

Snowdrift.coop: Funding for free projects - signa11
http://lwn.net/Articles/625051/

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yzzxy
Looks like a lot of the same ideas behind the Internet Archive, but focused on
asset creation rather then preservation.

I also like to see more people moving into the Patreon-style market - Patreon
has probably figured out a lot of the pain points and will probably rightfully
hold some permanent market share for being first, but I think the ability of
nonprofit/coop projects to be more agile and respond better to user needs due
to the general lack of ulterior motives will be valuable for this specific
business model in the long run.

~~~
quadrangle
Patreon wasn't actually first. Gratipay (formerly Gittip) was around well
before Patreon and "be a sponsor" via an ongoing monthly or annual membership
is a concept that has existed for centuries. Online, Paypal has offered
ongoing donations for years. Patreon is just the most prominent and so far
successful of several dedicated platforms for the idea of ongoing sponsorship.

In the Snowdrift.coop review of hundreds of existing sites, they even list a
handful of other subscription-style sites
[https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/othercrowdfunding#su...](https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/othercrowdfunding#subscription)
(most with no real success, but many of which were around before Patreon).

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jerf
And just to minimize friction, the crowdfunding campaign itself:
[https://snowdrift.tilt.com/launch-snowdrift-
coop](https://snowdrift.tilt.com/launch-snowdrift-coop)

I gave a while ago. For me, it isn't that I necessarily 100% believe this is
guaranteed to work, it is that it is good enough to be _worth a try_. My long-
term hope is that this takes off enough and attains enough credibility that I
can go to my employers and say with a straight face that we ought to be
participating to a significant degree, but with life and the world working as
it does, the project is first going to have to bootstrap the credibility to do
that before I can even bring it up, let alone get it approved.

------
MaxGabriel
Snowdrift is written in the Haskell web framework Yesod
[https://github.com/dlthomas/snowdrift](https://github.com/dlthomas/snowdrift)

~~~
joelthelion
They also said they were looking for some help with the coding, so if anyone
is interested it could be a nice project.

------
KajMagnus
I liked the overall idea, and I like that they're trying to fund the project
via their own platform, and that they are a non-profit (right?).

So I had a look at their site — and apparently they're building their own
forum, wiki, blog, and issue tracking software. This seems like things that
can take a tremendous amount of time, and derail them from their main mission.
And I'd guess the results would be average at best in comparison to what is
produced by other teams that dedicate all their time on one thing, e.g.
Discourse for new forum software.

Their model that calculates how much money that is paid out to each project
feels like the opposite to what I would prefer. One would get paid something
proportional to the number of supporters ^ 2. But if I wanted to donate money
to something, then, if few other people donated, I would want to donate more,
so that the project got a reasonable amount of funding. And if many people
donated, I'd want to automatically donate less (not more), because I don't
want the project to get more money than what it actually needs.

With Snowdrift's current model, I'm afraid a few projects will get a lot more
money than what they actually need, and won't be able to use that money
efficiently. Whereas most projects will get like $0.1 a month.

I'd love to see that their ideas work out well despite the things above :-)
Best wishes to you the Snowdrift team.

~~~
quadrangle
No projects should take more than they need because the requirement is that
funds go to ongoing development. Thus, a project can specify when they are
adequately funded and not take extra. Projects that don't show good use of
funds over time won't keep getting people funding them. Anyway, if the system
actually gets to where projects are adequately funded, it will already mean
the system is a success.

Yes, there's a natural _intuition_ that you should pay _less_ if others join
you, but that only makes any sense after a project already has adequate
funding. Anyway, the intuition is a failure in reality. Why should I add my
donation if it just means others will donate less? The question to think about
is: "what will most encourage others to donate who aren't donating now?" And
the answer is definitely in matching as a big factor.

Anyway, the whole snowdrift dilemma is about the fact that you would indeed
like to donate as little as you can and have everyone else donate as much as
they can. The point of Snowdrift.coop is to acknowledge how that thinking is
destined to be a failure for the project, so we have to make people adjust
their thinking.

The mission-creep concern is totally valid, but there's pros and cons as well
to having a more integrated system. I happen to agree with you that wheel-
reinvention is a big problem in general. And Discourse is indeed pretty nice
for what it is, and no way would it be easy for someone else to quickly whip
up something comparable.

