"Just open-source it" is not realistic
rachelbythebay.com
rachelbythebay.com
When I open sourced my own RSS reader[1] some of the "non-monetary currencies" I received:
* Several (non-robot) recruitment emails from well-known companies doing Ruby
* Additional development time from strangers to fix things I wasn't interested in
doing (i18n, performance improvements)
* Additional testing time to iron out all the bugs
* 50-100 "qualified followers" (i.e. other developers/designers) on Twitter, many
thanking me for creating the project - increasing my network reach
* Five people have sent me messages that their merged pull requests were there first
open source contributions - that feels really cool
* Links from two of my favorite blogs - OneThingWell and The Changelog
* Being referenced in a Ruby book written by a community leader
* Socially-validated (1.8k+ stars) open source project that I can forever point to
* Material for future blog posts, user group/conference talks
We've had a lot of people come to us after successful and non-successful Kickstarters in order to keep the dream alive.
Edit: I get it, blatant self-promotion. Look through my history and you'll see I rarely mention my company, and when I do, it's appropriate. In this case, I'm trying to help.
For example, http://ignitiondeck.com/id/crowdfunding-a-video-game/ is the most valuable crowdfunding breakdown I've ever seen.
Is there currently something like that? A crowdfunding platform will work, I guess, but I want something with more visibility, because I'm bad at discovering and communicating with my target market.
I guess this is a rather hard problem, I might try one of Kickstarter, Indiegogo or a similar platform and see if I'm successful.
Ironically, I avoided a lengthier comment because I worried it would seem fake.
Just add a "shameless self-plug" or "* this is my product". I guess it's important to mention that you are advertising "your" product.
"Rachel - if you'd still like to pursue crowdfunding for open sourcing Fred, email me at nathan@ignitiondeck.com - we'd love to feature you in a new series we are doing called Kickstarter Redemptions"
Even if the software represents a significant investment, it's frequently easier to create wealth than it is to capture the value of that wealth. One big realization of the open source movement was that even if you can't capture the value of your software by selling it under proprietary terms, you can still derive value from it via indirect reciprocity by releasing it under a FOSS license.
I can't really blame people for not backing that kickstarter either though. Why $30K for an OSS feed reader when there are so many open source ones [1] that could be easily retooled to most purposes? The market for this stuff is so incredibly over saturated as it is. Rather make something new and different if you're going to do a kickstarter.
[1] http://opensource.com/life/13/3/eight-open-source-rss-feed-r...
www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-reader-extraordinaire
There's a vague description of being an RSS reader that you have control over. There's all kinds of talk of the various technologies that Fred sits on top of, but very little talk about what Fred itself actually does. There's a single image on the Kickstarter page, which isn't the product itself, and looks like something whipped together in Paint in 5 minutes time. There's a link to a demo site, but, again, it's not entirely clear what's going on when you get there.
It's not that people are unwilling to pitch in or that $30k is necessarily even too much for that, but it has to be something people want and you have to give them a reason to want it. The lack of any kind of compelling pitch seems to be what killed the Kickstarter in this case.
That's the key, rule 1 for introducing a product is someone has probably already done it, so make sure you provide some value that your existing competition doesn't have. After playing with 'fred' for a few minutes, I don't see how I would care to use this over any of the alternatives.
so I'm curious, how is she earning income from it? it does she know she'll find people to licence it?
This is too simplified, as you can have other monetization models, but usually you don't open-source things if you want to charge for them.
That isnt correct, a lot of people buy open source software specifically because it is open source.
It's possible to sell open source software, but it is very, very tricky to get right.
I realize if you want your project to flourish as an open source project, you need to make it palatable. However, a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING. This person isn't even deluding themselves by saying they'll "get around to open sourcing it." You won't do the world a disservice by releasing working code. Seriously, just come out and be honest and say "I don't want to open source it because I don't wanna."
bzzzt! Wrong!
Releasing stuff that is "close enough" as a product and have it succeed is wasting other people's lives as they struggle to fix your ball of mud and make it work better over time.
Better to wait and not waste other people's time.
Software (open or otherwise) is never done, its always too ugly, missing some features, slow and / or buggy.
If you are thinking about releasing your stuff as open source, do it now, it probably is too early and nobody will use it, someone may pick up it or your next library, share some knowledge report some bugs or evern fix stuff.
It is very easy for software developers to verify the stability of the libraries they are using, you have absolutely no responsibility to them by releasing software that has bugs, it all does.
It's entirely one thing to release functional and ugly code, it's entirely another to simply code dump broken crap and think that's a good thing.
If you open source some code without making any grandiose promises and someone somehow ends up in the position where they are wasting their time fixing it, its entirely their own decision / fault.
Not necessarily. A tarball of shit can become the de facto standard for some utility, and end up haunting us for ages after it gains critical mass, even long after a superior replacement arrives. See, e.g., rvm.
And ... I've got a pretty thick skin after years and years of net time, but I already struggle with staying motivated on projects, and that kind of feedback really doesn't help.
So, for the most part, the whole "social programming" thing is just not for me.
I don't think any of this negates your argument, but I understand the apprehension involved in open sourcing a project one feels is sub-par.
Much less one that is being held hostage by it's author.
It sounds like she wants to release software that works well without needing any maintenance, which would tend toward a payment up-front model.
I am surprised by this trend — put a project on kickstarter and promise to open source it. Build it on tech that's been open sourced for free.
