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Phalcon/Zephir Funding Campaign

Hey Community,

Since 3 years we have been working on Phalcon trying to improve it and move forward with the resources we have. Most of the work has been done in our spare time and with the great help of the community.

In the last year, due to our jobs and other responsibilities, progress in Phalcon has been a little bit slower, we would like this to change next year.

We are launching a campaign in Pledgie to promote the development of the framework and its sub-projects in order to bring Phalcon where we all want.

Following is the summary of the campaign:

We are asking for 30,000 USD (~2,500 USD/month) that will be employed during the following year, at this ti some donations were already made, thanks to the donors for their assistance and support!. If you want to help, please support this project by donating to it. Donations of any size are gratefully accepted. We hope to soon reach 35% (10,500.00 USD) of the goal to create a non-profit organization and hire developers.

How will we use this money?

Phalcon/Zephir goals

  • Allow us to pay 1-2 fully-dedicated core developers for a year
  • Develop the most popular requests from the community on Github in a short and realistic time frame
  • Provide high-quality answers and support in forums and StackOverflow
  • Release new versions constantly
  • Provide a LTS (Long Term Support) version focused on the enterprise

Phalcon specific goals

  • Improve documentation covering a larger number of subjects in depth
  • Create more tutorials and examples focused on a novice, intermediate and advanced audience
  • Extend test-suite achieving greater coverage and increasing framework quality

Zephir specific goals

  • Finish the implementation of a JIT compiler for Zephir to facilitate testing and debugging of software created in this language
  • Create a debugger that facilitates the development of extensions in this language
  • Increase the number of backends that currently Zephir supports
  • Support future versions of PHP and maintain backwards compatibility with already released PHP versions
  • Extend and improve the test-suite to verify what has been built also works.

You can donate here: https://pledgie.com/campaigns/27405

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Thanks!



16.4k

I'll donate again ^^

I don't have money, but i will try to contribute Zephir/Phalcon ^_^ :3

This needs to be in a different color on forum home page. Only just donated now.

I cannot donate right now. How else can I get involved though. I'm pretty new to Phalcon and novice-intermediate as a developer. Perhaps I could help with tutorials and examples or help with documentation.

No this is not an all or nothing campaign. If we reach the goal set in Pledgie, that means that two developers will be solely working on Phalcon and thus the development will be much faster.

If the goal is not met, then we will still continue the development of Phalcon but at the pace that our lives and other activities dictate since it will be only a "free time" development.

I take myself as an example, the last few months have been very very busy (see my github contributions are minimal to none). Before that I did have time to work on the project. It is the way it goes I'm aftraid with open source projects

Is this an all or nothing campaign? I'd hate to have my money sitting in escrow forever.

[edit] If this campaign is all or nothing then I think that it is much too high. I was about to have the man with the money bags donate for an end-of-the-year tax writeoff but I was unsure about the status of the campaign so we held off.

Nobody is obligated to donate - you should not feel that way.

Monetary donations is one thing, support by pull requests, tests, discussion in the forum and IRC is another. Everyone donates the way they can. :)

I cannot donate right now. How else can I get involved though. I'm pretty new to Phalcon and novice-intermediate as a developer. Perhaps I could help with tutorials and examples or help with documentation.



1.1k

I just donated $100 usd and will keep giving $100 per month for (at least) a year. BTW it would be easier for all if there were a subscription option (you can set it up with Paypal and post the button here).

Andres and all Phalcon team, congrats and keep going!

Phalcon community (developers using Phalcon), come on, let's commit to give some $ monthly so that the team knows there is a little cashflow coming in every month and can concentrate more in the framework. Think of it this way, would you buy one them a $3.5 coffee once or twice a week? Sure you would!



20.4k

I only discovered Phalcon last June. I have used it on one fairly complex job and intend to use it on more. I too think the core devs have done a great job so far! I want to help any way I can. I don't have much money to donate, but I will donate as much as I can. I'm happy to help any other way I can though - so long as it doesn't involve C (I only just started learning that)!

