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Lots of mutations of this idea exist since the 1990s. Perhaps Snowdrift now matches OP's desire as it includes subscription donations: https://snowdrift.coop/ho

Lots of mutations of this idea exist since the 1990s. Perhaps Snowdrift now matches OP's desire as it includes subscription donations: https://snowdrift.coop/how-it-works https://snowdrift.coop/how-it-works To learn a lot about the field and its history: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfundi... https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software

cperciva 9y ago
It seems like snowdrift is crowdsourced fundraising aimed at open source software, but doesn't have the "issue tracker" / quasi-"support contracts" side of what I'm envisioning?
- buovjaga 9y ago
  I asked on IRC #snowdrift @ Freenode and Bryan Richter said: "We recognize that a funding mechanism is only one small piece of the puzzle for supporting public works! The founder wolftune in fact envisions an all inclusive site with integrated issue tracking and all manner of things. But we are trying to keep our scope realistic, and besides there are some pretty good FLO tools out there these days."
- smichel17 9y ago
  I'm on the snowdrift.coop team. This type of thing was part of the original vision -- you'll see bits and pieces if you poke around our wiki[0] -- and remains that way. Ironically, we struggle from the same funding problem we're looking to solve. At some point we realized we needed to drastically reduce scope if we were ever going to launch. For context, Snowdrift has been around for slightly longer than Patreon, but we didn't receive several million dollars of VC funding (or solicit it -- our mission is strictly ethical, not competitive[1]). We're planning on adding community-support-type features back in as we (hopefully) grow and open up the platform to more projects. I'm happy to chat more, but am also in the hectic last few days of my semester; I'll come back to this but am not sure exactly when. If you'd like to get someone else's response, you can try pinging people in #snowdrift on freenode. [0]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/ https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/ [1] If someone else succeeds at creating sustainable support for FLO projects, we'll gladly pack our bags and join them. That said, there have been many, many other crowdfunding sites that fail in one respect or another[2]; I'm hopeful for snowdrift.coop because our Crowdmatching mechanism[3] has some unique properties and has never been tried before. (Also, I'm realizing the linked page has some details that are out of date; the general idea of a matching pledge remains.) [2]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfundi... [3]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/mechanism https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/mechanism

cperciva 9y ago

It seems like snowdrift is crowdsourced fundraising aimed at open source software, but doesn't have the "issue tracker" / quasi-"support contracts" side of what I'm envisioning?

buovjaga 9y ago
I asked on IRC #snowdrift @ Freenode and Bryan Richter said: "We recognize that a funding mechanism is only one small piece of the puzzle for supporting public works! The founder wolftune in fact envisions an all inclusive site with integrated issue tracking and all manner of things. But we are trying to keep our scope realistic, and besides there are some pretty good FLO tools out there these days."
smichel17 9y ago
I'm on the snowdrift.coop team. This type of thing was part of the original vision -- you'll see bits and pieces if you poke around our wiki[0] -- and remains that way. Ironically, we struggle from the same funding problem we're looking to solve. At some point we realized we needed to drastically reduce scope if we were ever going to launch. For context, Snowdrift has been around for slightly longer than Patreon, but we didn't receive several million dollars of VC funding (or solicit it -- our mission is strictly ethical, not competitive[1]). We're planning on adding community-support-type features back in as we (hopefully) grow and open up the platform to more projects. I'm happy to chat more, but am also in the hectic last few days of my semester; I'll come back to this but am not sure exactly when. If you'd like to get someone else's response, you can try pinging people in #snowdrift on freenode. [0]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/ https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/ [1] If someone else succeeds at creating sustainable support for FLO projects, we'll gladly pack our bags and join them. That said, there have been many, many other crowdfunding sites that fail in one respect or another[2]; I'm hopeful for snowdrift.coop because our Crowdmatching mechanism[3] has some unique properties and has never been tried before. (Also, I'm realizing the linked page has some details that are out of date; the general idea of a matching pledge remains.) [2]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfundi... [3]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/mechanism https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/mechanism