I was also not so sure about using Kickstarter for source code, but then i stumbled upon Light Table, which is a coding tool sold there.
I'd really like to continue working on it to make it more polished and for that i need some way to get money out of it. I could, of course, try to sell it as a SaaS project, but that would block people from hacking it.
I think you should also offer it as a SaaS once you get it up and running. Being open source doesn't stop you from doing that. Then you get the best of both worlds.
Yes, paying for a project which then fails would suck.
I'll send the binaries around and upload them once i get around to packaging them (probably tomorrow).
For the kickstarter i was planning on making the current state of the project open source as soon as the funding is reached. Do you think that would also work?
I mean if i open source the whole thing beforehand, why should someone participate in the kickstarter when they can get also get it for free (although unfinished) right away?
As for SaaS, i'd say that the client should run on the user's computer in any case, just to make stuff really fast :) Hosting the IMAP-Synchronization-Gateway might work, though.
(edit) I guess, emotionally speaking, I'm in the position that if it were already on Github, I would actually fund your Kickstarter. I mean, right now. As it is, no, I'm not going to, for the reasons I explained in my comment upthread.