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Has anyone used a crowdfunding site for an open source project?
I've been considering using Kickstarter to try to fund a free software project of my own and it seems to me that it should be a natural fit.
If a developer posts a proposal for a project (and these proposals would be pretty thorough, with video demos of the final product), and the can raise enough money to work on the project full time, it could be a win for everyone. More free software is created, which is good on its own, and giving the project a developer's undivided attention should result in higher quality, more complete solutions, and faster completion.
Has anyone tried this, or thought about trying this?
- cd34 15y agoThe Pyramid project is using chipin.com to collect donations for rewriting the documentation. https://groups.google.com/d/topic/pylons-discuss/sGupDbtrq9E/discussion https://groups.google.com/d/topic/pylons-discuss/sGupDbtrq9E... Kickstarter has a number of open source projects. Diaspora being one of the more popular ones. Just search for Open Source on Kickstarter, you can see dozens of ones that have gotten funded.
- cmlacy 15y agoTrue, there are a good number of projects, but most of them are "open source hardware" projects, which isn't really what I had in mind. I'm surprised I don't see projects like "Finish off GNU Free Call" and the like - Dedicate some full-time developers to larger projects.
- cmlacy 15y agoI guess what seems strange to me is that there's nothing "unifying" the various open source projects on Kickstarter in particular. I'm surprised that there isn't a Curated page run by the FSF or OSI, or some other group interested in encouraging open source development.