I graduated from high school recently, and I’ve already been approved to my dream college. The problem is that college is expensive and in this world, you have to make money by working.

This means I don’t have time to keep developing my freeware projects anymore as I have to focus on paid work instead.

But I love working on ThunderBrowse because it’s something new and I love helping people. I hope that you guys can help me too.

The truth is that I don’t get paid to work on ThunderBrowse. Ads pay out once every eight months and I only get about $100 dollars (ads pay near to nothing [it's such a ripoff]). I also don’t get many donations on behalf of the project.

The thing is that I have lots of great ideas for features to add to ThunderBrowse, many of them that you guys, the community, have suggested that I add. With college approaching, I need to be focusing on paid assignments.

But you can help, and this is where Summer of Funding comes in.

What is Summer of Funding?

ThunderBrowse Popup Window

Summer of Funding is a little of experiment that I want to try with the users of Thunderbird and ThunderBrowse in general.

Users can donate money that will support the continuation of ThunderBrowse development and help me pay part of my college tuition for the first year.

I’m going to set up a milestone system, so that whenever the monetary amount hits a milestone, I’ll start working on a new feature that will greatly improve ThunderBrowse.

I’ve yet to decide how exactly new features will be chosen for each milestone (milestones are every $200 dollars [thus there are 5 milestones]) but most of these features will be ones that are most requested. I might put up a poll to decide what gets worked on next.

3.2.7 will be the last version that will have anything new or big in it as I’ll not be available to work on ThunderBrowse during college. If you really want to get some new and improved features and fixes added, then help me out!

How can I help?

You can donate to the project. Currently, we accept payment via Paypal (you can pay with your credit card [you do not need an account with paypal to donate]).

Click here to donate to the ThunderBrowse project.

How much do I have to donate?

Youtube in ThunderBrowse

You are free to donate the amount of your choosing.

Donating lots of money does not increase your chances of anything. It does, however, make me happy to know that people care and will decrease the amount of time until the next milestone.

I would appreciate at least $15 dollars per person, but you are the sole decider of what you want to spend.

Do I have to donate?

Donating is really up to you. I would really really appreciate it if you did donate, but you don’t have to.

What will you do with the money?

The money is to help me pay for part of my college tuition.

Can’t you just get money from…?

Scholarships? I’ve entered a lot of them and I’ve only won one of them. FAFSA suggests taking out a hefty loan to pay for college (I rather not take a loan [especially the amount that they suggest]). I’m already doing a lot to earn money to pay for college, but I still need a lot more to get even close to college. Summer of Funding is an idea that I hope will contribute to the money I need to pay for college.

When is the last time I can donate?

September 4th 2009. I’ll compile whatever I had at that time and release it. I would prefer that you don’t wait until the last minute to donate, but you can donate whenever you want (the sooner the better).

What are milestones?

Every time the donation counter hits a $200 dollar milestone, I’ll start working on a new ThunderBrowse feature. After work has been completed, I may or may not put up a beta for you to test/use. Betas will probably be codenamed like: 3.2.7 Panther or something to that effect.

How much do you need?

I really need about $5,000 USD (this barely scratches how much I have to pay), but I’m currently asking for $1,000 USD to help kick start funding. If the response to this project is great, I’ll bump up the amount I’m asking.

How many milestones are there?

$1000/$200 = 5 milestones. There is a milestone every $200 US dollars.

What kind of features are planned for the milestones?

I’ve only planned a few so far and I’ll get to more if I get more donations (meaning, this really gets off its feet).

Here’s the current list (in no real order):

1. Using native Thunderbird 3 tabs
2. Improving history (this will help lead into the Awesomebar)
3. Adding the Firefox awesomebar
4. Document printing support

Can I suggest a feature?

This is probably the one time I’ll actually take suggestions for features and work towards them (provided a milestone is hit). But yes, you can suggest features simply by leaving a comment on this post. There are a couple of things that you cannot suggest and those are:

1. Cookies support (this is a bug in Thunderbird that we cannot fix [Mozilla states that they are working on it [and they are]])
2. Embed Firefox/IE – Not only can we not do this (because the core is too similar and we don’t have write abilities to it) but it probably violates some trademarks/licenses.

What happens if you don’t get enough money?

If Summer of Funding fails then I won’t be able to add in these new features or work on ThunderBrowse as much. If I have completed previous milestones, I will release my progress up to that point as ThunderBrowse 3.2.7. I won’t be able work on ThunderBrowse as starts (the college I’m going to has a lot work involved, so I cannot spend time during school working on ThunderBrowse). I really hope this campaign raises some money because I would love to keep working on ThunderBrowse.

What if no one donates?

Well, then I won’t be able to work on ThunderBrowse over the summer (right now, I can only focus on paid assignments) and probably won’t be able to release a new version.

What about translations?

Translating all the new features of ThunderBrowse will be the last milestone of this fundraiser. If we do not hit the last milestone of this fundraiser by the time it is over, I will not get 3.2.7 translated (however, if it is apparent that we will not be making progress on anymore milestones, I will get it translated).