Hi there,

I discovered Phalcon in our research for a new framework. As we want to replace our RubyOnRails Stack with a PHP framework, we've compared several frameworks and the winner was phalcon. For me I will spend 5,00 $ each month until end of the year. I know it is not much, but if anyone here would do it, it would become much.

We're currently planning the switch and playing around with the framework. Maybe I can convince my company to spend a little more, but that would be a tough job ;) At least I will try it.

Anyway, keep going, fantastic work so far! I'm curious about the upcoming changes in version 2!

Martin

edited Jan '15

I've sent an email to Andres (the one posted in his github account), but going to ask here:

Is it possible to fund/hire a developer to help my company with business apps and support him/her to develop Phalcon as well? Help move both of them forward?

For example you can hire me https://en.dmtry.me/about https://github.com/ovr

I've sent an email to Andres (the one posted in his github account), but going to ask here:

Is it possible to fund/hire a developer to help my company with business apps and support him/her to develop Phalcon as well? Help move both of them forward?



25.1k

Just donated $100, keep up the good work guys!



22.6k

Wish I had more to donate, but please accept my $30! Many thanks for your hard work and effort! It's greatly appreciated!



1.1k

@Rene I think that you could use that Pledgie system with Phalcon to auto-donate every month. Could not find a way to make it a subscription using Pledgie...



1.1k
edited Feb '15

I put another $100 and will do it monthly.

BTW, I did not find a way to make it a monthly subscription using Pledgie. Maybe if you put a subscription in PayPal would help me and other contributors that can commit with a small/big amount in a monthly basis.

Come on guy, let's back-up $ the PhalconPHP team!

UPDATE: I just noticed that in the new PhalconPHP homepage, at the bottom, there is a PayPal link that takes you to a PayPal donation form that allows for recurring monthly payment. Good Job!

Great effort! I've just donated a few hundred bucks. We need faster development, especially with the upcoming 2.0 update. But this pledgie-campaign needs more exposure! Can we do something more to spread the word? Free publicity, etc

The upcoming convention should/could also generate exposure and money for this campaign. It is a bit delayed unfortunately.

I don't have a lot of funds but I have donated $5 because this truly needs more publicity.

Phalcon is a fantastic framework, designed/developed well & well thought out. I'm only just getting into it but you can already see that it's killing most other frameworks. I'd put it easily in the top 3.

I have to encourage anyone else who's reading this to donate, even if it's $5. I agree with the guy that says Phalcon is at a critical point, a lot of changes are happening right now in the PHP space with PHP7 on the horizon and heavy HHVM competition. Both Phalcon & Zephir can solve a lot of issues.

Just $5 guys, if that's all you can afford, that's okay. Lets keep this going!

And to the developers, I would seriously consider making this donation page more "up front". Like a header/banner accross the top of the main page that can be closed, but that everyone will see at least once. Kind of like what Wikipedia does once a year.

Don't be ashamed to ask for some funding for such a good product.



7.9k
edited Mar '15

keep up the good work phalcon team !!

just made a small contribution, i will repeat as soon as possible
about exposure, we can all use the pledgie banner for phalcon campaign where possible (blogs, websites etc)
but from the phalcon team side you have to expose it as well !!!



7.7k

You should create a kickstarter.com page instead, there is way more people on there then Pledgie. Thank you for all the work on Phalcon.

Yes, hit up some Kickstarter, everyone's heard of Kickstarter, it's a far more popular funding platform.

And I still think you should hit up one of those wikipedia style funding banner notices for a month or so right on the main page just to get some more traffic here for funding. Here's a reference discussion with a photo of one of the wikipedia promos: https://www.quora.com/How-effective-is-the-new-yellow-donations-banner-on-Wikipedia

You should create a kickstarter.com page instead, there is way more people on there then Pledgie. Thank you for all the work on Phalcon.

