A New Free Software Donation Directory

Wolfgang Spraul writes: "CoSource and SourceXchange are closed. They became part of the history of Open Source Software Markets. However, I still need a place where I can find maintainers or core developers of existing Free Software packages that accept my feature request and payment, implement the feature within a reasonable timeframe and give me support if it doesn't work in my environment. Since no such place is in sight, I launched the Free Software Donation Directory as a first step. What do you think? How should the next Free Software market look like? Should there be one at all?" Right now, he's got around 20 projects listed, if you care to invest in some Free software.

Re:SourceXchange

[goon america]

Yes, but if 200 people all wanted the same feature for $100 each.....

Why can't more than one person by the same feature at the same time? It seems economically efficient. I mean, if only one person could buy one feature at a time, everyone else who would have paid for it "free ride" on that one person who paid. On the other hand, if everyone who ever used a piece of software paid for a new feature by the exact amount it was worth to them, even if each the amount for each individual was small the sum could be very large.

Re:Could it ever have worked?

[stevey]

If you have to work on only a few features, wouldn't you do those which scratch your own itch rather than those you were paid for?

I wrote and maintain GNUMP3d [gnump3d.org] a streaming server for MP3's/OGG's. I originally wrote it because nothing was available which met my needs. After using it myself for a while I decided to make it available to others.

To be honest the last few releases have only happened because of the users. It does everything I set out to do. The features contained in the last few releases were almost exclusively requested by users.

Granted they didn't pay - but that's a good example of programming which wasn't explicitly scratching my itch.

OTOH I have had a couple of people buy stuff from my wishlist [amazon.co.uk] in exchange for features, or to persuade me to implement a feature before I'd planned to. So I can see it from both sides.

Personally I think a directory like this is a good idea - if there's somebody out there who wants to support OS work, but not donate to a faceless company like RedHat they can choose an application from the list there which they like and appreciate and easily find contact details.

Re:Good idea..

[Artifex]

accepts your payment, for free software.... for free software....

Free as in, I need this done, I'm willing to pay for it, but you can give it away to anyone else out there, so that they don't have to reinvent the wheel.

It's kinda like a church. Generally, churches need some sort of place to hold worship services in, and buildings don't get built unless people give money. However, after they get built, they're free and open to all members and guests, including those who haven't given any money. (Yes, I know there are exceptions, but you get the point)

If you don't like that analogy, think of PBS [pbs.org]. Certain foundations want shows made to deal with certain topics, and they pay for their production and later may subsidize their broadcast. That's how a lot of the shows get paid for. You don't have to pay to watch PBS, either.

I can see it working, but for priority-shifting

[Trepidity]

You're right, it'd take far more money than most people are willing to offer to actually pay for development at a reasonable rate. However, I could see it working as a way to encourage authors to continue working on their projects, while getting your pet features a bit higher up on the priority list. If I were a project manager and I had 5 or so features I was planning to implement in the near future, if someone paid $100 in favor of one of them, I might well not mind getting that one done first. Sure, for $100 few people will develop an entirely new feature that otherwise they wouldn't have done, but it might be enough to encourage them to shift priorities around a bit.

the bug with this approach

[tomlord]

The bug with this approach is that it assumes the person spending money will request a specific feature or a certain level of support.

That's crazy. Businesses are already extremely efficient at providing new features and support. They are experts at those kinds of contracts and open source volunteers can't compete against them in such a simple minded way.

The real funding need in the open source world is sustained, long-term funding for creative, exploratory research and development. We don't need customers who want to buy "features" or "support" -- we need customers who want to simply PAY US TO HACK on new and interesting projects that may be too new to help many customers directly today, but that will help the open source world evolve tomorrow. It's because we in the open source world don't pay people to "just explore" that Bill Gates gets to say the GPL is bad for the industry and unamerican and that fascistic copyright protections are a necessity.