Over the past ten years, FileSender is used by a wide range of organizations worldwide. Its success is not only attributable to the efforts of the team members. The community has also contributed in various ways, both in terms of time spent and funding. In this interview, board members Jan Meijer and Guido Aben discuss funding.
In order to develop FileSender, one of its principal sources of support is from the educational and research community, i.e. parties that supported the initial creation, regular maintenance and innovation. “In general, funding parties are not particularly interested in funding infrastructures like FileSender,” says Guido Aben, a member of FileSender’s board and Director, International eInfrastructure Cooperation at AARNet. “Funding bodies prefer to invest their money in high performance projects. That’s why we made a strategic choice. Our goal is to get as many people as possible using FileSender in a short period of time. Instead of committing them to memberships of hundreds of thousands of euros a year, we are currently asking our community members to contribute a few thousand euros per year.”
Jan Meijer, FileSender board member and Senior Advisor International Strategy at Uninett: “To prevent the project from quietly shutting down after a few years, we didn’t want to be dependent on a few key players. We therefore strive for a broad base of funding, so that the FileSender project will continue to exist if a key player or organization drops out. This was a conscious decision. We also receive financial support from an organization such as the SIDN fund, which enables us to further increase FileSender’s name recognition among the target audience. “
Pleased with all contributions
”We are tremendously grateful for all the contributions from organizations and the community. However, we do not only receive support in the form of money. Occasionally a sponsor provides us with a developer, who then spends a number of hours working for us. All of these contributions in the form of money and hours make the success of FileSender possible. That is how we are able to realize our goals,” Jan Meijer clarifies.
After reading this article, would you like to support FileSender in terms of time or money? Please contact the FileSender board via email. If you want to use FileSender yourself, you can download the software with documentation for free at GitHub: https://github.com/filesender/filesender/releases
