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Comment by soapdog | Hacker News Reader

I wanted to contribute but I am a single freelance developer, I don't have the amount of money shown on the sponsorship options. I would be great to have a USD 50 option there.

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I upvoted this, but want to also add my opinion in writing that I strongly second this opinion. The company I work at is definitely interested and might be able to contribute, but I'm also strongly interested as an individual. I have a lot of projects that would greatly benefit from having a tool like this available -- especially one that's open source -- and I would be more than happy to donate, but the sponsorship options are super high as previously noted.

For now, the best way you can help is to try and sell your organization on sponsoring a larger amount. We can help you if they're interested. :)

I think I know a company that would be interested, but I noticed something on the page: "Please consider giving a little extra if you are also requesting additional features." -> Does this mean you get to be a part of deciding features if you donate?

We'll definitely take feature requests from sponsors seriously. The biggest limiting factor is how much time we can afford to spend on development. Anyone who substantially helps out with that gets a bigger voice in prioritizing the order we develop the reach features.

You are leaving money on the table.

I don't think the point is to "profit" as much as it is to fund the project. Notice these aren't "customers" but sponsors. Maybe the mindset of "money is being left on the table" isn't quiet the right one for this sort of project ...

Seriously. When I first went to the website and read the description, I was like, "why isn't this already funded? They're only asking for $75K." Now I know why.

Thanks--We'll definitely accept individual contributions before the fundraising period ends. We wanted to avoid staff at companies contributing individually instead of bringing institutional support. Flynn's long term success will depend on institutional adoption (not contributions), so forging strong relationships in that area now is important.

We're also considering different options e.g. Gittip vs traditional kickstarter-esque funding options with stickers and t-shirts. Currently there are 13 days on the clock, we'll post again when we're nearing deadline.

We'd be excited to hear any suggestions you have on how to balance individual and organization contributions and participation before then.

Thanks again for your support

Thanks-- we definitely plan to explore ways for individuals to support the project.

If open source projects had always required $50,000+ to get started, we might not have GNU/Linux today.

Why can't you start the project first and then ask for donations later? Are you saying that unless you guys get paid you're not going to work on the project?

You will not nearly get as much money if you ask for donations later. Certainly not enough to pay for your cost of living. People have the tendency of thinking

"hey I can get this for free, and I can get this TODAY. hm those developers are cool. maybe I'll donate some day"

Then they download and use the thing. 97% forget about donating and never return. Of the remaining people, they donate maybe $100 or something.

proof?

Human observation. How many open source applications do you use that you have paid for?

That have tried to raise money later?

Regardless if they have raised before or after.

FooBarWidget (who you replied to) is actually Phusion, the maker of Passenger (the very popular Rails app server). I think they have some very strong anecdotal evidence.

Up until recently Passenger was completely free, with donation options. Now they have an Enterprise offering - which we are happily paying for. I suspect the Enterprise licenses are orders of magnitude more than the donations ever were.

We answered this in the FAQ: We will still build it, but development will take much longer and the finished product will be less polished.

We're experimenting with a model that allows us to work full-time on a project for long enough to make it a viable production system.

We've added a "fill in the blank" contribution option to the form.

Thanks, just contributed! :D

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