Flouzo: Most Recent Posts

Flouzo Book & Use cases

Xavier Antoviaque — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:44:00 +0100

We are currently working on the use cases for the beta version of Flouzo. The work is about 50% done, but there is already more than 30 pages, and it is starting to give a good feeling of what it will look like once it has been implemented.

I have thus added an extension to the wiki, to generate two books based on the latest changes on the wiki:

The Flouzo Book (PDF, 16 pages), made of the most important elements of the Flouzo.net wiki.
The Flouzo Use Cases (PDF, 31 pages), the latest version of the Flouzo.net specifications.

Just for fun, here is a mindmap that helped refining the relationship between users, campaigns and organizations in Flouzo:

Donations, A Business Model, Really? Wikipedia's Example

Trevas Walker — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:36:00 +0100

If you talked to most business experts about garnering capital through donations they would probably laugh in your face. Of course there are always colleges, and other non-profit organizations who are run mostly through donations. Swarthmore college in Phoenix, for example, finished their seven year fund raising campaign (on Dec 31, 2006) with over $245 million in donations. Start quoting numbers like that to those same “experts”, and I bet you would get their attention.

Even online organizations have found huge success with this type of business model. Wikipedia is an excellent example of this. The non-profit organization finished the 2006 year off with close too $1.3 million in donated funds. This year they are expected to do much more.

If you look at the exponential growth of Wikipedia in the past 3 years it is really quite phenomenal. In 2004, they stated income of $80,000. For the 2005 fiscal year their income was almost 5 times that at $379,000. Then, with their major fund raising campaign, in 2006 they finished the year off at over $1.5 million in revenues (again almost 4 times the revenue of the year before). If they experience the same growth for this fiscal year, that would mean they would bring in $6 million for 2007.

Since 96% of the previously mentioned figures come in from donations; it quickly becomes apparent how viable this type of business model really can be. Wikipedia has recently finished their 2007 fund raising campaign – and although their yearly income totals have not been announced yet, the campaign itself was a huge success.

With this years campaign their main site showed only the current number of donations, and not the running totals. Wikipedia wanted to put the spot light on the number of contributors this year instead of on the dollar figures. If you dig deep enough, however, the running total for the current campaign can be found. To follow are comparison of how Wikipedia's major fund raising campaigns have grown over the past 3 years. They do run smaller campaigns through out the year, but their major fund raiser is always their fourth quarter fund raising campaign. Since in 2005 and 2006 almost 75% of their income was garnered through their fourth quarter campaign, it is the best time of year to compare for growth.

As you can see, year over year, Wikipedia has seen huge success and growth with their Q4 campaign totals.

Along with rather large growth in $ there has also been consistent growth in the number of contributors.

The last chart I wanted to share shows year over year averages for their fourth quarter campaigns. For the 2007 campaign the average donation actually dropped.

An easy explanation for this is the length of the campaign. In 2005 and 2006 the fourth quarter fund raiser laster 20 and 21 days. For the 2007 campaign they ran it from October 22 right through to January 6th , 2008.

Considering that they had more than 44,000 donation for this last campaign, the extended time frame obviously worked out well.

What is it then that makes Wikipedia work so well with this type of business model? It's quite simple really. It is all about ownership and community.

All of the content on Wikipedia is user contributed. This gives users a sense of ownership over the site. A lot of the work is also a collaborative effort between many individuals. This builds a sense of community surrounding the site. Those two things combined make it the perfect type of project for this kind of business model. Users are active participants in a community and want to see the project continue.

So back to my original question; can donations really be a business model? The answer of course is yes. All it takes is a community of active participants who have a sense of pride and ownership in your project.

You can download the data used to create the spreadsheets here:

donationdata.ods (821 KB)

First campaign: Iliad & Freebox

Xavier Antoviaque — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 09:30:44 +0100

The first campaign can be found at : freebox.flouzo.net:

Several free software writers have called Iliad, one of the main telecom companies in France, to respect their work, and a judicial proceeding has begun to demand the respect of their licence. This action follows repeated refusals of Iliad to publish the source code of the Free Software included in their Freebox. Although the writers appreciate “the innovative contributions that Iliad has made in the telecommunication industry, along its historical inclination toward Free Software”, they are concerned about the reasons that may have led Iliad to this philosophical swing.

