I think its a fantastic idea 
I definately think a subscription of some sort would be the best way to go to ensure that money is always coming and something like $50 per year or 6 monthly is not a lot of money. I appreciate that some people will be pissed if money is spent to create a mod that they didnt want but thats the whole point of democracy, a public vote decides the outcome. The reason i didnt chip in with the Dynamic Tabs mod is because while i thought it a great idea it was not something my store would benefit from.
Supporting mods and updating them could be a problem though. If Mod A costs $700 to make, whats it going to cost to have it updated to each new CS version? That in itself is going to eat up the money.
Trust always will be an issue but then if the people holding the money do take it and run they wouldnt get a great response here or at the new place and unfortantely that is life, companies take our money and run everyday, we whinge about it and we have to move on from it. Once concern for me with CS has always been that they dont publicise an address and the phone number in their email signature is dead but theres not a great deal we can do about it.
If i do stick with CS then i would definately join
Hey!
I trully beleive that not all members of a fund will be happy all the time about the decisions the fund members make, that is why I was suggesting the polling method, the poll system I was mentionning earlier is not to vote for a mod in specific (yes and no), it is done to acquire chorum of member.
1- Meaning that a designated amount of members have to have voted before money is drawn and those mod suggested (like groceries stuff) would quickly fall into the trash unless we all have one… Which would fufill the chorum (say 90% of members) of all members would vote against or for!!!
2- Before voting, three things have to be establish, a)the amount of members vote required to obtain chorum, b) how much money the fund is suggesting to contribute, c) and if there will be any additionnal money required by all members that want the mod. (say 90% of member) later members would pay the fees required in the mention regardless of if the money to have the mod done is obtained or not(just goes back in the fund) in order to get the mod. (Listing needs to be posted to mod subscription price.
Yes, there is a 10% of members that would be unhappy, but the line has to be drawn somewhere, and who knows, maybe another time this 10% will get another mod that another 10% will loose.
OK, now what does it mean, let me show you in a simple example:
(funds I know with over 150000 members works similar to this, i know i was part of the committies)
1- Proposed contrib to 100 active members at time of proposal:
[COLOR=“Red”]Knife and fork in upper left corner of shop![/COLOR]
2- Person asking + mendated committe personnal evaluate says 200$ to build the mod (Again voted by members yearly)
3- Vote is launch in a poll asking who is for and how much they are willing to pay, as a predefined choice answer that meets the mod intent.
4- Say 90 persons are for it and 10 against, chorum is met but everybody judged that only 110$ should be spent for this contrib. (90% - presumed predefined by all members in fund constitution which you can have an example at this address: [url]http://www.dnd.ca/emebranch/branch_fund/branch_fund_index_e.htm[/url] )
5- Now 90 members have to share 90.00$ themselves. Which comes to 1.00$ by members. So 1.00$ is the prices of this contrib for members that joined after the contrib was created. If created.
6- Money is than drawn from members and when obtained, drawn from the fund, only than the mod should be engaged financially to be built. Also, all other fees would be than shared amoung ‘‘contribution members’’. Demands for extra funding cannot be done unless it is repolled and accepted by all members or predefined chorum number.
7- Keep in mind that in order to be fair everybody must vote or chorum be met before it is engaged financially.
8- Other things like account in the name of the commitee/fund treasurer and president/ vice-president needs to be created and invoices of cost engagements be available to all members. Also a expenses summary be given or posted to members every 6 months or so to make sure everybody knoes what is left in the fund.
PS: willing to help if need be, the tricky part is to establish properly the fund constitution.
CHEERS ALL, RAY
[quote name=‘DOSPLUS’]Yes, there is a 10% of members that would be unhappy, but the line has to be drawn somewhere, and who knows, maybe another time this 10% will get another mod that another 10% will loose.[/QUOTE]
That is called lottery. And not something I am going to waste my money on.
sounds like a great idea but i’m out for sure, next thing you know is you got some scumbag dirtball who signs-up, downloads all your mods and then asks for a refund because their the biggest scumbag on earth, yet they’ll spend thousands of dollars on a big screen tv so they can sit on there big fat ass drinking beer while complaining and moaning how their the ones who are always get’n ripped off like the world owes them something for stinking the place up, frigg’n dirtballs…
I guess I am also OUT!
I wonder how I was able to generate so much hanger with a so simple text, I thought we were at the throwing ideas stage, if anybody has a better idea, just say so and elaborate on it so we can participate, but I have rought time understanding on which principle all of the other ideas would be base on exept the faith of not being ripped off… ! but anyway…
1- Lotery i far from giving majority what they hope for, not at all the same, if it was it means that 90% of all moneys acquire during the ticket buy would be spent, which is really not the case, 1-4% if only.
2- Scumbags can pick invoices in your garbages and steel more than 25$ in your account.
3- This is not necessarely a full money investment where you double money, shares a built for that, I saw it more like a privileged area for downloads and contrib that are controlled for later version of CS-Cart.