How much will I save money on server hardware with faster framework? I'm currently rewriting my site and after I see the results I donate the 50% of savings :)

When one day you realize most of the speed of a real project is not lost in the framework, you will realize how stupid this comment is. If you rewrite it badly you can loose money on the faster framework and vice-versa.

How much will I save money on server hardware with faster framework? I'm currently rewriting my site and after I see the results I donate the 50% of savings :)

I'm rewriting project because it's has very old code in it and after years of experience it will be faster whatever framework I choose. But with phalcon expectations in speed are much greater.

When one day you realize most of the speed of a real project is not lost in the framework, you will realize how stupid this comment is. If you rewrite it badly you can loose money on the faster framework and vice-versa.

How much will I save money on server hardware with faster framework? I'm currently rewriting my site and after I see the results I donate the 50% of savings :)

Although phalcon gets the best throughput thanks to it's design, I'm sure that's not the only thing you'll come to like about it.

I'm rewriting project because it's has very old code in it and after years of experience it will be faster whatever framework I choose. But with phalcon expectations in speed are much greater.

When one day you realize most of the speed of a real project is not lost in the framework, you will realize how stupid this comment is. If you rewrite it badly you can loose money on the faster framework and vice-versa.

How much will I save money on server hardware with faster framework? I'm currently rewriting my site and after I see the results I donate the 50% of savings :)



12.8k

In my opinion donations is not enought. I have few ideas how can community get more money:

  1. Zend company has very good buisness plan. Zend framework is for free but for Zend Studio (IDE) you have to pay. Zend Server and Zend Guard -> the same story. Maybe it's possible to create some advanced tool for debugging or something what is usefull during developing process, some easy tool just for 3-5 $.

  2. Certificate and yellow pages. A lot of people around the world want to have new PHP certificated. We can create some "yellow page" when all people who pass the exam can have a profile. "I'm certificate Phalcon framework developer" -> seems good for me:)

  3. Tshirts, stickers etc...

  4. Dedicated developing team ready for hire *

I like options 2,3,4 There used to be an option to buy stickers in the phalcon store. But that site is currently down?

Maybe we should make a seperate topic to start discussing what a certified developer should know, be able to. And how the certification should work?

In my opinion donations is not enought. I have few ideas how can community get more money:

  1. Zend company has very good buisness plan. Zend framework is for free but for Zend Studio (IDE) you have to pay. Zend Server and Zend Guard -> the same story. Maybe it's possible to create some advanced tool for debugging or something what is usefull during developing process, some easy tool just for 3-5 $.

  2. Certificate and yellow pages. A lot of people around the world want to have new PHP certificated. We can create some "yellow page" when all people who pass the exam can have a profile. "I'm certificate Phalcon framework developer" -> seems good for me:)

  3. Tshirts, stickers etc...

  4. Dedicated developing team ready for hire *

I would like to suggest below points .

  • paid training / events
  • provide business solution or paid services
  • create cms / crm / cart or any good product based on phalcon
  • Phalcon books / guide


4.7k
edited Apr '15

I think the System of the TYPO3 Association is really great.

https://typo3-association.myshopify.com/ You can become a member and support the development of the Product. Basic Memberships like the "Bronze" Membership of TYPO3 for example aren't so expensive.

Annual Fee of 105€ for each Person. Thats arount 8.75€ per month.

Its not to much that the people would complain about paying to much but in the sum of all member this would be a great income to boost the development of such great frameworks like Phalcon.

Every Association Member has the right to decide which features should be implemented.

I think Phalcon is still at it's beginning but while growing it would be really great to see it become sone organization like TYPO3 that supports the development and organizes events for all interested People.

Phalcon is awesome...



