As for trust, the JavaScript community knows me as the maintainer of CodeMirror, and apparently likes the way I'm handling that project. This seems to lead people to believe that I won't deliver a horrible mess, and that I won't try to rip them off after the fact.
Starting up a project with a crowd funding does not make it impossible to later fund continued maintenance by selling support and such. It is a way in which I'm safeguarding my initial investment.
I agree that trust is not at stake, but the implication bothers some people because it cuts against the culture of OSS (rightly or not). You may just be one of the early pushers of a profit model that hasn't had time to normalise. I'll be interested to see.
The point is, this is not a model at all IMHO, since a model requires the ability to work in the long run.
So you know wrote code for 1 month, and you want to be crowdsourced. Ok, what's the plan for the continued development of the project? Code as it is is worth zero without bugfixes, evolution, and a community.
B) I'm debating whether to take the OSS or commercial route, since I do need money to live
C) I have a reputation for maintaining software in a serious way
So I'm asking people "If this is worth 10k to you, let's go the open-source route". So far, it looks as if it is worth that to people. Unless I'll turn around and act like a complete bandit, destroying my reputation, the model works. It does require the reputation part, I guess. But I'm quite puzzled why you are so hostile to it.
I'm not hostile about you, I'm hostile about your model, since I care about open source, and OSS for me is not a license, but a culture and a model for the development of the computers industry.
I think there are things that play nicely with the open source model, that is, ways to make money that don't interact in a bad way with the culture of free software. I don't think that to ask to be payed to open source stuff is in line with the OSS movement / culture.
Ok, now that the hostile bit is discussed, my argument is that it makes more sense IMHO if you say, there are N people willing to donate me 10$ per year if I open source this stuff? It's still wrong IMHO as a model, but at least makes sense, that is, you will get money to provide the software relevant, updated, documented in the future.
The una tantum system instead is broken, how you'll make money in the future in order to continue the development, since it is clear you don't write this software if you are not backed in some way?
He's already shown that he is willing to support his stuff without additional payment, he's done so with CodeMirror.
When taking on this project, he presumably factored it in, that he'd want to continue to support it. If not, well, those of us who chipped in probably won't chip in on the next thing he does. I'm willing to take that risk.
And even if he doesn't...so what? It's open source. Other people can continue the work, and if they want to do something ambitious enough to justify crowdfunding as well....more power to them.
You may be right that what he is doing isn't "in line with the OSS movement/culture." Richard Stallman would likely agree with you...he was never one for shades of gray. I would argue that if that is true, that the OSS movement/culture is the thing with the problem.
I've been doing something like that (try to get people to make regular payments) with CodeMirror, in the form of selling commercial support. I've found it hard to get people to continue to pay, and a major time drain to keep track of all the paperwork involved. A crowd funder driven by a short hype is simply much easier to manage.
I agree with antirez point of vue. To write a software is one thing, you can be crowd funded for that, no problem. What Antirez is saying, as far as I understand it, is that your software is not valuable if you don't have a sustainable model in the long run. You'll still have to pay your bill the day the software will be released open source.
In that perspective, crowd funding might not be a solution.
So in the end, I think what Antirez is saying is that you probably should choose between releasing open source (and find something else to pay the bills) or go and make your project sustainable by making it something like licensed closed sources.
I'll point out again that launching by crowd-funding is in no way incompatible with being sustainable. It just eases the burden of the initial investment.
I think both have valid points, but in such a way that Marijn is right.
I did start cool open source projects without crowd-funding. It happened at
certain points in my life when I didn't really need extra-money (or when I
had sufficient free time — essentially the same thing). It is possible.
Today? I'm not sure I could start anything substantial today without
funding. My life is not the same as it was 3 years ago. Things change, and
somehow paying the bills gradually becomes harder each day than it was the
day before—I don't know why life has to suck this way, but so it happens.
There's quite a narrow frame in everyone's life when one can start major
free projects without any income — and I'm probably approaching the end of
it. Kudos to Marijn for he manages to do so well, and still provide free
tools of outstanding quality! (and in case you didn't notice, the demo is
quite impressive — the thing is alive, not vaporware).
On the Antirez side now, it's true that a project without a community is as
good as dead (he also mentions evolution and bugfixes, but a community is a
prerequisite for that). I certainly have projects that could benefit
enormously from having a community — but it just didn't happen, for some
reason. (OK, I know why: Emacs and Lisp are Just Not Popular).
Tern is not likely to suffer from lacking a community, because it happens
that JS is the most popular language on the planet and Tern solves a Hard
Problem. You could think of Tern as the smarter big brother of JSLint.
JSLint employs brute-force to find potential mistakes, while Tern employs
smartness to help you find real semantic errors, or to improve the way you
write code. It's unique. I don't think it'll suffer from lacking
community—au contraire, I hope the community won't be as invasive as to
murder this project by bringing into it tons of "I'd like my code to look
that way" features — but then again, I trust Marijn for being able to trim
down feature requests and leave in only what's meaningful, rather than
particular use cases; and for particular use cases he will totally be able
to make a living by providing custom support and development and this will
eventually raise the quality of the project on the whole.
I'm sorry, I laid my sentiment over your point and ended up missing the argument. Bad conversation on my part.
You're saying, A value proposition worth paying for would focus on support, not software availability. Yeah?
I'm unsure whether that's always the case. And as the OP is pointing out, support is implicitly included by his need to maintain a reputation. I'm not sure the profit model has to explicitly include it.
If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And either way, we've learned something. There's one one approach or set of approaches that are blessed and known to work 100% of the time.
I was more than happy to support it given the fine work that he's done in the past and how easy it has been to get answers from him about CodeMirror.
If this helps him produce more software or release some of what he's already written, then great. I'd rather he do this than get a more traditional job and have the fruits of his labor locked up.
But either way... what's the harm in trying a different approach? What's the harm in (potentially) giving him the opportunity to continue doing what he enjoys and does well?
If you don't want to give him that opportunity, that's fine. But there's little need to cast aspersions, right?
So don't donate. I think its awesome that he's doing it, and the fact that he did CodeMirror open source should count for something.
I think it's an excellent model. I hope it makes the target, so he doesn't have to go the closed source route with it. And I hope more people do things this way.
Even if he doesn't continue developing it (leaving it to others to do so) or if he wants to write closed source plug ins, so what? That's not what the 10k is for. If he wants to make a big enhancement to it in a year and crowd fund that, I say go for it.
