There are serious regulatory issues in the US with issuing real equity to a crowd. We worked around that problem by building a distributed model, inspired by th

There are serious regulatory issues in the US with issuing real equity to a crowd. We worked around that problem by building a distributed model, inspired by the Open Source GPL. Just like there is no such thing as a "Linux Corp", but rather hundreds of individuals exchanging code through a license, we built the same model with a twist. In effect, our license says "if I contribute to your project and you make money, then you owe me some percentage back." That percentage is really virtual equity. So in effect, we have created a way for people to issue [virtual] stock, that can at a later stage, be converted into equity from a real corporation, once the project becomes successful enough that it requires real management. It's at http://fairsoftware.net http://fairsoftware.net of course :-)