~~~
KajMagnus
Re "Why should I add my donation if it just means others will donate less?"

They wouldn't donate less, that's not what I had in mind. I'm thinking the
other people are supporting many different projects, in addition to project X
that I start supporting. Now, when I support project X too, they'll contribute
a little bit less to project X (but the net effect should still be that X gets
more money). However, then the other people will get some money over, which
the system will distribute among the other projects they support.

I'm thinking I'd prefer a money distribution model that tended to divide money
evenly between many projects, rather than one that favored a few popular ones.

Anyway I'm thinking that the model you currently have in mind can be changed
later on if needed. You could perhaps support more than one model. Or even let
people choose themselves which model should be used when their money is being
distributed.

~~~
quadrangle
Of course there's room to adapt as things evolve, yes.

The immediate challenge is that most projects are severely underfunded.

Anyway, I still would be _less_ likely to donate to a project if the effect
was "I donate $5, and the project only gets $1 extra, and I'm freeing up $4 of
other patrons' money so it can go to other projects." That's _worse_ for my
goal of wanting this project to succeed than plain unilateral donations. If I
want a project to succeed, I'd rather send them my entire $5 with a simple
Paypal option than to do that screwy thing where others give less. Your
version _does_ mean, "others give less [to the project I support] when I
donate." And that would make people want to skip that system and just donate
unilaterally.

It's actually far _better_ for the overall ecosystem if popular projects
actually get adequate funding and less popular ones die than for all the
funding to be split among all the projects regardless of popularity or
worthiness. Yes that's two extremes. The ideal may not be either extreme.

Think of it this way: It would be way better to have two or three GNU/Linux
distros that got enough support to completely outdo Mac and Windows in _every_
respect than to have every GNU/Linux distro out there get an extra $100 a
month. It's perfectly reasonable to argue that it's basically _negative_ for
GNU/Linux that there are so many distros and confusion. Consolidating the
community and the funding around the most deserving projects is a _positive_
effect.

That said, the goal is that if people want to support the popular projects and
many others, they should _add_ more funds, and up their overall budget when
they see the value. People wont' keep to an absolutely fixed budget for the
system. I might put in $100 at first, but if I knew the rest of the world
would truly join me to build a truly better entire world, I'd put in my life
savings. So, there are real limits, but don't assume this has to be a zero-sum
game.

------
mike-cardwell
Any chance you can add an RSS feed to your blog so I can follow the project?

~~~
icebraining
Until it can be arranged, here's a version built with Yahoo! Pipes:
[http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=ff5133ba1971595f95...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=ff5133ba1971595f95eda66d287c67ab&_render=rss)

Feel free to clone it and fix any issues, if you want.

~~~
NicoJuicy
For the ones wondering, you can clone / fix it here :
[http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ff5133ba1971595f9...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ff5133ba1971595f95eda66d287c67ab)

~~~
icebraining
Oh, right, thanks. I also want to say that I have no affiliation with
Snowdrift, so the feed is in no way "official".

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listic
They are still pledging fake money, I presume? I wonder when they will finally
launch for reals.

~~~
dllthomas
Still fake money, yes. We'd like to launch ASAP, of course. Early 2015 seems
realistic.

------
niche
Here's an idea: PTE (Publicly Transparent Entities); every transaction is
posted (down to the bits) and known to the public; no convolution; nothing to
hide

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kentf
Love this! Great job on the launch!

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spacecowboy_lon
So you on a .coop and your not sure that you actualy a coop?

Open, voluntary membership.

Democratic governance.

Limited return on equity.

Surplus belongs to members.

Education of members and public in cooperative principles.

Cooperation between cooperatives.

~~~
quadrangle
.coop is a sponsored TLD. It's not possible to have a .coop without being
recognized as legitimate by [http://nic.coop](http://nic.coop)

Anyway, for Snowdrift.coop, it's planned as non-profit so there is no equity
or return on equity. All revenue must serve the non-profit mission.

The rest of what you mention is affirmed in the Bylaws (which are still only a
draft, pending legal review):
[https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/bylaws](https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/bylaws)