104

+1 try your best



25.1k

+1 My company uses Phalcon and we just made a 2nd donation via Pledgie

Martin,

My name is Jesus Granados, We have been working with RoR, but spite of kind of hard to find experienced people, I decided to change to PHP. Now I want to speed up development time....I have done a lot of research, and I liked what I had found about phalcon.

We are doing development in PHP 5.5, using Jquery, Bootstrap, JSON, and CSS. I certainly don´t know Phalcon, so my question is.. Which will be the advantages of using if? will help us to speed up projects?

I appreciate your help,

Regards Jesus

Hi there,

I discovered Phalcon in our research for a new framework. As we want to replace our RubyOnRails Stack with a PHP framework, we've compared several frameworks and the winner was phalcon. For me I will spend 5,00 $ each month until end of the year. I know it is not much, but if anyone here would do it, it would become much.

We're currently planning the switch and playing around with the framework. Maybe I can convince my company to spend a little more, but that would be a tough job ;) At least I will try it.

Anyway, keep going, fantastic work so far! I'm curious about the upcoming changes in version 2!

Martin

+1! Congrats for the great work!



133

Thank You A Lot! Adore Phalcon Framework!)))

10$. MANY THANKS! EVEN NOT START TO USE YET :)

edited Mar '16

I want to do donate every month, Phalcon is awesome...



60

Please add Alipay support……



13.2k

Hi,

Thanks. Should I create a campaign in maegam.com , crowdfunding product . I have launched recently.

Raja K



12.4k

I don't have a lot of funds but I will donate 5 $ each month. I know it is not much, but if anyone here would do it, it would become much.

You should create a project on kickstarter.com, it's a popular funding platform.

Phalcon is awesome. Thank you so much for your work

The big problem here is Paypal. Not every country can use Paypal. Provide other options please!

Nobody is obligated to donate - you should not feel that way.

Monetary donations is one thing, support by pull requests, tests, discussion in the forum and IRC is another. Everyone donates the way they can. :)

I cannot donate right now. How else can I get involved though. I'm pretty new to Phalcon and novice-intermediate as a developer. Perhaps I could help with tutorials and examples or help with documentation. hi nncvncvxmnvxc



14.4k

I'll occasionally donate some money.



17.5k

I'm fairly close to releasing iteration #1 of phalconjobs.com... I'll donate ~5% of the proceeds from that (less server cost and other expenses). Hoping to have it done in the next couple weeks!

So what is the current status of this? Obviously at only $5k in 2 years the $30k mark won't ever be reached, at least not this decade.

Are the core team members still involved with and interested in the Phalcon/Zephir project?

@dschissler - Thanks for the quick reply. So is money still the limiting factor?

@dchissler - Thanks for the replies.

We might have a strong use-case for Zephir to support our efforts to generate revenue from an open-source project we are working on. If we validate that assumption we might be in a position to provide financial support for ongoing work on Zephir. Good to know that is a potential.

Of course, we will need to execute on our strategy first, so it is by no means a done deal. But maybe!



14.4k

Maybe just add another campaign with a more popular vendor. Not many know pledgie.

Thanks @dschissler. We have a specific set of needs that Zephir fits and so that is where our focus would be, if we can turn our current traction into revenue...

+1

Donations of any size are gratefully accepted

I will donate as much as I can to support you guys. I really like phalcon even I still didn't use this on my real project. Im looking to it in the future :) keep it up guys goodluck



7.4k

Os admiro maestros. Espero seguir aprendiendo con vosotros y por supuesto, aportando mi granito de arena. Un abrazo y buena suerte chicos.!!



8.0k

Hmm, went to donate, but at paypal step as receiver of my payment i see "Juan Paulo Mendoza Londoño" seems supsicious. Any idea who this lovely fellow is?

A friend of mine, everything's fine :)

Hmm, went to donate, but at paypal step as receiver of my payment i see "Juan Paulo Mendoza Londoño" seems supsicious. Any idea who this lovely fellow is?

Alright, done!

Keep up the good work <3