Mailing List Archive


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

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



On 06/15/2013 11:48 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Edward Middleton writes:

  > My impression is that they are about providing minimal assurances that
  > the project is not a complete scam and that it is likely to succeed.
  > Not all projects are accepted by Kickstarter.

My impression is that Kickstarter doesn't check for scamminess (how
can they? is it that hard to write a plausible proposal for a creative
project?), and that according to their site most rejected projects
violated their content guidelines.  Likelihood of success clearly is
important to them, they explicitly mention sufficient funding to
complete the project as a rationale for returning pledges if the goal
isn't reached.

I don't see there model as sustainable if they cant minimize scams, so I would presume they put some effort into minimizing the likelihood that a project is a scam.

  > I think this finite amount of money assumption comes from you assuming
  > contributers see it as charity.

No, that's not my assumption.  Eventually you do run into a resource
constraint.  My precise assumption is that project requirements will
increase much faster than available funding as people become aware of
this funding source.

Who's requirements?

  > If as a developer you use it as a barometer to gauge whether a
  > project has sufficient interest (is worth doing), and more
  > importantly are prepared to walk away or invest time in other
  > things, then their is no longer an assurance that non contributers
  > will get something for free if they wait.

A valid point.  There are two contervailing factors, though.  First,
this is somewhat inconsistent with developers putting a lot of effort
into promoting their projects.  Second, at least on Kickstarter, you
can only post one project at a time, so using it as a barometer is
inefficient.  On the other hand, use of multiple crowd-funding sites
wouldn't be very reassuring to your potential backers I suspect.

I guess I could put it another way. If all your potential contributers are convinced you will carry out the project with or without funding your contributers will view it as charity. If they view it as a pitch that will get refined or changed until it gets funding then there is a risk they won't get what they want if they don't fund it.

I think crowd funding is still in its infancy but it does look to me like it could have significant potential to fund the development of certain types of opens source software.

  > If the mailman developers plotted out a good way to make SPAM
  > filtering easier to setup with mailman,

I don't understand where you're going with this.  Doing it in Mailman
is bad in principle for several reasons, and I don't see any way that
calculation is going to change.  This is the MTA's responsibility.
Our users generally understand that, and that's figured into the
funding side but ignored on the project side[1] in the ROI
calculation.

I was just extrapolating from what you said, i.e. what is the root cause of the problem that people would be trying to solve by improving SPAM filtering in mailman.

Edward


Home | Main Index | Thread Index

Home Page Mailing List Linux and Japan TLUG Members Links