I like the idea of running crowd funding campaigns to release software as open source. This could be done for certain milestones (like feature X or platform Y)

I like the idea of running crowd funding campaigns to release software as open source. This could be done for certain milestones (like feature X or platform Y) in a longer running or bigger project. I would even think it's fair if the developer included a maintenance cost into the amount he wants to gather before releasing the software. It's clear to users what they are giving money for. Also the incentive is bigger to contribute because before the amount is reached, the code isn't released. And for the developer, it's more predictable than donations. Of course, this still wouldn't work so well for maintenance heavy projects that don't gain a lot of features, like security sensitive infrastructure like openssl.