6 ms·

"Just open-source it" is not realistic

76 points by ericedge 13y ago

kaoD 13y ago
Summary: "I might want to make money out of this, so... nope."
- snuxoll 13y ago
  Open-source and profit aren't mutually exclusive, in this case he was unable to get enough of the latter to justify the effort of the former, perfectly reasonable.
  - slater 13y ago
    She.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    You're both right, that's what the blog seems to be saying to me. Can't argue with either. I think this is also a not-so-hidden hint of 'if you wanted this open source, you should have paid more attention to that kickstarter!' I can't really blame people for not backing that kickstarter either though. Why $30K for an OSS feed reader when there are so many open source ones [1] that could be easily retooled to most purposes? The market for this stuff is so incredibly over saturated as it is. Rather make something new and different if you're going to do a kickstarter. [1] http://opensource.com/life/13/3/eight-open-source-rss-feed-readers http://opensource.com/life/13/3/eight-open-source-rss-feed-r...
    - snuxoll 13y ago
      > different That's the key, rule 1 for introducing a product is someone has probably already done it, so make sure you provide some value that your existing competition doesn't have. After playing with 'fred' for a few minutes, I don't see how I would care to use this over any of the alternatives.
    - commandar 13y ago
      I mean, looking at the Kickstarter, I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what Fred is. www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-reader-extraordinaire There's a vague description of being an RSS reader that you have control over. There's all kinds of talk of the various technologies that Fred sits on top of, but very little talk about what Fred itself actually does. There's a single image on the Kickstarter page, which isn't the product itself, and looks like something whipped together in Paint in 5 minutes time. There's a link to a demo site, but, again, it's not entirely clear what's going on when you get there. It's not that people are unwilling to pitch in or that $30k is necessarily even too much for that, but it has to be something people want and you have to give them a reason to want it. The lack of any kind of compelling pitch seems to be what killed the Kickstarter in this case.
- dlitz 13y ago
  I think a more relevant question is, "Do you have a realistic plan for how you're going to generate revenue from this software in the next year or two?" If the answer isn't, "yes", then your prospect of ever making money out of the software is probably just wishful thinking. Even if the software represents a significant investment, it's frequently easier to create wealth than it is to capture the value of that wealth. One big realization of the open source movement was that even if you can't capture the value of your software by selling it under proprietary terms, you can still derive value from it via indirect reciprocity by releasing it under a FOSS license.
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  I don't think it is fred itself she wants to make money off of, but rather the C++ libraries she wrote that it uses, as well as an automatic build system. Other clients do pay for work based on those, hence the reluctance to give those away.
fein 13y ago
Tell that to Acquia.
andrewvc 13y ago
At my company we've open sourced a ruby gem for an elastic search client but kept the rails integration closed for some of the same reasons. I just don't have time to write a version that runs with vanilla rails. Our gem relies on a bunch of conventions and libs that are not standard for a rails app. Sure we could extract it, but we would have to rewrite parts that depend on other tools. Sure they could be open sourced as well, but we've hardly got the time to do that. The reality is that most oss projects are small and are maintained by one person with occasional patches from others. Without that one person most die.
tillk 13y ago
Can anyone explain/summarize what this is? I gather it was/is feed reader, but I can't find much more and she (?) is very vague. Or I don't know how to navigate her blog.
- CoolGuySteve 13y ago
  I was wondering too so I found the kickstarter. It's some kind of personal feed reader server: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-reader-extraordinaire http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-rea...
  - tillk 13y ago
    Thanks! I am surprised by this trend — put a project on kickstarter and promise to open source it. Build it on tech that's been open sourced for free. Trying to stay positive here. But haven't they heard of the millions of people who contribute to (quality) open source software every day?
    - svaksha 13y ago
      ... and dont forget the few thousand FOSS projects already freely available on Gitorious, Github, Bitbucket, Google-Code, Launchpad, Sourceforge and ... so many more !
gaze 13y ago
