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A New Free Software Donation Directory

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the free-as-in-dollars dept.

Wolfgang Spraul writes: "CoSource and SourceXchange are closed. They became part of the history of Open Source Software Markets. However, I still need a place where I can find maintainers or core developers of existing Free Software packages that accept my feature request and payment, implement the feature within a reasonable timeframe and give me support if it doesn't work in my environment. Since no such place is in sight, I launched the Free Software Donation Directory as a first step. What do you think? How should the next Free Software market look like? Should there be one at all?" Right now, he's got around 20 projects listed, if you care to invest in some Free software.

1 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Could it ever have worked? by stevey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you have to work on only a few features, wouldn't you do those which scratch your own itch rather than those you were paid for?

    I wrote and maintain GNUMP3d a streaming server for MP3's/OGG's. I originally wrote it because nothing was available which met my needs. After using it myself for a while I decided to make it available to others.

    To be honest the last few releases have only happened because of the users. It does everything I set out to do. The features contained in the last few releases were almost exclusively requested by users.

    Granted they didn't pay - but that's a good example of programming which wasn't explicitly scratching my itch.

    OTOH I have had a couple of people buy stuff from my wishlist in exchange for features, or to persuade me to implement a feature before I'd planned to. So I can see it from both sides.

    Personally I think a directory like this is a good idea - if there's somebody out there who wants to support OS work, but not donate to a faceless company like RedHat they can choose an application from the list there which they like and appreciate and easily find contact details.