Beta feature: Group export. (Move a group between Loomio instances)
Robert Guthrie PublicSeen by 60We recently had cause to develop group export/import, and we're delighted that even at an early stage it seems to work well.
This feature allows people to download a json file with all the data in their group, and then import it into a new Loomio instance.
We'll be making group export available from loomio.org so you can move your group to your own server, or just take a backup of your group data should you want that.
The feature is not publicly available yet, there is a bit of work to go (Attachment support and removing/regenerating tokens being top of list) but I know that people have been asking for this, and just wanted to give a heads up that the key parts of the work have been done.
If someone desperately wants a group export please get in touch, otherwise expect this feature to arrive publicly sometime soon-ish.
One question I have is: How can we encourage people hosting their own Loomio to contribute financially to the continuation of the development of the software?
Hosting costs are a small fraction of our overall costs, staff costs being the highest, and we want to see lots of people running their own Loomio's around the world as well as seeing our subscription revenue allow us to grow the company. So.. would you consider paying a regular open source/self hosted support subscription?
Agree with above. I think you'd be surprised how many users / groups would be open to contributing more towards development rather than hosting.
I also have to agree with Julien (and by extension myself :P ) that being more public about your roadmap etc (without damaging your plans of course) and bringing users into the loop would incentivise us to contribute.
I would recommend though... don't get into a donation-based model if you can avoid it, keep the element of reciprocity and service provision. Maybe even a paid user tier (in addition to paid group tier) with some snazzy features (like user flairs for example...).
Thanks Sam. I really do want to keep you updated with progress and intentions. Right now you've got my best attempt.
It's not about damaging our plans, it's just that we're a very small team that's better at development than we are at comms. When we try to communicate far out development it takes lots of energy away from dev, so we've kind of settled into a pattern that delivers real progress based on our experience.
We have a big update to release this week (hopefully) and the versioning stuff will be worked upon shortly after that.
In terms of the feature in the subject of this thread, I feel confident that users knowing that they're not locked into a particular Loomio instance (or data controller) should make them more confident in the platform for long term use.
Great stuff!
Just an idea off the top of my head: Could you imagine a model where you pay a small and optional upgrade fee every time you download a new version? This money would then be pooled into a fund where anyone get voting rights in a sort of "popularity contest" on what feature users are most keen to see developed/prioritized.
Alternatively an opt in paid membership in a voting club, where users can upload requests that are voted on/awarded credits by the other members of the "club".
For The Borderland (Scandinavian Burning Man) we have distributed the art grants system to our participants on a platform called Dreams where anyone with a membership (ticket) gets to distribute credits (called hearts) to up to 10 different art projects (called dreams). Each heart is worth 14 euros.
Great with the group migration feature! And I really see how the financial part needs to be adressed.
I've been thinking about this since our Borderland Loomio has been such a resounding success. Here's one idea – maybe have some sort of program where organisations can opt in to being a part of the "Loomio Alliance" which would give access to a closed Loomio group which collects representatives and admins from all organisations hosting their own Loomio. I could see this being beneficial to us at the Borderland in a few interesting ways, connecting with other community organisers and sharing interesting plugins, modifications and ways of working.
Sounds cool!
Maybe there is something that the dev team could offer to such a group, granted that it would be a source of income?
Not sure. I'd like to keep as much information in the open as possible. At this stage there are no other groups we know of/hear from, it's just you, so I think we need to foster an open community of support to encourage more usage more than anything.
I think we'd rather be charging funded & for profit organisations, maybe with access to active directory plugins and things that they specifically value.
However access to us for direct support is a cool idea for the future.. but I want to keep it easy for anyone to host successfully.
I recently held a presentation (slides, presentation was also recorded but no word yet on when that becomes available) for the Burning Man European Leadership summit. Part of it was singing the praises of Loomio to do what we do at the Borderland. There was considerable interest from some regional events to set up their own versions.
Btw, might be fun for you to know that the Borderland Loomio now has almost 600 users and 31 groups. Pretty good going in just a few months!