"I might make myself look a bit messy by releasing this. I also imagine that some other people might have to put in some amount of work (much less than the work I put into writing this in the first place) to get this to work, so I'll make them rewrite it all from scratch if they are in need of this functionality." I don't believe this person understands empathy. I realize if you want your project to flourish as an open source project, you need to make it palatable. However, a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING. This person isn't even deluding themselves by saying they'll "get around to open sourcing it." You won't do the world a disservice by releasing working code. Seriously, just come out and be honest and say "I don't want to open source it because I don't wanna."
- bradleyland 13y ago
  I think reality is somewhere in between. Spend some time browsing the issue tracker on a good OSS project. Then, if you're feeling brave, head over to a bad one. I don't think any of this negates your argument, but I understand the apprehension involved in open sourcing a project one feels is sub-par.
- otterley 13y ago
  > a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING Not necessarily. A tarball of shit can become the de facto standard for some utility, and end up haunting us for ages after it gains critical mass, even long after a superior replacement arrives. See, e.g., rvm.
- pnathan 13y ago
  > However, a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING. bzzzt! Wrong! Releasing stuff that is "close enough" as a product and have it succeed is wasting other people's lives as they struggle to fix your ball of mud and make it work better over time. Better to wait and not waste other people's time.
  - daleharvey 13y ago
    Just in case anyone who is thinking about releasing open source softare reads this, it is entirely wrong. Software (open or otherwise) is never done, its always too ugly, missing some features, slow and / or buggy. If you are thinking about releasing your stuff as open source, do it now, it probably is too early and nobody will use it, someone may pick up it or your next library, share some knowledge report some bugs or evern fix stuff. It is very easy for software developers to verify the stability of the libraries they are using, you have absolutely no responsibility to them by releasing software that has bugs, it all does.
aggronn 13y ago
just want to point out: if the reason for holding it back is almost entirely because she wants to get paid for it, she should actually explain how open sourcing it excludes her from income. after reading it, it sounded like she was concerned about the sunk cost--which would be irrational. so I'm curious, how is she earning income from it? it does she know she'll find people to licence it?
- StavrosK 13y ago
  Because, well, making it available for free means that fewer people will be compelled to buy it?
  - aggronn 13y ago
    and if no one is compelled to buy it to begin with? that's what I'm asking. I don't think we can just assume that someone would buy it.
    - StavrosK 13y ago
      Sure, we can't, but if you open source it, you'll make strictly less money than if you hadn't (because if nobody was going to buy it, they aren't going to pay you money if you open source it anyway). This is too simplified, as you can have other monetization models, but usually you don't open-source things if you want to charge for them.
      - daleharvey 13y ago
        > Sure, we can't, but if you open source it, you'll make strictly less money than if you hadn't (because if nobody was going to buy it, they aren't going to pay you money if you open source it anyway). That isnt correct, a lot of people buy open source software specifically because it is open source.
        davidw 13y ago
        And statistically, they're absolutely dwarfed by the money flowing to proprietary applications. It's possible to sell open source software, but it is very, very tricky to get right.
nhangen 13y ago
If you really want to keep building Fred, you could use something like IgnitionDeck (http://ignitiondeck.com http://ignitiondeck.com) to raise money over a longer duration. We've had a lot of people come to us after successful and non-successful Kickstarters in order to keep the dream alive. Edit: I get it, blatant self-promotion. Look through my history and you'll see I rarely mention my company, and when I do, it's appropriate. In this case, I'm trying to help.
- swanson 13y ago
  I downvoted you - it is not the self-promotion, but rather the fact that except for mentioning "Fred", this whole comment reads like an auto-generated message. For example, an ancedote about a similar open source project that failed on kickstarter and found success on IgnitionDeck would probably be better received.
  - nhangen 13y ago
    That's fair enough, I appreciate the feedback. Ironically, I avoided a lengthier comment because I worried it would seem fake.
    - swanson 13y ago
      I certainly can't speak for the whole crowd but I would approach it like this: "Rachel - if you'd still like to pursue crowdfunding for open sourcing Fred, email me at nathan@ignitiondeck.com - we'd love to feature you in a new series we are doing called Kickstarter Redemptions"
      - andrewljohnson 13y ago
        I don't see any decrease in the smarminess of your approach.
      - Sayter 13y ago
        Nathan's comment sounded like a genuine suggestion: the focus is on her to be able to utilize an alternative. With yours, the focus is on we'd "love to feature you." Sounds so much more self-serving, and also like impersonal marketing copy. Though, as with you, I cannot speak for the whole crowd.
edderly 13y ago
