How sustainably is OpenQDA maintained (and funded)?

[FlorianPrimig]

I am wondering how sustainable OpenQDA is maintained and funded. This matters because if one decides on a larger scale to opt for OpenQDA as an analysis tool (e.g., on institute level) one would have to know the horizon for support to make an informed decision. Does anyone have an answer to that?
I know it is a tricky question and touches the classic problem of app development for the community in a system that hardly offers any sustainable long-term contracts for anyone. But we are currently checking options for going open-source and leaving MaxQDA behind at our institute and we have to consider these things.

[kadewe]

Hi Florian, a very important question indead. In the long term we want to develop OpenQDA in a larger community project with a institution spanning governance and supported by some kind of foundation. That said, right now we have one permanent research software developer position which is funded long term, we also have ph.d. projects focused on OpenQDA, we also have 3 ZeMKI PIs (Andreas Hepp, Andreas Breiter and me) committed to the project research wise. Also the other labs are actively participating in the ongoing development of OpenQDA. We are also using it in our method seminars and for research projects at ZeMKI across the labs and study programs. We also have just submitted a grant proposal for an infrastructure program, and have entered cooperation agreements with the Weizenbauh Institute in Berlin as well as the Data Science Center of U Bremen and other partners. As we try to make this project as open as possible, we are actively looking for partners and contributors, while building up a sustainable and long term development foundation. For this we try to design the software architecture as modular as possible to lower participation barriers.