Wonderful! So happy about this. Will watch the talk. Thanks very much for your support.
Firstly, I’ve whinged and moaned a lot at the Loomio crew about the absence of this feature. Big ups to you all for working on it! I’m excited to see it rolled out. I agree that users will actually feel more confident starting up and using paid groups on Loomio.org, knowing that they have the option to move to their own hosting if money gets tight, without having to start from scratch on a new server, or downgrade to a free plan on Loomio.org and lose the extra features of the paid plan.
Maybe you could go with a suggested donation? How much would you need self-hosters to pay to make it worth the transaction fees and paperwork? $10 a year? $50? $100? Oblong internet centre used to charge $3 an hour for net access on our computers, but one day a week was “koha day”, when customers could pay-what-you-want. Some people paid less, and some paid more, but because the usual charge was there as a benchmark, most weeks we made as much on koha day as we did any other day, if not more.
One of the things that has always put me off donating to free code projects I use (other than being flat broke ;-P) is that it feels like dropping money into a black hole. There’s no indication of what the developers costs are, or how much I’d be helping if I dropped a gold coin in their web-based donation tin.
I've often imagined a system where the developers costs are visualized as a set of buckets (eg web hosting for one year is one bucket), and I can choose which thing to donate towards, and see the liquidity level rise a little bit in that bucket when I do. Maybe if I see that I can fill a bucket by doubling my $5 donation to $10, I would do that. The other cool thing about that kind of system is that if I’m broke, but I can see the developer is spending an awful lot on something (eg HTTPS certificates), I may be able to help them lower their costs by sharing tips, in lieu of giving them money I don’t have. Maybe if they have a food bucket, and I have a garden, I could send them some preserves!
MySQL, XWiki Labs (developers of CryptPad) and others do a thing where they sell special licenses to companies that want to use their code without respecting the copyleft license. So you you're not guaranteed to get any patches sent upstream, or code for any features or integrations they add, but in theory, you can charge a reasonably steep, annual price for that privilege.
Stallman disapproves of this model, presumably because of the effects on the users of that company’s servers, but the reality is those companies would otherwise just use proprietary software. If they use free code software under a proprietary license, it’s no worse for those users, and maybe better. Plus, it means that money is funding the development of more free code, instead of going to a proprietary software company.
@samtoland
I think you'd be surprised how many users / groups would be open to contributing more towards development rather than hosting.
It’s a lovely vision, and maybe things are changing in that direction with the emergence of Liberapay (RIP Gratipay) and OpenCollective (I hope so), but I don't know of many free code development groups successfully funding themselves (properly) off donations. Loomio started out with a pay-what-you-can model, and there’s a reason they shifted to the priced subscriptions.
@hampus
Could you imagine a model where you pay a small and optional upgrade fee every time you download a new version?
I remember one developer experimented with developing his code in the open under GPL, but charging for compiled binaries. That was a desktop app though, and the end users were Jo User types, not sysadmins. But if you could gently prod people for contributions wheneve they upgrade (with metrics on the hours of work put into that dev cycle etc), it is a good time to be reminded of what the Loomio Cooperative is sharing with the world.
This is a great feature, I think of it as a selling point: you can start a group on loomio.org (or on a third-party or on premise server) and then move it to another host if your needs and/or technical or financial means change. There might be groups leaving the loomio.org platform, but I'm sure there will be groups moving in to benefit from your support and latest features...
On how to encourage people using Loomio elsewhere to contribute, I think the best model here is to allow anyone to pay what they want/can, via their preferred system (wire transfer, bitcoins, liberapay.org - see, people already want to contribute ;-), paypal or others)... These options could be added to the marketing home and/or to a page in app, linked from a user dropdown button, so that end-users can contribute to software development too. Maybe an effort to publicize your roadmap & changemap (as discussed here), so that people are encouraged to pay for the next features or even a way to contribute directly to one feature completion would make sense for groups or individual using Loomio elsewhere.