I can't just help thinking that if this software was truly both non-trivial and useful that it would be relatively easy to pick up $30k "after" open sourcing it via consulting or customization work.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- wes-exp 13y ago
  I feel like the OSS consulting model benefits from releasing buggy, hard to use software that requires the developer's assistance to get working. It sounds like she wants to release software that works well without needing any maintenance, which would tend toward a payment up-front model.
  - edderly 13y ago
    I don't think you get any guarantee that just because you pay for software that it works well and is not buggy.
jongold 13y ago
Not wanting to proselytize on a failure but presumably 15 minutes of graphic design input on the video thumbnail would have helped the Kickstarter pitch?
swanson 13y ago
Regarding the money thing, remember there are other currencies than dollars. When I open sourced my own RSS reader[1] some of the "non-monetary currencies" I received: * Several (non-robot) recruitment emails from well-known companies doing Ruby * Additional development time from strangers to fix things I wasn't interested in doing (i18n, performance improvements) * Additional testing time to iron out all the bugs * 50-100 "qualified followers" (i.e. other developers/designers) on Twitter, many thanking me for creating the project - increasing my network reach * Five people have sent me messages that their merged pull requests were there first open source contributions - that feels really cool * Links from two of my favorite blogs - OneThingWell and The Changelog * Being referenced in a Ruby book written by a community leader * Socially-validated (1.8k+ stars) open source project that I can forever point to * Material for future blog posts, user group/conference talks Not all of these have the same value to each person - but for me, they were worth the trade-off. Could I have charged for the software instead? Probably, but I have a day job that pays me well and I enjoy. I wrote the software because I wanted it to exist (one of my favorite things about being a developer) and any extra benefits are just icing on the cake. [1]: https://github.com/swanson/stringer https://github.com/swanson/stringer
- iuguy 13y ago
  I just took a look at stringer and having recently set up tiny tiny rss wish I knew about this at the time, as fever support was something I really wanted. I'll take a look into it when I get a moment, but your post inspired me to create a /r/repos subreddit to post open source repositories worth checking out.
- gboudrias 13y ago
  This is a really cool example, thanks for contributing. You have my star :)
mempko 13y ago
In other words, capitalism ruins it for the rest of us....
- mwfunk 13y ago
  What's the alternative? Do you want your tax money to go towards supporting this particular developer so that she can open source this particular project? Because that's the alternative. Or are you saying that she shouldn't have the right to determine what to do with her code? Because that world sounds pretty awful too.
  - calibraxis 13y ago
    Sure, funding free software democratically as a public good is rational. There's no law of physics which makes you choose between directly compensating people, and their work being open. Books, music and movies could then also be open. I recall this has been advocated by Lessig and Stallman. Go far enough in this direction, you end up with ideas like Participatory Economics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics) Unfortunately, to people in non-democratic countries (who, for example, can't choose to stop allocating their taxes to prisons, drones, armies and surveillance), taxes are some awful thing. But in a saner culture, people would rather enjoy deciding on collective purchases.
    - dnautics 13y ago
      where and when do collective purchases go to anything besides enriching the wealthy or politically connected? "[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth. Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ... But is it possible? ... Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary? ...Finally...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success."
cheery 13y ago
I've found open source so liberating that I couldn't even consider closing down my source ever! For a while, for me, it's been morally wrong to close source code or rely on sources that's not within your reach. "why should I compromise my own ability to license this and make some money from it?" It's the same reasons you don't do slaves anymore. This guy needs to figure out better business models because the ones she's trying to do are obsoleted. Also it's not wonder that her Kickstarter failed, it sucked very hard. Big TL;DR with no marketting material that would motivate people to pick on it. Most of people who saw that thing probably had no idea what they could do with her project.
AdrianRossouw 13y ago
I just don't think that there are enough developers yearning for yet-another-feed-reader, and one written in C++ of all things, to really support an open source project for it. Much less one that is being held hostage by it's author.
clark-kent 13y ago
Your project doesn't have to be perfect or complete when you open source it. You just have to set your version number correctly somewhere between v0.0.0 - v1.0. Developers will still find it useful while they know it's not yet 1.0.

