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jv16 PowerTools - using Indiegogo to 'fund'' open-sourcing it

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Innuendo:
Let me preface my comment by saying I do not use this product, I have had no experience with the author, and those two factors are likely to continue unchanged. I have no leanings towards supporting or condemning him or anything he does.

I did want to weigh on the 'you will be charged immediately' portion of the conversation. I think this is acceptable behavior because you will be receiving a license key immediately in return for your pledge. Places like Kickstarter don't charge you until after the goal has been reached, but...you also don't receive anything immediately & if the goal is not reached you don't receive anything at all as well as not being charged at all.

I think mwb1100 has the right way to look at this. Look at it as a sale with a fringe benefit if the sale/fund-raiser is a success. Regardless of how things turn out, you'll at least be walking away with a license for one-third the normal price.

I'll close by saying registry cleaners are dangerous. If you are not knowledgeable and don't closely supervise what they often wish to do to your system you're probably going to end up re-installing your OS.

wraith808:
But be aware!  This crowdsource fundraiser will immediately charge you for a pledge, even if the goal is never met.  I'm not very experienced with these things, but it was my understanding that the usual rule was that pledges didn't get charged unless the goal was met.
-mwb1100 (March 12, 2014, 10:40 PM)
--- End quote ---

Good point! But it's important to note that that's primarily Kickstarter's rule. And since Kickstarter was the earliest and most successful crowdfunding aggregator, it has (mostly) become the norm for crowdfunding in general. But it's not a legal requirement.

Different aggregators can adopt whatever rules they want. And those rules can be expanded (i.e. made "flexible") or change with little notice. So it's always good to read the fine print - as many an unsuccessful Kickstarter project learned to its dismay when it discovered it was still on the hook for the percentage Kickstarter charges to host a campaign. Because Kickstarter is a business - not a public service. It gets its fee regardless of your campaign's success or failure.
-40hz (March 13, 2014, 06:18 AM)
--- End quote ---

With Indiegogo, they have a couple of different ways of setting up your project.  The traditional Kickstarter manner is called Fixed Funding.  But this particular campaign is under Flexible Funding.  Right under the donate button on any project on indiegogo, it will tell you the manner of funding.

CONTRIBUTE NOW ▶
Flexible Funding
This campaign will receive all funds raised even if it does not reach its goal. Funding duration: January 22, 2014 - March 23, 2014 (11:59pm PT).

--- End quote ---

Unless it's something that I don't really care about- like charity, which Kickstarter doesn't let you do so a lot of those end up here- I wouldn't pledge to a flexible funding campaign.  It shows that they don't have the confidence to really run their campaign- they're just trying to get money.  And I have no faith that the afterwards won't end up the same way.  In this case, because of the way the rewards are set up, I think it's valid.  But in most cases, I stay away.

40hz:
Here's the thing...the campaign doesn't really make sense as stated.

Normally, when you go with a GPL license, your intention is to build a community of developers and maintainers. It's more a political or philosophical thing. It's not a business model.

What's being proposed goes against that philosophy.

It would be one thing to solicit contributions before development begins. That sometimes happens in order to gauge interest before committing to a development effort. Or to GPL something once it is developed and ask for contributions to keep the project going. That's the way most FOSS projects work.

But to basically hold the GPL ransom for an existing fully developed product? It's kind of tacky. And it really doesn't match up to how GPL/FOSS projects work.

Then to add a "stretch" goal and say that instead of going with the GPL, you'll release under a BSD (aka "take the work of others and run") license where you won't be bound to share the source for any additions or mods you may make - with the strong hint you can repackage it as the core of a commercial product? (Hey, it worked for Apple when they did OSX right?)

That simply makes no sense...unless...you were planning on getting out of it...looked for a buyer - but couldn't find one and figured:

What the hell...if we can make some money on the way out, we'll release it to the public and let them have at it...but...maybe we can make even more money if some company somewhere decides they want to use the code in their own commercial product...so we better make the BSD license an option too.

Since the only way we'll probably crack the original target is if some business interest gets interested and coughs up bigger bucks, lets make the BSD license our pledge if the more serious money comes in.

That (to me) is the only rationale I could come up with for why the BSD license is the stretch prize - and the GPL is the target goal's.

 8)

J-Mac:
Started discussing this about six months ago, here:  https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=36182.0

Didn't make much sense then either!

Jim

mwb1100:
Started discussing this about six months ago, here:  https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=36182.0
-J-Mac (March 14, 2014, 01:18 AM)
--- End quote ---

I missed that - I even searched for "jv16" before posting this and saw that thread, but I guess I stopped reading when I saw that the thread was about the odd request for monetary support to publish a report.  Looks like I should have kept scrolling down the page...

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