Trying to stay positive here. But haven't they heard of the millions of people who contribute to (quality) open source software every day?
I recall this has been advocated by Lessig and Stallman. Go far enough in this direction, you end up with ideas like Participatory Economics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics)
Unfortunately, to people in non-democratic countries (who, for example, can't choose to stop allocating their taxes to prisons, drones, armies and surveillance), taxes are some awful thing. But in a saner culture, people would rather enjoy deciding on collective purchases.
Do you want to be put in the situation where you are contributing to Rachel's Kickstarter, whether you want to or not? What if you didn't like her project and wanted to fund some competing project instead? Where are these countries where you get to choose exactly where your tax money goes to, anyway?
Like, do these magical countries with ultrafine granularity for choosing public funding let you make choices like: do you want your tax money to go towards Rachel's Kickstarter? Because if that's the granularity that you want, then why involve government and taxation at all? You keep your money, and you contribute it where you want to. Or not.
What if this enlightened government you speak of decides that the books, music, and movies that it wants to spend your money on for you are things which you hate? Presumably, if that government was responsive to what its citizens were asking for, it would produce stuff along the lines of what currently gets the best ratings/sales/etc. in these "non-democratic" countries that you look down on so much. Although, I'm sure the people in your country are much more enlightened than the people in my country, and all they want is more philosophy and history and intellectually honest and well-researched analysis of current events, because you live in a magical place where the bulk of humanity is good and nice and curious about the world.
Basically, do you want the government to spend your money making the next Jersey Shore? Why not just eliminate the middleman and vote with your own money, instead of thrusting the government into the position of deciding what sort of entertainment everyone wants?
"[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth. Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ... But is it possible? ... Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary? ...Finally...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success."
What did this 19th century fellow know of efficient public healthcare, roads, the publicly funded research which led to things like computers and the internet? What about cooperatives, a natural way to purchase things which none of the participants could afford individually?
Part of the right wing likes to frame itself as anti-statist. (And are trotted out when anyone proposes funding anything decent, rather than ways to kill and control.) But of course, the "socialists" are the most serious about transcending these violent nation-states. Take the Occupy movements, influenced by "anarchists" (and think what you will about them, but these socialists aren't exactly the biggest supporters of nation-states).
As mentioned, it's hard for people in non-democratic societies to imagine how to rationally team together to allocate funds. In such hierarchical societies, wealthy/powerful elites make such decisions; the rest are supposed to obey their bosses every working day, in their corporate communes. Like indoctrinated cult members, we often have a difficult time imagining how to rationally function and accomplish simple goals as a horizontal team.
This is utterly rediculous, and quite frankly bordering on racist. it's often in the poor areas of the 'non-democratic' societies where people learn how to co-operate, and exchange without the state, and rationally function and accomplish goals as teams.
The socialists are about forcibly redistributing property: allocating the fruits of labor as either the electorate or an elected elite sees fit. In the first case, it will be the marginalized minority that gets punished, in the second case, it will be the unconnected poor that get punished.
Nobody is saying don't help out the poor, but the idea that the state is a qualified agent to help out the poor is laughable and there is plenty of evidence spanning milennia that it is a bad idea.
As for public healthcare. Healthcare in the US sucks, but would I rather be part of the private healthcare system or the VA (public healthcare)? Did you not see? As part of the 'healthcare reform bill' all legislators and their staff were required to join the public option. They are busy carving out an exemption to this as we speak.
As for publically funded research, it's horrifyingly wasteful, and all, I mean ALL of it goes to the "1%". Realistically there is no professor that is not a part of the 1%, and their work is built on the backs of a very very exploitative system of labor where grad students and postdocs' most productive years are sucked dry. Much of that essentially becomes subsidies for the military-industrial complex or the pharmaceutical-medical complex (allowing them to shove off some of what should be R&D money off onto the backs of the public).
Don't beleive me? Here is a 501(c)(3) - and four-stars on charity navigator, no less - organization that operates 90% on NIH money (and negotiates a sweet 85% 'overhead' deal) its president makes 1.3 million dollars. http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/330/3304359...
The hilarious thing is this: i'm now working at a different nonprofit science research institute. About 10 years ago, it was almost entirely run on the endowment - salaries given to postdocs and professors were generous, and the president was paid about 1/1000th of the net worth of the company. Since then, the net worth of the nonprofit has decreased by two orders of magnitude, and it is almost completely run off of public funds, in fact private granting organizations are turned down because they bring in no overhead. Now, the president gets paid three times what he did back then. Moreover, his son is about to be employed with us (uh, that's a no-no), as is the grandson of a board member.
There is something about accepting 'public monies' that is almost magically a corrupting factor.
But I think anyone can see that I consider my country, the US, to not be a democracy; and it's hard to imagine we're a free people when most of us obey commands from a "boss" all day. (The US has a top-down form of government with some barely-functioning democratic forms; our corporations are akin to dictatorships, where power is strictly top-down.)
Where do you think those social services come from?
How exactly do you think the Internet, most of computer hardware and software was researched and developed before the GREAT PRIVATIZATION in the late 1970s.
"why should I compromise my own ability to license this and make some money from it?" It's the same reasons you don't do slaves anymore. This guy needs to figure out better business models because the ones she's trying to do are obsoleted.
Also it's not wonder that her Kickstarter failed, it sucked very hard. Big TL;DR with no marketting material that would motivate people to pick on it. Most of people who saw that thing probably had no idea what they could do with her project.