>Is personal funding viable? Here's a question: What verifiable documented successes exist in the world? The one that always comes to my mind is Dwarf Fortres

>Is personal funding viable? Here's a question: What verifiable documented successes exist in the world? The one that always comes to my mind is Dwarf Fortress. It's not open source, but Tarn Adams has gone with the donation-ware model since January of 2007. I've been tracking those numbers since, and recently have attempted to start getting data on community size where that's also verifiable: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhPaW9RBi5v4dGFYZ05PVTY4dGxxSVBVVXUzY3dkTFE https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhPaW9RBi5v4dGF... >Instead we should expect a few people to tip a lot, and a long tail of people to tip a little. Based on anecdotes, this doesn't surprise me, but I'd certainly be curious to have a look at hard data. I know in the case of Dwarf Fortress about 1% of Bay 12's income is from one person: me. Additionally, I'm aware of other big tippers as well. However to get back to my original question, if folks could provide links or other sources to other successful donation-funded endeavors that aren't humanitarian efforts or fitting the typical charity mold, I'd be interested in hearing about it.