Group: Ipernity Members Association Project

Bonjour,

Sous quelle forme pourrait-on tenter de sauver IPERNITY ?
Mes seules compétences seraient pécuniaires (don de liquidités).

Moi aussi, je ne vois qu'une augmentation conséquente de notre contribution pour sauver Ipernity et un temps et un nombre de photos restreints pour obliger les gens à souscrire.
Ne plus mentinner "Offrir un abonnement" car je pense que le mécènes sont beaucoup trop rares. Mettre plutôt une accroche du genre "Rejoignez-nous vite" à la place !!!

I can only offer to put money into a crowdfunding solution if it appears. I would be prepared to pay a much higher annual fee and also pay for 2 or 3 years ahead if that was an option

I agree with your proposal, and would be willing to contribute.

Thats the only quality in which I could be of help as well..
increased fees and up to 5 years contribution in advance.

Hi Eric, as you know I run global Marketing.

Like everyone, I do not want to see Ipernity close and whilst I do not have resources of skills and time to offer, I would be prepared to pay considerably more for the Club subscription (at least double) to help keep this lovely site going.

I am a web developer with skills in C# (ASP.Net) and PHP. But very little time I'm afraid - the day-job eats most of that.

One option might be for the platform to be continued as an Open Source project - but this does require a community of skilled and motivated developers willing to work essentially for free. This does happen, in many areas (like the whole of Linux, for example, or the Gimp image processing software... see git.gnome.org/browse/gimp and www.gnu.org for that process in action) . Perhaps more of an obstacle - it would require the shareholders/owners of Ipernity to be prepared to release their code as Open Source - which is often hard to reconcile with a commercial 'ownership' model... even if the code that they 'own' is not being used by anyone.

However, having said that, I don't think there is a huge need for a lot more technical development on this system - I think many of us would be happy just to see it continue as it is. William's suggestion (on another thread) of Amazon Cloud hosting also seems pragmatic and good.

Hi Jim, a novice's question: you're speaking of a community of skilled and motivated developers. If we imagine that ipernity owners agree to release their code as Open Source, is it silly to think of converting it in open source under GNU license ?

Bonjour Jim et Eric,
Par le passé, j'étais Directeur des Systèmes d'Information d'une grande collectivité, je suis aujourd'hui à la retraite. J'ai des compétences en développement et en réseaux informatiques.

Ce que je voudrais signaler c'est que l'activité de développement sous licence libre est très complexe à gérer. Les exemples de réussite du libre les plus fréquemment mentionnés sont Linux, LibreOffice ou GIMP mais ce qu'il faut savoir c'est que, souvent, derrière ces communautés il y a de grands groupes comme IBM ou ORACLE.
Tous les développeurs du libre ne travaillent pas gratuitement... Le plus souvent les projets du libre sont réalisés par des développeurs sur leur temps de travail sur des projets intéressant l'entreprise pour laquelle ils sont embauchés, très rarement sur des développement concernant les loisirs du développeur...

Gérer une communauté de développeurs n'est pas donnée à tout le monde. Il faut s'accorder sur les priorités de développement, étudier chaque proposition, rejeter, accepter, tester le nouveau code sur des plateformes très variées (poste de travail, navigateur, système d'exploitation), le mettre en production, gérer les bugs et les effets de bords, répondre aux sollicitations, etc. etc. L'usage d'une méthode de gestion informatique comme ITIL est ici essentielle.
A mon sens mettre le code source d'Ipernity en licence GNU n'est pas réaliste dans des temps contraints. Je ne crois pas vraiment à cette solution. S'il n'est pas idiot de penser à la conversion en Open Source, il n'est pas raisonnable de croire que cette conversion sauvera Ipernity dans les délais annoncés par Christophe Ruelle.

L'augmentation substantielle du nombre de membres d'Ipernity et une adaptation du tarif aux besoins de la société pour héberger les données, payer ses salariés et embaucher d'autres personnes ressources sont pour moi les principales solutions. Maintenant, il faut qu'Ipernity soit repris par un investisseur (ou un groupe d'investisseurs) convaincu et fasse le nécessaire pour recueillir et mettre en place certaines des idées proposées par les membres du site.

Bonsoir Alain,
merci pour cet éclairage qui me convainc tout à fait. Un "rêve" qui s'envole, et une piste de moins à explorer.