76 points by ericedge 13y ago

kaoD 13y ago

Summary: "I might want to make money out of this, so... nope."

snuxoll 13y ago
Open-source and profit aren't mutually exclusive, in this case he was unable to get enough of the latter to justify the effort of the former, perfectly reasonable.
- slater 13y ago
  She.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  You're both right, that's what the blog seems to be saying to me. Can't argue with either. I think this is also a not-so-hidden hint of 'if you wanted this open source, you should have paid more attention to that kickstarter!' I can't really blame people for not backing that kickstarter either though. Why $30K for an OSS feed reader when there are so many open source ones [1] that could be easily retooled to most purposes? The market for this stuff is so incredibly over saturated as it is. Rather make something new and different if you're going to do a kickstarter. [1] http://opensource.com/life/13/3/eight-open-source-rss-feed-readers http://opensource.com/life/13/3/eight-open-source-rss-feed-r...
  - snuxoll 13y ago
    > different That's the key, rule 1 for introducing a product is someone has probably already done it, so make sure you provide some value that your existing competition doesn't have. After playing with 'fred' for a few minutes, I don't see how I would care to use this over any of the alternatives.
  - commandar 13y ago
    I mean, looking at the Kickstarter, I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what Fred is. www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-reader-extraordinaire There's a vague description of being an RSS reader that you have control over. There's all kinds of talk of the various technologies that Fred sits on top of, but very little talk about what Fred itself actually does. There's a single image on the Kickstarter page, which isn't the product itself, and looks like something whipped together in Paint in 5 minutes time. There's a link to a demo site, but, again, it's not entirely clear what's going on when you get there. It's not that people are unwilling to pitch in or that $30k is necessarily even too much for that, but it has to be something people want and you have to give them a reason to want it. The lack of any kind of compelling pitch seems to be what killed the Kickstarter in this case.
dlitz 13y ago
I think a more relevant question is, "Do you have a realistic plan for how you're going to generate revenue from this software in the next year or two?" If the answer isn't, "yes", then your prospect of ever making money out of the software is probably just wishful thinking. Even if the software represents a significant investment, it's frequently easier to create wealth than it is to capture the value of that wealth. One big realization of the open source movement was that even if you can't capture the value of your software by selling it under proprietary terms, you can still derive value from it via indirect reciprocity by releasing it under a FOSS license.
rogerbinns 13y ago
I don't think it is fred itself she wants to make money off of, but rather the C++ libraries she wrote that it uses, as well as an automatic build system. Other clients do pay for work based on those, hence the reluctance to give those away.

fein 13y ago

Tell that to Acquia.

andrewvc 13y ago

At my company we've open sourced a ruby gem for an elastic search client but kept the rails integration closed for some of the same reasons. I just don't have time to write a version that runs with vanilla rails. Our gem relies on a bunch of conventions and libs that are not standard for a rails app. Sure we could extract it, but we would have to rewrite parts that depend on other tools. Sure they could be open sourced as well, but we've hardly got the time to do that. The reality is that most oss projects are small and are maintained by one person with occasional patches from others. Without that one person most die.

tillk 13y ago

Can anyone explain/summarize what this is? I gather it was/is feed reader, but I can't find much more and she (?) is very vague. Or I don't know how to navigate her blog.

CoolGuySteve 13y ago
I was wondering too so I found the kickstarter. It's some kind of personal feed reader server: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-reader-extraordinaire http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-rea...
- tillk 13y ago
  Thanks! I am surprised by this trend — put a project on kickstarter and promise to open source it. Build it on tech that's been open sourced for free. Trying to stay positive here. But haven't they heard of the millions of people who contribute to (quality) open source software every day?
  - svaksha 13y ago
    ... and dont forget the few thousand FOSS projects already freely available on Gitorious, Github, Bitbucket, Google-Code, Launchpad, Sourceforge and ... so many more !