A few steps away from launch...

Xavier Antoviaque — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Almost there! :-) The company statutes (in French) are ready and have been signed by all founding members, we are still gathering a few remaining items before being able to hand them over to the French admdinistration. The contract with Neuf Cegetel for EasyNeuf is going well, it should be enough to give Flouzo enough founds to begin its activity - and I investigate other opportunities. The work load becoming quite heavy, we are looking for a community coordinator; the job offer is in French, but if you know enough French to be able to understand it, you may apply - international profiles could fit the job.

Also, we are working on the first campaign : Loic is looking for founds to develop a Free Software alternative to Google Reader. In the meantime, Ayo is working on the design of the website, so soon it should be very nice looking. :)

Concrete stuff?

Xavier Antoviaque — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0200

The project matured the last few weeks. Loïc Dachary joined to take care of development, and we have worked a lot on the Use cases of the future website. They are of course open to comments...

The ethical comitee is being finalised, this should be done within the week. In the meantime, the comapny statues are being written (I'll add them to the wiki when the lawyer is finished), and a huge pile of paper is being prepared for our lovely French administration.

I've also started working on several contracts to get some money for the project, as we have to pay the lawyer, the development, the servers, the limo... The project which is taking me the most time is for Neuf Cegetel, a French ISP, on the EasyGate project - btw, it is a quite nice Free Software project, which won the French FS "Lutece d'Or" award, as a special choice from the jury.

You can find other details in the brand new wiki. And if anything is unclear or weird, the forum (which is new, too), is there for you.

Good - we'll (perhaps) avoid going to jail

Xavier Antoviaque — Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Second lawyer, then! That time, the meeting was with Me Fulgan, lawyer specialised in business copyright law, and also former T4C player with I had the chance of meeting while I was working at GOA. A lot more serious, friendly than the other one, and he knew what he was talking about. :-)

Even if it was only a preliminary discussion, we were able to conclude that a hosting and service attitude could limit the risks. In a nutshell, we would basically charge for an given amount of money for each campaign, but the money wouldn't go through Flouzo (campaign creators would have to use a Paypal account for example, where the money would directly arrive), sign a real paper contract and verify the identity of the campaign creators.

As this is quite a constraint, the first phase (getting donation pledges without any actual payment) could be launched while the other elements are being sent and validated. It adds some work for the campaign creator, and we'll have to carefully choose the amounts we'll ask for, but at least it's a good way of doing it legally speaking. Now we'll have to prepare nice spreadsheets, to know how much we would need to allow the project to stay afloat financially. And try to get one or two contracts to get some cash to strat things off. So, we aren't quite there yet, but things are moving forward.

Meeting with a lawyer

Xavier Antoviaque — Sat, 12 May 2007 00:00:00 +0200

While Flouzo isn't yet a legal entity, and while we still aren't sure we will do it, I'm already not a "unemployed" person in regards to the local employment agency. I am "creating a company". Wow, but this is just a way to kick me out of unemployment statistics - and using a title to make it look nicer reminds me of some technics used in the MMORPG industry... Anyway, since the beginning of the month, I have the great joy of being able to taste the company creation procedure, and I'm discovering this brave new world made of papers and forms.

To be honest, it's not as bad as it looks. People follow what you do, and you are told what you need to do. There are five meetings at an advising center, in addition to visists to the local government work department to get "advising checks" and the ACRE form, and to lawyers and accountants.

Yesterday, it was a meeting with a lawyer. The advising checks, which allows to see lawyers and accountants for a small price, only let you use a limited list of accredited profesionnals. I wasn't convinced this would be enough for Flouzo, given its unusual nature and legal complexity, but given the small price (12.50€ an hour, instead of 100-300€ an hour), it was worth the try. And as expected, a good number of issues quickly appeared.