Joey Hess used[0] Kickstarter to fund work on a nice frontend[1] for git-annex. In general, I don’t see anything wrong with that: This feature would not have be

Joey Hess used[0] Kickstarter to fund work on a nice frontend[1] for git-annex. In general, I don’t see anything wrong with that: This feature would not have been implemented otherwise (or at least not as quickly) and by providing funds, the users were able to prioritise/introduce new ideas. Maybe this is comparable to other situations where some developers are paid by their employers to work on software, whereas others contribute in their spare time. Surely it would be nicer if everybody had infinite resources and time, but given the constraints of the real world, I don’t see why a) developers should not request funding via Kickstarter, Flattr or you-name-it and b) users should not offer funding/employment in return for features they need. If developers need certain large features themselves, they will still implement them, just as they did before, and if they don’t need them, they will have a hard time implementing them – apart from possibly ideological reasons (cf. FreedomBox[2], which is mostly about scratching someone else’s itches). [0] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant-like-dropbox-but-with-your-own http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan... [1] http://git-annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/ http://git-annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/ [2] https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/ https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/