4- How can a person or scum bag download all contribs without having first paid each and individual fees relating to every contrib he wants, one contrib is a buck, he pays he downloads, only have access to this one? He pays for another one, he downloads that one. for each of them if any!
5- Thousands of funds, lucrative or non-lucrative works this way, and it works well, I guess they are all doing it wrong than. I also read the whole Dyn Tab thread, and was everybody happy with their investment? Probably not, but doea it mean ripped off or a bad contrib, not at all something came out of it.
ANYWAY! If i offended somebody in regard to a 25$ check, i am sorry, I thought the fund would be more to privileged members that would like to contribute either with money, time, or scripts…
I guess we we will pay CS for this! 
PS: Sno, i got to ask, is that really how you see everybody around you or intereacts with you??
[quote name=‘DOSPLUS’]Sno, i got to ask, is that really how you see everybody around you or intereacts with you??[/QUOTE]
nope not at all, I’m just telling everyone what is going to happen before it happens…
[quote name=‘DOSPLUS’]I thought the fund would be more to privileged members that would like to contribute either with money, time, or scripts…[/QUOTE]
good idea, if we did this we could possibly eliminate the criminal element…
[quote name=‘Snorocket’]I’m OUT, no more mods, no more hacks, NOTHING, that’s it folks, I’m DONE…[/QUOTE]
other contributing coders fully understand the above rants which are justified and have nothing to do with your posts or comments…
The thing is, I’m really wanting to give this a K.I.S.S. If we start charging time limited subscriptions, and email voting blasts, etc., this will become a full time job, which I’m sure no one is willing to do, especially for free.
I never intended for the club to be the sole source for mods, nor do I envision it to be the only avenue for mod development. I want contributions to be voluntary. I want anyone who joins to have access to everything in the repository. I also think that some of the contributions that forum members have contributed for free are actually valuable enough that they should have gotten something for their efforts. But I’m not advocating that they should stop contributing for free either.
It would be easy to collate all of the free stuff that’s been contributed, put it in one place, and let anyone that wants downloadthem. That is basically what we do right now, except they’re spread out all over the forums. However, it would be better if anyone wanting to use this repository had a cataloged list to peruse, rather than search forever. I think nearly everyone will see the value in this and won’t mind donating a few bucks which in turn would be applied toward development of some new mods.
I’m not concerned in any way, shape or form that we’ll run out of money, or there will be a bunch of people fighting over whether a mod gets funded or not. I know the money will be there because I’m confident that CS-C will be immensely successful, and I think I’m being conservative in estimating they will have 15-20 thousand active licenses within the next 5 years. CS-C will promote the hell out of the club because it makes their product better, without them having to fund the development. Often enough, they will be the one getting paid to make their product better. So, if 15,000 users sign up at $25 each, that’s $350 grand in the bank. If we only got a third of the them to join the club, we would bank $125,000. I’m sorry, but between the natural development from CS-C, and the mod’s funded by the club, I can’t imagine that there will be a dire need for so many different mods that we could burn through that much money in 5 years. The cart itself is awesome as it is right now. Sure, there is a need for a few mods, that’s obvious, but if you do the math, I don’t see where we’ll have a problem. For example. Using the $125,000 figure over 5 years equates to $2083 per month for mod development. If a mod costs an average of $300 each, that’s churning out just under 7 mods per month, or 416 over the 5 years. We’re not doing 7 per month right now, and the product is still in its infancy .
How many of you think there will be a need for 400+ fairly sophisticated mods, when CS-C will be upgrading the product every year, and there will still be a plethora of free stuff contributed by the community? On top of that, developers can put out a few freebies through the club, and sell more sophisticated products through their own store.
My 2¢.
Sno: I assume that you got really burnt deep on the dynamic tab contrib, which is not fair, since the job was well done. Just trying to help the cause because time and energy I was willing to invest but not without some guiding lights.
I felt one of these guiding lights could of been you in the membership plan.
Note: Fat wigs/scums are sitting in the government ripping off people’s money, funds are normally created freely to help those being ripped off by the scums… HIHHI:razz:
I agree with MIKEZ, I really see my 25$ in that thing, it is really possible to build something here, but remember civilization was built on people trying different things, which means that if you must get 25$ out of it, there is a slight chance to be deceived, but if it work!
You would get way more that what you put in.
The link example of fund i sent was just as a guiding tool, I did not meant to use this type of fund. But even this fund started with a few hundred $ and 40 members. But the members got scrared when they got their first 100000$ in bank when it grown so fast, because of theft and people that are not well intended, from than on… it became more official in the paperwork sense since it was a big thing to account for.
I see that MikeZ suggestion is achievable, and i like that he sees it big, PRESIDENT’S always see it big, if you know what i mean. But be prepared for it to get bigger and a bit more time consuming… Again, i could help if need be.