What will users that donate get?

They will get the wonderful feeling that they are helping out a bright student to move on to future pursuits and fulfill his dream AND I’ll add every person who donates $20 USD or more (if the donation is in another currency, it will be converted and rounded to the nearest US dollar) to the extension (a lot like how Firefox’s Invitation program worked) in a special credits section of the extension. This will be visible from about:donors or something. I’ll go into more detail as summer starts to end.

Being Mozilla, the only licenses available were completely open source software licenses. However, ThunderBrowse is free software, but not open source but most free software licenses were way too limiting or too open.

For example, one of the Microsoft Public licenses applies to C++, C# and Javascript files. It sounds great, until you look further in. One of the requirements is that your software has to run on Windows only and your software cannot be used in a business environment.

This prompted me to write my own license using the W3C License as a template. Nothing has really changed from what I’ve said in the past.  ThunderBrowse is free to use but not open source.

The new license can be found here: http://www.thunderbrowse.com/thunderblog/license/

In a nutshell:

1. Users can distribute ThunderBrowse as long as it is the one from AMO and complies with the present distribution rules.
2. ThunderBrowse is free to use and download.
3. ThunderBrowse cannot be sold [1].
4. You can modify ThunderBrowse for your own personal use BUT you CANNOT distribute your changes in any way [2].
5. ThunderBrowse cannot be bundled with other works [3].
6. No derivative works are allowed.
7. Software is provided as-is and GameSpotting! Networks is not responsible for any problems that may occur.
8. Babelzilla translators own their respective translations.

[1]: This clause has an exception that is mainly focused on print media such as magazines. I will only allow ThunderBrowse to be sold with my express written permission (this means if you want to sell a magazine bundled with a CD/DVD and it contains ThunderBrowse you need to get my permission).

[2]: We don’t want people changing and/or distributing individual files and/or wrapping the changes they and/or someone else made into an extension and then distributing it. If you created a custom skin for ThunderBrowse using Stylish or something, by all means, please upload it. This clause may change to no modifications at all if problems arise.

[3]: This pertains to software bundling that some people do. We don’t want ThunderBrowse to be bundled with anything unless we say that it is okay (again, asking for permission is the way to go).

Let’s pretend:

You are an artist who just painted what you call a masterpiece. You love it so much, that you decide to show it to the world by setting up a small stand in the local farmers market*. It’s a lovely day and you are so happy at all the people admiring your work.

But suddenly, someone jumps in front of your stand and yells “This art is crap!” Now people are starting to walk away because, hey, it’s a pretty awkward situation. How would you feel?

Probably pretty hurt and wanting to yell and/or hurt at this person, even if they have a point.

This is no different with any other work of labor. Truth is, people don’t like negative criticism, no matter how true it may be. But if a person is constantly improving their work, you, as a reviewer, should step back and look at how it’s improved. If you dislike the way it’s going, feel free to say so. But say so positively.

For example?

Here’s an example review that I would call bad: “Horrible. This software is bad.”

The problem with this review is that it doesn’t specify what exactly is bad with the software. Is it the installer? The UI? The graphics? The usability? No, this review tells you nothing. Nor does it state if the person had a problem and if they looked for help.

Here’s an example review that I would call good: “This application is pretty good but it really isn’t what I was looking for. I did have a couple of problems with some plugins, particularly Flash.”

This review doesn’t actually have any problems. Here’s why:

1. They stated they had a problem with Flash content
2. They complimented how the software was going (showing that they have at least used it longer than 15 seconds)
3. Ended on a positive note.

What would be even better is to have an email address somewhere in the review (on AMO, you can choose to leave your email public [seriously, you practically do not get any spam if you do]). Or if you filed a bug report with an error log. The most important parts of reviewing is to be detailed and be positive.

But I don’t have enough time!

If “I don’t have enough time to list out some problems I had with this” is true for you, don’t write a review. All you are doing is invalidating yourself, because honestly, if you have enough time to comment on something, then you must have some time to state a couple problems you had. Besides, it makes you look good.

Some people might think you are a nitpicker, but guess what, at least you value public knowledge and respect the author enough to care about their success. By being more detailed, you allow others to know about problems that could/can/will be experienced when using this software.

What if I can’t find help or my review sounds like a support request?

If it’s more of a support request, find the developer’s contact info and send them a message. File a bug report if possible.

But if none of those things are available, then you should state your problems in a review. And on top of that, leave an email address (in your profile, review, whatever) so that the developer can contact you. That way, they can help you with the problem and you can work it out together.

This makes both parties feel good and understanding of the issues presented. And it gives you a higher chance of the software being fixed, and thus you can enjoy it again.

And most importantly, remember to stay positive!

*Here in Washington, we have these open air markets [like in Mexico and Spain] where you can sell fresh food and paintings and stuff. These markets are called Farmer’s Markets. Just a heads up.