gaze 13y ago

"I might make myself look a bit messy by releasing this. I also imagine that some other people might have to put in some amount of work (much less than the work I put into writing this in the first place) to get this to work, so I'll make them rewrite it all from scratch if they are in need of this functionality." I don't believe this person understands empathy. I realize if you want your project to flourish as an open source project, you need to make it palatable. However, a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING. This person isn't even deluding themselves by saying they'll "get around to open sourcing it." You won't do the world a disservice by releasing working code. Seriously, just come out and be honest and say "I don't want to open source it because I don't wanna."

bradleyland 13y ago
I think reality is somewhere in between. Spend some time browsing the issue tracker on a good OSS project. Then, if you're feeling brave, head over to a bad one. I don't think any of this negates your argument, but I understand the apprehension involved in open sourcing a project one feels is sub-par.
otterley 13y ago
> a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING Not necessarily. A tarball of shit can become the de facto standard for some utility, and end up haunting us for ages after it gains critical mass, even long after a superior replacement arrives. See, e.g., rvm.
pnathan 13y ago
> However, a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING. bzzzt! Wrong! Releasing stuff that is "close enough" as a product and have it succeed is wasting other people's lives as they struggle to fix your ball of mud and make it work better over time. Better to wait and not waste other people's time.
- daleharvey 13y ago
  Just in case anyone who is thinking about releasing open source softare reads this, it is entirely wrong. Software (open or otherwise) is never done, its always too ugly, missing some features, slow and / or buggy. If you are thinking about releasing your stuff as open source, do it now, it probably is too early and nobody will use it, someone may pick up it or your next library, share some knowledge report some bugs or evern fix stuff. It is very easy for software developers to verify the stability of the libraries they are using, you have absolutely no responsibility to them by releasing software that has bugs, it all does.

aggronn 13y ago

just want to point out: if the reason for holding it back is almost entirely because she wants to get paid for it, she should actually explain how open sourcing it excludes her from income. after reading it, it sounded like she was concerned about the sunk cost--which would be irrational. so I'm curious, how is she earning income from it? it does she know she'll find people to licence it?

StavrosK 13y ago
Because, well, making it available for free means that fewer people will be compelled to buy it?
- aggronn 13y ago
  and if no one is compelled to buy it to begin with? that's what I'm asking. I don't think we can just assume that someone would buy it.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Sure, we can't, but if you open source it, you'll make strictly less money than if you hadn't (because if nobody was going to buy it, they aren't going to pay you money if you open source it anyway). This is too simplified, as you can have other monetization models, but usually you don't open-source things if you want to charge for them.
    - daleharvey 13y ago
      > Sure, we can't, but if you open source it, you'll make strictly less money than if you hadn't (because if nobody was going to buy it, they aren't going to pay you money if you open source it anyway). That isnt correct, a lot of people buy open source software specifically because it is open source.
      - davidw 13y ago
        And statistically, they're absolutely dwarfed by the money flowing to proprietary applications. It's possible to sell open source software, but it is very, very tricky to get right.

nhangen 13y ago

If you really want to keep building Fred, you could use something like IgnitionDeck (http://ignitiondeck.com http://ignitiondeck.com) to raise money over a longer duration. We've had a lot of people come to us after successful and non-successful Kickstarters in order to keep the dream alive. Edit: I get it, blatant self-promotion. Look through my history and you'll see I rarely mention my company, and when I do, it's appropriate. In this case, I'm trying to help.

swanson 13y ago
I downvoted you - it is not the self-promotion, but rather the fact that except for mentioning "Fred", this whole comment reads like an auto-generated message. For example, an ancedote about a similar open source project that failed on kickstarter and found success on IgnitionDeck would probably be better received.
- nhangen 13y ago
  That's fair enough, I appreciate the feedback. Ironically, I avoided a lengthier comment because I worried it would seem fake.
  - swanson 13y ago
    I certainly can't speak for the whole crowd but I would approach it like this: "Rachel - if you'd still like to pursue crowdfunding for open sourcing Fred, email me at nathan@ignitiondeck.com - we'd love to feature you in a new series we are doing called Kickstarter Redemptions"
    - andrewljohnson 13y ago
      I don't see any decrease in the smarminess of your approach.
    - Sayter 13y ago
      Nathan's comment sounded like a genuine suggestion: the focus is on her to be able to utilize an alternative. With yours, the focus is on we'd "love to feature you." Sounds so much more self-serving, and also like impersonal marketing copy. Though, as with you, I cannot speak for the whole crowd.