My only expertise is with fundraising - but with respect to UK grant-aiding bodies - so not really applicable here.
.
However, on a personal level, I would be willing to pay at least twice as much per year for "club" and for up to five years in advance.

Ipernity financial reports are here - useful for those who can read these figures:
(en) https://www.euronext.com/en/products/equities/FR0010777680-XMLI/company-information
(de) http://www.finanzen.net/bilanz_guv/IPERNITY_ORG
(fr) http://www.societe.com/societe/ipernity-org-435069216.html

Since November 21st the price of Ipernity stock has risen 18%. I would like to see what it trades at in the coming days. If it rises investors have hope of a buyout of some kind.

I like this idea ...

also "crowd-funding" for the costs / fees ...

Here is a blog from Ip

www.ipernity.com/blog/team/4646844

so perhaps our ideas are going to bear fruit !

It seems that the best solution might be something akin to a cooperative where a core of users become the owners and there is a small paid staff. There would be a tremendous number of details to be worked out regarding such, but I suspect there is a tremendous amount of talent among current users that might be harnessed to make something work. A particular large obstacle would be the geographic and linguistic distribution of users, but modern computer based communication technology could be used to conquer at least the distance part of that.

I'm fairly stretched on volunteering, but being retired I can chisel out some time if there is promise of something potentially solid to come out of this. One skill that might be handy is some antiquated experience managing websites. Website architecture has moved far beyond the skills I used when managing sites, but having had some experience with that I at least have some familiarity with website management issues that may be valuable.

Still thinking about how I could help, in a practical sense. I don't have any experience with website design / management - but I have been a "global moderator" previously on various fora (dealing with disputes, spam and spurious registrations etc) Apart from some very basic Esperanto I am confined to English, unfortunately. But I do have some skill in editing / proof reading and compiling documents in business, not just academic, situation..
.
Thus, in practical terms, I am willing to help in any way, should my skillset be of use.

Actually, I suspect that a lot of the "free" accounts are in-active.
As in; someone joins, maybe posts a bit, mavbe nothing at all, but then does not come back.

Probably real number is close to 30.000-50.000 active users but that is also enough if they'll be willing to participate in saving this unique place.

pernity has 100,000 members in total. At Present the income generated by 3,000 club members at €29.99 is €89,700
A
So if the present 3,000 club members doubled the club fee the income would rise to €179,400 ( which most have offered to do so)
B
If the remaining 97,000 non club members were to pay 15€ ( €0.29 per week)The income generated would be €1,455,000

Adding A+B The resulting increased income for IP would be €1,634,400
As an incentive to encourage non club members to pay €15 an increase in the number of images viewable in their poststream could be put in place.

Ipernity must address the above problems relating to income by non paying members. And also take up the suggested ways to improve income by implementing business models laid out by many in this blogg
www.ipernity.com/group/2260604

If not they definitely will fold in my opinion.

I am skilled in java, C, C++, go, and python. I also have experience as a software engineering manager.

Reply to my figures above in New Perspective EN FR

Audrey d'ipernity has replied
The numbers are not exact, ipernity doesn't generate 89k€ annually since a part of Club members pays for 2 years (+ the taxes and charges).

But you are right, we need to address the issues generated by non-paying users and we are actually working on the question.

Team Ipernity have just published an article entitled The First Results for the Survey, which I'm guessing many of you will want to read!

Please note that this refers to the poll by the IMA and not the unofficial one that I was working on at the end of last year! :)

Just learned quite late about the IMA planning to save Ipernity. I would like to help, not sure how though. At the moment I would have quite some time to spend on this project, my skills are various (studied and worked as physicst), I am good in solving general technical and organizing problems, also in building up concepts for structures of any kind.
Unfortunately I don't speak any French, only German and English. Currently I live in Bedford UK, originally I am from Germany. Let me know how where your problems are and I will think about how I could help you.

Cheers,
Manuel

PS: By the way, I posted some suggestions on how one could evolve Ipernity in the other thread: www.ipernity.com/group/2260604/discuss/186302/comment/50031916#comment50031916

Hi there! Where can I find / who do I need to talk to for technical information about Ipernity? If I understand it correctly, a huge part of the operational costs come from Ipernity being completely(?) hosted on Amazon AWS. I just wonder if there is room for improvement by down-scaling or rather ruling out inefficiencies (think: nginx instead of apache, caching, preventing premature spawning of VMs/instances, just to name some)