I still think a board where people could ask for implementation and open a subscription for funds would be a great opportunity.
If someone wants to do it and needs some help i am here, please contact me.
@anon67614380 That is an excellent idea, but I can assure that it wonât work. Look for instance at the Proposals section here Proposals - ArduPilot Discourse
People that want features and are willing to support its development financially already have a process to do it, via the commercial support page.
Smaller things that a handful of hobbyists want, will hardly raise enough money to pay a dev to not only develop it, but most importantly support it, and maintain it.
But if you want to go ahead, please do.
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Ok, it was just an idea, i trust you that have been around here much longer than i did.
Corrado
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Donât worry, if you want to help the project Iâm sure we can find something to get your help. 
Our documentation and wiki really really need a whole lot of TLC
Can I interest you on that ?
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I agree. When I read your post it jogged my memory of what happened with a âTechnical Steering Committeeâ causing disassociation with DroneCodeâŚ
maybe such a thing could be done via patron or a similar platform.
We sort of need mini kickstarters for each idea proposal.
Yes that was the idea a mini kickstarter but if you guys have already been there and it doesnât work, i believe you.
Great.
Please add you requests to the section Proposals, and Iâm sure that the funding team and the dev team will chime in on such requests.
About patronage requests, every one can contribute NOW to a âlargerâ objective Donating to ArduPilot project â Copter documentation supporting ArduPilot.
Iâm down to contribute bounties for solving specific issues. Think of it like having votes for paying taxes. Hahaha. Iâm sure a 5-10 minute fix like some of the Issues posted would be quickly picked up for a few $$.
Would it be possible to track/tie donations to feature requests/issues? Then maybe if theyâre not solved in 1yr, they get removed and contributed to the general fund.
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Bounties could work. They could be crowd sourced too.
However, when would a bounty be paid out? And who would be responsible for supporting the feature?
I guess we would need someone to curate all the issues, to fend off setup issues and give a âfunding targetâ that is proportional to how much work it would be. I.e. $5 would not be enough for a big job, but adding a parameter for some small thing then $5 or $10 would be fine. Also this person could be the one to judge when the job is done.
Personally I think that once the feature is in, it then falls on everyone to try and keep it updated. Maybe we also want some dev feedback before we put the ideas up for voting. Some people may want things that should not be put in master, ie some change in core functionality, that would be easy to do but would be confusing for the rest of the users (led blinking colors or something like that). This would make it more likely that features are kept current once there in.
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I definitely see a benefit if such an approach is adopted, as this would allow for things to become more modular. And thereby more customizable - and valuable - to various select group of users, but without affecting anyone else, who doesnât need such a feature/ feature-set.
Might be time for a new thread so this doesnât get lostâŚ
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I have come across a platform, that seems to address the funding approach of special features discussed here. https://issuehunt.io/
(More written about it here: https://itsfoss.com/issuehunt/)
Seems to be in a fairly infant stage though. Maybe someone knows of a more mature system, which also allows âcrowd-fundingâ.
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Bountysource is the common one.
Can you split the thread at about 15 posts up?
exactly where would you suggest?
@anon67614380âs post on the âboardâ
New topic could be âFunding/Donations to solving specific issuesâ
Wow, busy thread! Constructive with valuable ideas if I may add.
@camti, I can only give my personal opinion here, but Iâd say the points you delineated, following my partial quote of your post above, are very much in line with the project governing principles and direction. (Transparency and communication, reliability, performance, growth, redundancy, security, innovation, expertise, guidance, collaboration).
Iâd also go so far as saying that they have, to date, been generally implemented , albeit definitely incompletely in some areas for sure, and with lots of room for improvement. Yet all those characteristics youâve eloquently listed are here to a not so incomplete extent. To summarize:
Transparency and communication can be seen right here on this forum, on multiple gitter rooms and github channels, along with FB for some but not all of us. Add to this the monthly reports to partners, and the weekly dev calls that anyone can attend, and the hundreds of pages of documentation.
Reliability and performance has been demonstrated by the widespread use of Ardupilot in professional, industrial and research environments. Likewise redundancy, with support for multiple IMUs and GPS, general failover mechanisms, and more recently battery multi use, to name a few examples.And security with mavlink 2 for instance, or the availability of all source code for scrutiny.
Innovation can be witnessed by Ardupilotâs history of continuous addition of new features with Ardupilot staying on top of the game. This be it, to summarize and again give just a few examples, through support of a wide variety of simulation environments (ROS gazebo, X-plane, RealFlight, plain yet rich build-in SITL, Flight gear, the most recent Morse, etc âŚ), ESC protocols and features (soft serial, DShot, BLHeli, etc âŚ), vehicle architectures (quadplanes, tail sitters, monocopters, helis, exotic rovers and balance bots, subs, etc âŚ).
Finally expertise, guidance and collaboration (to be brief again) are characteristics constantly on display in this forum and other communication channels listed above, and also on display with partner communications and Ardupilotâs wide support for a uniquely large variety of hardware.
Are there holes in the above? Absolutely, and far from me the idea of giving the impression that everything is perfect with no need for improvement. Itâs also why I think your post is so valuable. Yet I wanted to also tell âthis opinionâ of the story Perhaps what could be done is digging in further on those areas, and within each category identifying the larger holes, to then prioritize what the community as a whole thinks can be improved.
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