Re: [tlug] kickstarter for open source...

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Ulrike Schmidt writes:

 > I am funding all kind of projects in my daily live: the bakery next door 
 > for example.

Please, "purchase" != "fund".  You are *purchasing*, the bakery
*receives revenue*.  What is done with that revenue is up to the
bakery.  The owner can close its doors tonight and retire.  The
decision to *fund* future production is the owner's, not yours.

What you do with your money, and how you think about it, is up to you.
That's true both as a matter of ethics and in economic analysis.  But
the difference between revenue received and funding received is
crucial to a business, and crucial to understanding the economics of
Kickstarter and whether it's likely to be an important contribution to
funding open source software.