The Value of Free Software

[Eric S. Johansson]

Don Parris wrote:
> Our house-church ministry recently funded the addition of a missing
> e-mail feature from Evolution.  You can find out more about it here:
> http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/64720/index.html
> 
> The article was updated, and you'll notice that affects Ubuntu users.
> 
> Regards,
> Don
> 

Don, this is a wonderful article.  It does highlight a problem with 
funding of open source features.  It seems to me that one should be able 
to buy shares towards a feature and schedule.  it could work something 
like this:

individuals "commit" to buying shares.  the debt incurred by the 
individual would be like a credit card debt and that they are signing a 
contract to pay on demand.  But unlike the credit card, they would only 
pay at certain trigger points such as achieving a proper number of 
shares to fund the project, the developer meeting certain milestones, etc.

if a party does not pay, the developer has the choice of legal action or 
public disclosure of the party that did not pay.  Ominously, one needs 
to work with a lawyer to handle this properly to shield the developer 
from liability of disclosure but it can be done.

nonpayment could also be communicated among other projects so if that 
party is over committing, their funding offer could be removed from the 
project.

The reason I suggest this model is because quite frankly, I can't afford 
to pay for fully developing some features[1].  But I can afford to pay 
something and if there was some way to aggregate a bunch of us partial 
payors, then a project to move forward.

This topic also highlights one of the ways the open source movement has 
shot itself in the foot.  Because people confuse "free" with "free", 
it's hard to get people to pay for anything because it's "free".  as a 
result, the vast majority of open source work is subsidized by other 
people or companies.  I have had clients subsidize some work for various 
projects and I have funded my own work out of my own pocket.  It's about 
time we, the open source users, started funding our own projects and not 
rely on indirect or direct corporate subsidies.

what's another way to make this happen?  I've recently read about the 
number of micro lending structures in which a series of people will in 
aggregate capital as a loan to some third party.  We might be able to 
leverage that infrastructure and that it provides us funders was some 
form of legal protection, it lets the developer get the money up front, 
and if they deliver the code, we can forgive the debt.

Anyway, food for thought.

--- eric

[1] for example, I really need a putty session that reestablishes itself 
automatically every time my WiFi connection blinks.  And believe me, it 
blinks.  I can't afford to fund it, but I can throw 20 bucks at the 
problem.  If we had 200 people throwing 20 bucks, we might get close to 
funding the effort.  the challenge at that point is advertising the 
effort and aggregating all the funders.