High defenition Oxygen, TokamakII, and paying the rent.


Hey! Yes Oxygen now has a high definition folder 256x256, David Betio, created most of them out of the source svgz files during the Tokamak I had the pleasure to help make possible during this weekend. Major Kudos to DEI-ISEP for all the support excellent.

I also think we finished the Quassel icon set including some nice state animations for the system tray icons.
Next on to do some icons for Koffice... btw I have benn trying to post the icons I do in http://identi.ca/pinheirokde
.

In a different front, I have been giving some thought on a method to pay my house rent, open source work is a lot of fun but it really does not pay the rent.

One of the ideas I had to help support oxygen development would be something like selling LGPL Oxygen adons like icons, wallpapers, avatars, even plasmoids, for free or whatever the user think they are worth... What do you guys and girls think? bad idea? good? do you have some other beter idea? please share.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I would definately pay for some of your artwork.
Have you thought about setting up a "donate" button?
IMHO, some company that uses KDE should hire you, though, you are an immensely important part of KDE.
Anonymous said…
There are some distros with commercial background that ship KDE as default. Maybe they are interested at artwork with custom branding that blends nicely with Oxygen. The company that comes into my mind first is iXsystems, the makers of PC-BSD. http://www.pcbsd.org/files/graphics/pcbsd-icon.png is sooo ugly. They probably need a graphic designer.
Other possible candicates are: Pardus and Kubuntu/Canonical. Maybe even Red Hat is interested but I doubt is. Just ask. :-)
Anonymous said…
Well, how about using http://www.oxygen-icons.org/ to setup a small webshop? Something like what Vlad is doing now (maybe even invite him in). We could all have an ID there, an ability to post items, and to charge for them what we like.
Don't be afraid to ask for money. Artists in OpenSource are seriously oppressed, and taken for granted.
Tell me if you like the idea. We can get it going I'm sure of it. So many before us could :)

Love,

it-s
Anonymous said…
sorry about the previous post... Yahoo's OpenID works weird :P
Pinheiro said…
@it-s, yeah I know, but I realy dont want to do the typical thing, :(. I would like to create a model that is totaly consistent with what we do now, without forcing us to do only do custum partly closed work that pays the bils, but dosent help the cumunity all that much. But yeah I know, not the easyest reality equation.

PS it-s love your wallpappers!
Anonymous said…
Your work is definitely of professional quality.
But I think that you don't have many solution :
1 - work as a freelance (icon or web) designer. Given your potential, it would pay the bill for sure :).

2 - If you want to open source all your work... then try to contact 'open source companies' like : Red Hat, Novel, the FSF, Collabora, Sun, Nokia, Mozilla foundation, IBM etc etc ...
You might find some ideas here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open_source_applications
Anonymous said…
Nah, artists are *not* taken for granted, at least not by me - I am a developer.
I am fully aware of how much KDE's look has improved (especially the icons), and I know that this is due to the hard work of a few good people. Seriously.
Some observations about open source work impacting the rest of your life (negatively):
- It happens
- You have to know your priorities
- That said, you will have an easy time finding a job or clients if you're any good.
I have no doubt that you're any good, so what's left is the decision how exactly you want to earn money with your work.
If you still had enough time to help KDE I wouldn't mind if you did standard commercial work. If that work is then released under a free license it's even better.
Thomas Thym said…
Your work is really great! I could imagine (and I hope) that some people will buy/donate as long they choose the amount. (As you discribed.) I'm not sure if it is enough to pay a rent.
But why don't try it?!
Good luck!
Thomas

P.S.: Most OS-Biz-Models I know are about b2b and not c2c or something. As mentioned above it's perhaps easier to think about a b2b model.
Anonymous said…
What about selling Joomla / Wordpress templates? I'm sure that many people would like your Job!
Anonymous said…
Well, go for it. But I think a lot of KDE contributers are experiencing something similar. GNOME people invented the adept a hacker model. I d suggest the following model: KDE is an e.V. in Germany, so let everyone me part of that 'club'. Let those who want to join the e.V. (like in german sports clubs) join, with a monthly subscription fee. For example 5€ for starters, 10€ for those who can afford more. Send everyone a KDE-Sticker, a Welcome To The Club Message and use the revenue that comes in to share amoung non-paid svn-contributors, who are in the need and contribute the most / best value. I d join right away the e.V. right away, and I think others might do this as well (STICKERS!!), because the community understands that a fella s gotta live. Let me know what you think (everyone).
Anonymous said…
I don't understand, aren't bitmap icons VERY ugly when they are resized ? I thought the advantage of vectorial icons was that they could be resized to any dimension without a loss of quality, and that is what I find beautiful in KDE4.
I noticed that bitmap icons become somewhat blurrish and ugly when you resize them to small formats.
Do you really want that for KDE4 ?? And to save a few Mbs, when memory has never been so cheap ?!
Please explain me !
Pinheiro said…
@Kabu :) svg is scalable and its couse we work so hard in our base source svg files that we get high defenition almost for free.
BUT Note this "SVG IS SCALABLE, BUT YOUR SCREEN IS NOT". so every icon need to be fine tuned to each size to match your screen rendering grid...
plus and couse we might overdone our work in the source vector files its take kite a bit to render them so.... not sure its godd idea to render them on the fly..
Anonymous said…
ok. You are Brazil based and I don't know social and industrial structure. I'm Munich/Germany located and seeing the potential in help overcoming the gap between FOSS standard software and commercially developed software with higher customization degrees.
In products like HP Openview and BMC Patrol, adoption of Linux by the Cities of Munic and Vienna, project implementation of bigger companies with fewer letters, corporate intra- and extranets are so much work to do in respect of their corporate idendities. Good old companies must revamp their signs from the beginnings of the '90ies. In case of financial crisis I see an increased rush for quality satisfaction of customers. From surface (your profession) to backstage business. I almost see graphics business in public domain by public viewing, no concerns for hiding. Other job's (i.e. kde/qt infrastructure) are more hidden and have IMO more concerns to be public viewable.
Ever asked FOSS borderline companies/projects for jobs (RedHat, SUSE, ZENOSS, CUPS, ZOPE, ...)?
The dark side for us is you are forced not to code for free in this time of your life ... But you are allowed to code anymore for the community and not to serve drinks.
We'll see, keep coding.
Yours, Juergen
Pinheiro said…
@Anonymous
Nope not Brazil based I'm Portuguese.
Witch in a sense is worse, as the ecosystem here is pretty low.
I might address those companies you pointed though I'm not sure how to address them...
Anonymous said…
I think you should apply for some UI design job full time or part time. You certainly won't have much of an hassle in finding one ;)

Not sure if you need to stay in Portugal or not. I already fled it some time ago ;)

Good luck!
Health News said…
This is a wonderful site. The things mentioned are unanimous and needs to be appreciated by everyone.

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