Most of
the stuff happens in the 2 hours I drive per day in public transports,
with multiple distractions (due to switching trains) in between. I
found it very hard to work on bigger things in qutebrowser that way.

Twice I took time off from work to be able to do more focused work.
Once before the v0.1 release, and once somewhat recently to work on
tests.

Inspired by pytest doing a fundraiser for a sprint, I looked at a
topic I had in the back of my mind for some while already: Collecting
some money so I can work on qutebrowser full-time, ideally for a
timespan between 2 weeks and 2 months.

It's not like I plan to stop working on qutebrowser in my free time,
it's just much easier when I can do so for hours without being
interrupted rather than minutes. QtWebEngine will come either way, but
it'll come a lot faster with your help!

As mentioned I mainly plan to work on QtWebEngine in that time, but if
time permits, there are other big undertakings (like config
adjustments to allow for per-domain settings) waiting to be tackled.



Since I'm saving for starting to study later this year, I won't be
able to do this without any income at all, however.

After some thinking about this, I'd need to have something like
3000 CHF per month to be able to follow those plans.

If you wanted to exchange your local currency to that, that'd be
about:

- 2800 EUR
- 2100 GBP
- 3000 USD

... I know this is probably sounding like a lot of money.

The problem is, living in Switzerland is quite expensive, and what
you'd probably consider quite a good salary is really modest here.

Adjusting the amounts based on the "location factors"[1] (which I
believe are a quite reasonable combination of various sources) yields
the following results[2]:

- 1300 EUR (assuming you're living in Germany)
- 1200 GBP
- 2300 USD

So what I thought about is doing a "flexible funding" campaign with
the goal of probably 3000 EUR, which translates to a month of
full-time work on qutebrowser.

If there's less than that, I'll get the money either way, and work
less time. If there's more, I'll be able to work on it longer (up to
something like 7500 EUR, i.e. 2.5 months).

In exchange, I could provide some schwag, like qutebrowser stickers
and t-shirts.



I realize this is quite crazy, and - also due to the lack of cooperate
backers - I'm really not sure what to expect, this is more of a
(public) thought experiment for now.

This is why I'd appreciate hearing any comments and thoughts you all
have on that matter - whether you know about similar projects which
did such a thing in the past, or you think this is completely crazy,
or you dislike the idea in general.

Also, if you think you'd donate to the cause, please let me know as
well!

Feel free to reply to me privately/off-list too.

Thanks,

Florian

[1] http://location.rkh.im/
[2] http://location.rkh.im/calculator/DE;US;GB;CH/3k?time_unit=month&base=CH

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