The perils of mixing open source and money

"First of all, it's tempting to cash in on goodwill earned."

The way I see it what you have done is way better.

And this strategy is really what people should be doing as opposed to simply cashing in goodwill:

"Take Ruby on Rails. More than 3,000 people have committed man-decades, maybe even man-centuries, of work for free. Buying all that effort at market rates would have been hundreds of millions of dollars. Who would have been able to afford funding that?"

Work for free that has benefited many people including you. Can't put a price on that.

You created Ruby on Rails and it was like well enough that all those people "more than 3000 ... man-decades ..." have put their time into the project and you have benefited greatly because you are the person that most people associate with Rails. Not any of the 3000 contributors. And that notoriety is what pays off in droves. Even if you passed up a few dollars (debatable by your argument?) you've gotten something way more valuable.

It's an open marketplace. The project still has to have merit to be funded via Kickstarter or similar venues.

The best use of this strategy has been integration of South into Django itself. The funding for this went above and beyond what was expected as everyone released the immense value of getting this work done. Also, I don't believe anyone is getting rich doing this. In the case of South, there was a genuine request of "hey, I can do this, but I can't make too much progress in my free time".

Using Ruby on Rails is a little disingenuous example too. It's had the backing of its main company (37signals) since its inception.

I do believe that these things will self-adjust itself. On face value, DHH makes interesting arguments. But, projects that are getting funding are being done by people that are already intimidate with the project. Also, the rates that are being set for the hours that will be involved are hardly market rate.

What I love about this new model, is that it can push projects into the mainstream whereas companies start getting involved and allow their employees to spend time making fixes and improving the projects.

Another example of this was Microsoft's financial support for the jquery UI team for building the grid. They funded I believe at least one developer's salary to get the work done. I don't think anyone would argue that this was a bad move as the jquery team was still in control of the project and the timeline (which has definitely been pushed back with regards to the grid).

Someone who drives a custom made Pagani Zonda at a price point of well over $1 million shouldn't be talking about "The perils of mixing open source and money"

edit: So, let's translate this article, shall we?

"Hey guys, it seems to me that it's getting a lot easier to get funding and release quality software products these days. So i'd like to request you stop doing that, please. It's competition to my ba$ecamp and stuff and i'd rather not have to deal with that because my racecars need new tires soooo often, lol. So yea, just make free libraries and stuff don't make anything too good lol"

Well of course it's not true when you re-frame the argument into a strawman like that. A large percentage of proprietary programs are also blatant copies or ripoffs of something else. The issue that we're trying to get to is that free/open source software is principally better, not that all open source software is always less buggy or more featureful than the proprietary software it's intended to replace. Obviously that would be a ridiculous assumption, anyone who's seen all the crap throwaway projects on github can attest to it.

Funding future software development through Kickstarter is a really dangerous proposition, even more for the person receiving the funding than the people who contribute to it. There've been success stories, but when things go bad it can ruin someone's life and credibility.

Maybe I'm wrong, but just from passive observation, it seems like for projects which haven't even been started at the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign, success stories are the exception rather than the rule.

It's so easy for someone to not manage expectations properly, especially in the early stages when they're trying to get the attention of potential backers. It's so easy to underestimate the time involved in any sort of creative venture that isn't 100% specced out ahead of time, whether it's software or an RPG supplement or a gadget or whatever. Software development time in particular is insanely difficult to predict.

I strongly feel like Kickstarter is best for projects that are essentially complete, but need funding for mass production or other costs related to distribution. The danger from Kickstarting open source projects isn't so much from money somehow polluting the goals of a project, as it is from the whole thing just blowing up into a nightmare for everyone involved. It's hard enough to predict timelines and establish requirements and manage expectations for one manager, I can't imagine what it would be like when trying to keep hundreds or thousands of managers happy and on the same page.