Crowd funding for an upgrade to D7

Thanks for this to-the-point summary! Just two remarks:

• #513096 is already hard to read; it should only be used to make a "battle plan"; then it should be locked and just left to point to the remaining sub-issues;
• #513096 has just 44 followers at the moment; how do we reach the remaining users? Even if d.o would still have a proper frontpage, an announcement could only reach a fraction of 'image' module's (end) users. What about a alert in the next module release plus a new section at ./admin/settings/image with a note like: "If you don't help now, you won't be able to upgrade your images to Drupal 7"? Pretty aggressive, but I don't know of another channel to evenpotentially reach end users...

wow, awesome initiative + summary, @joachim!

The main challenge/problem with a chipin like this is going to be the specification of "deliverables". People donating to a fund for resolving a upgrade path typically want to get their upgrade path resolved. So it inherently becomes important to clarify how image module data will be upgraded exactly; i.e., from what to what.

For the main part, I think that's pretty clear.

Where it gets a bit "dusty" and hairy is the additional functionality in the main image module that isn't contained in core's Image module, and of course, the entire functionality of the contrib/add-on sub-modules. That is, because a multitude of upgrade path variants are possible, and we'd essentially have to "preselect" the "recommended" upgrade path for all users for every bit of functionality that existed previously. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, it just needs to be clear upfront.

>> 513096 has just 44 followers at the moment; how do we reach the remaining users?
> I was rather hoping that you'd help with the awareness campaign... :)

DrupalCon Munich, from August 20th to 24th, comes to mind, in case someone attends (I don't); it's at least a platform to reach some of those guys who sold image module to their clients; needs something like flyers or posters, and people to spread them. A Panel about "The Future of Image Module" also would have been nice, but it's probably too late for that; also would need a speaker. However, there are also some other events.

http://drupal.org/news would be a place to reach some technical people as well, but I have no idea how to get a message promoted to the front page, unless you are a core maintainer, or a member of the security team, or the news directly relates to d.o. If d.o doesn't use image.module anymore, it's probably considered less releveant.

As far as I know, there is no official Drupal newsletter. But there is a low-traffic "support" mailing list; also there is the "Drupal Watchdog" magazine; imho, both have a very limited reach.

Last but not least there are blog posts; as soon as there is a well-defined battle plan with something like "milestones" or "deliverables", and a Flattr/Chipin campaign is online, blog posts should at least reach some of the DIY guys. It's especially important to get posts into blogs aggregated at Drupal Planet because this is multiplied through republishing.

Well, the rest... Those who neither read d.o, nor attend DrupalCons, nor read Drupal-related blogs, nor update his/her Drupal site, might not even be aware what modules he/she is using. I'm afraid this might be a huge part of image module's users, but I don't think we can reach them within a reasonable timeframe.

Please feel free to add more (or better) ideas ;)

Edit: There's one theoretical option I forgot to mention; of course 'image.module' could simply cease to exist with D6. The D6 version would "simply" receive mechanisms to migrate Image nodes etc. into CCK/Filefield/Imagefield/Imagecache nodes on D6 and leave the upgrade woes to the migration paths of those modules. Those "mechanisms" would go into a new sub-module which requires a number of module version updates, and those would trigger the attention as well of those using the module "as is" on D6 as of those trying to migrate to CCK via batch scripts. All data migration would happen in D6, and after the data has moved to CCK, 'Image' module's work would be done.

Wysiwyg uses a static image that's attached to a d.o issue. The image just links to the actual ChipIn.

Well, despite the fact that the ChipIn campaign is not looking good at all (only $46 at the time of writing), the users of the module went from 70k to 90k! I updated the issue summary.

As one of the 90,000 - and I suspect I speak for a significant number of others - I'm sorry to say Drupal's image handling has evolved to be utterly incomprehensible to mere mortals. I was with it from 4.3, then 5 was fine, but 6 was so complex, confusing and disconnected from what went before that I have never managed to recover from it. I wrote about that at
https://drupal.org/node/1046508#comment-6396386 in 2011. I've pretty much given up now. Every now and again - like today - I spend another 10 hours and fail to get anywhere. Galleries are still a total muddle of disorder, Lightbox doesn't want to know about the essential text, taxonomy jumps around between terms. D7 is a place I shall never get to because I'm still struggling and failing with migrating 5 to 6.

...well, since February 2013 when I posted #12 the project's usage dropped to ~55.000 (I updated the issue summary with this current approximate number). I guess old D5/D6 sites that were either upgraded to D7 (and therefore must have found and used some other solution for their needs) or some of them might have gone offline.

I propose that we close this one as a duplicate of #513096: The Future of Image in Drupal 7 and openly suggest (even on the project page) that people should use some other solution for D7 and forth like Media and/or one of the many already available gallery projects.

PS: I also updated the issue summary about the ChipIn shut-down.

...usage update + note on ChipIn shut-down.

Several according to this page. PitchInBox sounds pretty much identical.