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Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

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mouser:
One thing that fairware doesn't do is to allow, as you mentioned, to "bid" for future work. I personally doubt that it can work, at least in a fairware setting.
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I do think that one idea DonationCoder should very very seriously consider, is allowing people who donate to specify what future features they want to see in a program.  They wouldn't really be "bidding" on future work, but it would be a case where by donating they do get a tangible benefit of having the author put some additional resources into the features they care about.  With a high enough donation it might actually be a case of paying for a feature.  But for small donations it would be more of an informal "vote" for work on a certain feature.

I do think it's worth doing though because it's one of the few ways we can positively reward donators.

cranioscopical:
how wonderful it is to be in this community of people who really do make it work.
-mouser (September 11, 2011, 03:46 PM)
--- End quote ---
And we don't say often enough what's probably in all of our minds, which is how much we appreciate what you have done, are doing, and will do.

You're the glue that nails this place together and so basic to our success as a community that you couldn't be stapler.

Paul Keith:
This is written like a blog for eyeballs and the premise is simple (show your ideas to a big enough community) but I thought people reading this thread may also want to read about it:

http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/kickstart-your-own-economy/

40hz:
Just thinking outside the lines for a moment...

I wonder if the notion of "pay what you want" or "please donate" is anywhere near as important to the buyers as it is to those who are making such offers. I ask, because from what I've seen, most people don't seem to care all that much.

I bring this up because in the early days of my company, we had the notion that the big problem with most systems support companies was that they tried to keep their customers "captive." And that they did this by not freely sharing their knowledge with their customers.

As a result, we emphasized "knowledge transfer" as a big part of our sales proposition. This, we argued, was the "right thing" to do from both a business and an ethical perspective.

Guess what?

Hardly anyone cared.

And those that did wanted no part of it. As one senior manager said: "We don't want you to explain to us what you guys do. Or teach our people how to do it. We just want you to keep our systems running - and fix them when they break. That's what we're paying you for."

Another told us "We're not an IT shop. The last thing we want is to have our people getting distracted from what they should be doing because they're getting involved with the stuff you should be doing." (BTW: I liked the way he said it enough I wrote it down.  :mrgreen:)

Poof!

There went any illusions our potential clients were actively interested in changing the landscape of the systems support industry like we were.

Something to  think about... :)

Paul Keith:
As always great stuff 40hz, I just think the analogy fails in this case as there are no buyers.

Buyers would at least see the product. With software nowadays, buyers don't see anything until it hits them on the face because it managed to get by their popular rss feeds or even Facebook and Twitter streams and other types of notifications which skewer towards the tech using crowd like the slashdot crowd who rarely see much value in being social...err... socialists.

Donationware (if it were a government) I feel would be closer to communism. Someone wants an idea that they feel anyone can need. They have two options:

1) Seek the place that produces such items and implore them. (Thanking them later via donation)

or

2) Make the product by themselves and letting the people come.

Either situation doesn't lend much to post-product creation donation demand. (Unless the developers goes into lengths marketing and retesting their audience but again that leaves only the major players' names unless they offer something "shiny".)

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