Idea: A free crowdfunding site for Creative Commons projects | Hacker News Reader

Idea: A free crowdfunding site for Creative Commons projects

6 pointsmikk0j5 comments

Summary: * Crowdfunding for GPL/Creative Commons projects in arts, creative content, software * Free service, non-profit entity * Technical help needed

Sparked by the copyright discussion on thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3303796 I thought we should properly experiment in crowdfunding of open source and free projects, especially for arts but all creative projects (including software) aimed at creating freely distributable results while the creator still gets paid.

Crowdfunding is big, but IPR ambiguity hovers over the model in many cases. Sites like Kickstarter also take a cut (as is their right, of course) from the donations and pledges.

I want to create a crowdfunding site that is 100% free for project creators and pledgers. By listing a project on the site, you will also agree that everything produced in that project will be released under GPL or suitable Creative Commons license level. Let's discuss a model and license that makes sense.

I need help in creating this service. I am happy to cover hosting, any design needs & legal help as required, though in the spirit of the project maybe we can enlist help for those areas as well. I have a long experience in product management and product marketing from corporations and startups alike.

The service itself should be non-profit, and only accept donations (and maybe sponsors - discuss?) to cover costs.

Also discuss if you think the idea is stupid / redundant / against your political views.

What about a co-op of sorts? You could take your cut while people are donating, and then you give back the extra money in the form of a voucher or something that can be applied to another crowdsourced project (that way you don't have to exchange it back to their account and get hit with the transaction fee going back in).

Nice one - could work. I'm afraid that could add needless complexity though. Person pledging now is pledging for a particular project, which is meaningful to them. Making them think of another future project via a voucher or credit can confuse them. If there's one thing I've learned, it's never get in the way of what is meaningful to your users at any given moment.

Could be a future use case, though.

You don't have to distract from the current project at hand though. You would do this maybe once a year. A credit would simply appear in their account, and you send them an email saying something like "Thank you for supporting open source! We have taken in more money than our operating expenses require, so we're giving back to the community that gives to community software. You have $X.XX in your account to donate to any currently open project. This amount was based on how much you donated over the past N months"

That would keep them coming back, and I don't think it would confuse them. I mean, people don't get confused when they get their checks from the utility company or REI. If anything I think your demographic (people who donate to fund open source software) would understand.

As someone who has largely failed to make money while trying to give away what I have to offer, I have to wonder where you think the money will come from? What will be the motive to donate? I've known other webmasters, in some cases of fairly large sites, who just couldn't get the funding they really needed. They were idealistic and didn't want to "commercialize" it and didn't want to "beg" for donations either. I guess they thought people should just give out of the goodness of their hearts and, yet, in one case even when members were trying to find ways to give, the owner was turning them down due to his idealism, which was such it simply put a strangle-hold on any means to fund the site.

Do you have experience with the not for profit model? Are you familiar with the challenges that most non-profits face in trying to fund their work? Non-profits work on a similar basis to business as far as asking for money in exchange for something of value. In other words, the pitch is usually "we offer a valuable service to the community and you should fund us because it does positively impact your life in X way (such as reducing the number of homeless people on the street)"

I'm all for idealistic projects but many of them are so idealistic that they simply don't work. And frankly I kind of resent how much other people have benefited from my work while I got little in return. I have serious financial problems and could use the money. I wish I could find a way to crowd fund what I do. If I do, most likely that won't be called "crowd funding". It will be called "sales to the public", perhaps in the form of t-shirts, merchandising, etc.

Thanks for the comment!

I have to wonder where you think the money will come from? What will be the motive to donate?

If this is a question about the crowfunding site itself, this is a non-issue. Any running costs will be covered. Donations are not required. If the service becomes meaningful to a lot of people, there will be motivated people to support it in different ways.

Do you have experience with the not for profit model?

Some, yes. I don't mean to brush aside your valid concerns for the long-term financial health of the project, but the initial costs will not be unsurmountable.

I have serious financial problems and could use the money. I wish I could find a way to crowd fund what I do. If I do, most likely that won't be called "crowd funding". It will be called "sales to the public", perhaps in the form of t-shirts, merchandising, etc.

So this is part of the reason why I want to do this. A lot of people creating content have to just throw the content out there and hope it sticks and is monetizable. The crowdfunding model however is a good "sales to the public" model, I think, especially when used as a pre-demand and pre-order model. The biggest projects on Kickstarter for example have been pre-demand projects, where someone has created a wriststrap for the iPod Nano or a tripod mount for a camera phone and sold pre-orders for these.

We know that digital content is distributed freely, and this will not go away. For a writer, for example, this can be a serious problem. Say you create a non-fiction how-to book on something very specific and niche. A couple of people buy the ebook, and finding value in it, want to share it with the people they know in the same niche. They (at least many think this way) get more social value out of just sharing a digital copy of your work, instead of pointing their friends to buy it. If you flip this model, and ask for money upfront for the upcoming content, the same person who has donated will now be more inclined to find others to donate too, so that the content will actually get created (this is why Kickstarter's pledge minimums work to motivate sharing). Of course, in addition to getting the content among the first, they can get other perks. By all means you can consider this pre-sales or pre-demand instead of crowdfunding.

But that's going into the CF model in general. If people benefit from a new platform like this and it creates more copyright-free content while supporting the creators of such content, as far as I'm concerned it's successful.

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