

How Kickstarter will kill Open Source - billyb
https://10kblogger.wordpress.com/

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jmathai
As someone who started an open source project on KickStarter 2 years ago I can
attest it doesn't kill open source at all. As others have pointed out, FOSS is
free as in freedom.

I see the OP's point. However, it already exists. Imagine you spend 15 hours a
week on an open source project and someone comes along landing a paid position
to work on the same project. As unfortunate as that may be it's the reality
that has always existed.

Kickstarter allowed me to start something that I've spent 2 years full time
on, raised $400k in total grants for, and fostered a community of devs in the
hundreds. And all that work is open source on Github for anyone to do anything
with.

Money is a very real and necessary part of open source. Kickstarter is making
something that's very difficult a little bit easier. Everyone wins, including
open source.

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unavoidable
The way I see it, this is a net positive development rather than a negative.
Will it have some effect on the margins where developers who would rather be
paid might not contribute to open source projects anymore? Probably. But the
idea of FOSS is that the works are free as in freedom, not free as in beer.

If people are willing to pay to ensure that an open source project continues
to thrive, that makes the ecosystem more viable in the long term, not less.
This Kickstarter only demonstrates the pent up demand for this sort of thing.
Not everyone can contribute time or knowledge, so they might instead
contribute money.

Besides, many of the most popular open source projects are already implicitly
backed by paid developers (Linux, WebKit, etc.). Nobody seems to have a
problem with that.

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claudius
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-
assistan...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant-
like-dropbox-but-with-your-own)

[1] <http://git-annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/>

[2] <https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/>

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kybernetyk
I think it's a good movement that people start to think that their work is
worth something. (Hell, I even might consider contributing some non trivial
features to open source projects if I get paid for it.)

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DanBC
People using crowd funding can ask for the funding they need, and then offer
the surplus to the main project.

That allows people to show support for a new feature as well as support for
the project.

It's not efficient because of the crowdfunding tax, where the site will charge
a fee. But I guess volume of funders could overcome that.

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bluebaby
Open source projects have always had funding for developers. A new source of
funding doesn't mean death to open source. Open source is "Free as in
freedom", not "free as in free coffee".

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johnpolacek
Nothing short of an asteroid hitting the earth is going to kill open source.