edderly 13y ago

I can't just help thinking that if this software was truly both non-trivial and useful that it would be relatively easy to pick up $30k "after" open sourcing it via consulting or customization work.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
wes-exp 13y ago
I feel like the OSS consulting model benefits from releasing buggy, hard to use software that requires the developer's assistance to get working. It sounds like she wants to release software that works well without needing any maintenance, which would tend toward a payment up-front model.
- edderly 13y ago
  I don't think you get any guarantee that just because you pay for software that it works well and is not buggy.

jongold 13y ago

Not wanting to proselytize on a failure but presumably 15 minutes of graphic design input on the video thumbnail would have helped the Kickstarter pitch?

swanson 13y ago

Regarding the money thing, remember there are other currencies than dollars. When I open sourced my own RSS reader[1] some of the "non-monetary currencies" I received: * Several (non-robot) recruitment emails from well-known companies doing Ruby * Additional development time from strangers to fix things I wasn't interested in doing (i18n, performance improvements) * Additional testing time to iron out all the bugs * 50-100 "qualified followers" (i.e. other developers/designers) on Twitter, many thanking me for creating the project - increasing my network reach * Five people have sent me messages that their merged pull requests were there first open source contributions - that feels really cool * Links from two of my favorite blogs - OneThingWell and The Changelog * Being referenced in a Ruby book written by a community leader * Socially-validated (1.8k+ stars) open source project that I can forever point to * Material for future blog posts, user group/conference talks Not all of these have the same value to each person - but for me, they were worth the trade-off. Could I have charged for the software instead? Probably, but I have a day job that pays me well and I enjoy. I wrote the software because I wanted it to exist (one of my favorite things about being a developer) and any extra benefits are just icing on the cake. [1]: https://github.com/swanson/stringer https://github.com/swanson/stringer

iuguy 13y ago
I just took a look at stringer and having recently set up tiny tiny rss wish I knew about this at the time, as fever support was something I really wanted. I'll take a look into it when I get a moment, but your post inspired me to create a /r/repos subreddit to post open source repositories worth checking out.
gboudrias 13y ago
This is a really cool example, thanks for contributing. You have my star :)

mempko 13y ago

In other words, capitalism ruins it for the rest of us....

mwfunk 13y ago
What's the alternative? Do you want your tax money to go towards supporting this particular developer so that she can open source this particular project? Because that's the alternative. Or are you saying that she shouldn't have the right to determine what to do with her code? Because that world sounds pretty awful too.
- calibraxis 13y ago
  Sure, funding free software democratically as a public good is rational. There's no law of physics which makes you choose between directly compensating people, and their work being open. Books, music and movies could then also be open. I recall this has been advocated by Lessig and Stallman. Go far enough in this direction, you end up with ideas like Participatory Economics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics) Unfortunately, to people in non-democratic countries (who, for example, can't choose to stop allocating their taxes to prisons, drones, armies and surveillance), taxes are some awful thing. But in a saner culture, people would rather enjoy deciding on collective purchases.
  - dnautics 13y ago
    where and when do collective purchases go to anything besides enriching the wealthy or politically connected? "[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth. Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ... But is it possible? ... Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary? ...Finally...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success."

cheery 13y ago

I've found open source so liberating that I couldn't even consider closing down my source ever! For a while, for me, it's been morally wrong to close source code or rely on sources that's not within your reach. "why should I compromise my own ability to license this and make some money from it?" It's the same reasons you don't do slaves anymore. This guy needs to figure out better business models because the ones she's trying to do are obsoleted. Also it's not wonder that her Kickstarter failed, it sucked very hard. Big TL;DR with no marketting material that would motivate people to pick on it. Most of people who saw that thing probably had no idea what they could do with her project.

AdrianRossouw 13y ago

I just don't think that there are enough developers yearning for yet-another-feed-reader, and one written in C++ of all things, to really support an open source project for it. Much less one that is being held hostage by it's author.

clark-kent 13y ago

Your project doesn't have to be perfect or complete when you open source it. You just have to set your version number correctly somewhere between v0.0.0 - v1.0. Developers will still find it useful while they know it's not yet 1.0.