Re: [tlug] kickstarter for open source...

[Ulrike Schmidt <ulrike@example.com>]

Am 07.06.13 06:23, schrieb Stephen J. Turnbull:
> Edward Middleton writes:
>   >  On 06/06/2013 06:06 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>
>   >  >  Sure, tons of them have been tried.  Two of the biggest were
>   >  >  sourceXchange and coSource.com.  None of them worked.  Crowdfunding
>   >  >  works because it's basically the same as leaving your pennies in the
>   >  >  UNICEF box at the cash register at 7-11.  Good cause, the money is
>   >  >  less pain than getting bit by a mosquito.  The little coppers add up.
>   >
>   >  Do you have data to support this or is it just a feeling?
>
> Data to support what?  The failure of all FLOSS-specific schemes to
> date?  Sure, it's history.  Many of them were proposed on the FSB
> mailing list and on gnu.misc.discuss.  Some were tried, none survive.
According to what I found with google sourceXchange and coSource.com 
seem to be really historic, having been launched more than 10 years ago. 
I have to admit I did not know about their existence ... In the meantime 
open source, payment systems, crowd funding the public attention to and 
acceptance of these topics all have improved. And social media as well.
> My feeling that crowdfunding does work up to a point, based on
> aggregating large numbers of small contributions (where "large" is
> nowhere near as big as the "big" in "big data", of course)?  That's
> mostly a feeling, based on (1) the theoretical analysis that the
> psychology of sending money via the internet has percolated down to
> the point where "spam economics" apply (ie, with 100 million targets
> at $10 each, a conversion rate of man-ga-ichi is worth $1000), and (2)
> the historical success of those UNICEF boxes at the 7-11.
The first time I put money into a crowd funding project was because I 
really liked this video project after I had seen the trailer and I 
wanted to support them and have the dvd. It was not because I had spare 
money. In the end I did not only get a DVD but also new friends. The 
other times I was considering whether I had spare money for other 
friends' projects. I heard about all of these projects via mailing lists 
and social media and  not by browsing crowdfunding sites.

> The question is how much money actually changes hands?  Projects
> asking for $10,000 don't necessarily get 100% pledged, and they get
> nothing.  Projects that do make it to 100% don't necessarily get the
> pledged amount, and we have no idea what they are actually getting.
>
> At least the Kickstarter site seems to be designed to hide all
> information about actual financial results, not to mention hiding all
> the unsuccessful projects.  I wonder why they do that?
I don't know about kickstarter. With some of the platforms I know you 
can pick whether you need the whole amount of money before you start or 
whether you take all the money you can get and start anyway. Also there 
is feedback on financial results. Or are you talking about general 
statistics accross all projects?

> So yes, there's potential.  But it's very hard to say what the
> realization is, and harder to predict what will happen as this
> "market" gets saturated.
I do not think it is a market that gets staturated, but an alternative 
way to fund product development/other projects. And of course your 
product/project and your marketing will have an influence on whether 
people want to "order" beforehand.

Are there any widgets besides donate buttons which you can easily 
include on your website where you can do your own little crowd funding? 
Like "who wants which feature and would pay how much"? And where one can 
see from outside how much money has already been put on each feature? I 
understand that there might be disagreements on whether the feature is 
correctly implemented or not. But then one could bind payment to the 
passing of predefined tests. And minimize the risk by financing smaller 
steps or improvments that can be implemented in a shorter time.

Probabably it is easier use a crowd funding platform and link to that. 
But are there any where you can negotiate about features? Oh, they died 
10 years ago ... were the platforms themselves open source?