Sno got burnt because he took it upon himself to do it, and people had Sno to blame, a fund does not procure this since members would of voted for or not. What is free is free, but what has to generate money to go further cannot be passed in order for the fund to grow!
JUST THINKING!
Well, I actually agree with sno… yup… its official sws agrees with sno !
Theres a handful of people known as leechers, who take all and give nothing back, and NO im not referring to anybody so dont mistake what ive typed…
I think the club idea is relying too much on dev from CS themselves…
I mean theres quite a few on these forums with the knowledge and capability to make mods for CS-Cart and of course already have…
I would much rather focus around some kind of club where its these guys contributing to development but obviously some things its better to let CS do…
Zyles and I have a pretty cool mod and have worked on quite a bit within CS and Im sure quite a few of you also have your own secret mods, but not something you want to release for free, especially if its not just a hack of code, but some real hard work has gone into it…
I know for one thing, some of the work ive put into CS and this forum has taken me an awful lot of time, some of my contributions on the forum have been for things I dont even intend using myself, altough the majority are…
These are the sort of things any $25 club should focus around… Including all of the small hacks and “can somebody do this for me” etc…
Im all for helping, but unless its of real interest to me, then time is money, I as do you have a business to run also… Something like this could be the motivation to keep the ball rolling, after all, If I submitted all of my mods, and so did everybody else who has their own personal “secret” mods, then there would already be a wealth of information to subscribe to…
Im not sure if Im contradicting myself here, just blabbing on as usual for that extra post count 
If sharing the welt is the way to go, could we not open a thread only for downloading compiled hacks and contribs so people find this welt easily?? Because, i got to tell you that cs scripts and hacks are hard to find inside the forum, since I am a new member. when I bought my store I was expecting a definite section on contribs, a bit like OSCommerce MS2.2 contributions downloads.
Actually, Since i am there does anybody has a somewhat layout of the interaction between SQL table and files for CS-Cart, just like OSC, I know Osc well enough to insert and manipulate code, but is a bit lost in CS-Cast since it uses a different file-link layout.
A+;)
These are great comments.
A little clarification for our international friends, K.I.S.S. is an acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid. 
That’s what I see needs to happen here.
So I propose this:
• Access to the club needs to be immediately available after a person signs up. It must be automated as no one has the time to manually approve access.
• I like the forum format. It allows for password access, yet still provides for lots of interaction and commentary.
• Downloads can all be put in one place that would be accessible to all members. Code hacks could also be in this area just because it will be easier to have a central place to catalog contributions. Both OS-Commerce and Joomla have very good examples of this. I’d like to do something similar.
• I really think the success of this club is still dependent on the continued participation and contributions from those of you that know how to code, modify, or create things that people can use to make their CS-C experience all the better.
• The money should be absolutely accountable, verifiable, and not under the control of any single person. This is why I want to use PayPal. There’s just no way to cook the books. All money coming in is logged, all money going out is logged. Nothing is foolproof, but ripping the account off would be very difficult.
• Submitting mods has to be completely voluntary. If an author wants to give it away on the ‘public’ forums, or sell it on their own, that’s their decision. If an author elects, he/she can submit ‘lite’ versions which would be available to all club members, as a way to market full versions of a product they would charge people for. Templates are a good example. Frequently, template designers offer a few freebies and charge for premium versions. A significant revenue potential will likely result in designers and others deciding it’s a good idea to invest in CS-C products. The more the merrier.
• Once a mod is submitted to the club, it should become the property of the club? Not that I want to take anything away from an author, but how else could we handle upgrades if the original author isn’t around anymore. We certainly need to discuss this in order to be fair to the authors.
• Any mod the club pays for is the property of the club, period.
Discussions welcome.
MikeK
OK, sounds great, but how can we justify any expenses, and who would have authority on them!
[quote name=‘DOSPLUS’]MikeK
OK, sounds great, but how can we justify any expenses, and who would have authority on them![/quote]First, someone proposes a mod, or code change, etc. Hopefully, one of the members feels the idea is good enough to make for free, but if not, that’s OK too. Next, we discuss what we want/need and come up with detailed specs. There would probably be some more discussion, and then we would settle on a final spec. At this point we send it to CS-C as well as open it up for quote from the members. When a number is set, we transfer the funds.
As far as deciding amongst ourselves what mod to make, maybe a poll? Or just discussion to see how everyone feels about it.
Quick question. When you buy a mod from CS, who owns the copyright?
Hi argentice
I think CS-Cart do, and on any mod we put on the forum.
That’s a good question. I’ll have to ask Vlad.
Well obviously, if CS-Cart own the copyright then you cannot share the code amoungst the group members unless it’s specifically allowed by CS-Cart.
Providing that the original group of investors ‘own’ the funds contributed then the ‘investors’ should own the usage rights of the modification.
Good point! And as long as the group only has one installation of the mod, then I think we’re OK
It’s really is a grey area that should be made clear before anything is done.
Otherwise, whats to stop me from buying one copy of CS-Cart, on behalf of 100 of my friends.