OSS Funding through Fundable

John Pratt writes "FredCK, developer of the popular FCKEditor, recently raised $600 from supporters through Fundable to port his open source HTML editor to Safari. Fundable is a new site that lets groups of people pool money for specific purposes, like software features. Unlike generic donation dropboxes (such as PayPal buttons), if a group's targeted collection isn't reached after 2 or 4 weeks, everyone gets a complete refund." Newsforge has a piece discussing the site as well.

Comments

Is Software Tangible Enough For This?

[DanielMarkham]

Software isn't like a car or boat, FTA

Fundable.org leaves it up to the project initiator to make sure all the contributors are satisfied. "You can't really make sure someone is going to do what they're supposed to do," Pratt says. "We're working on a feedback system, but for now we let people post a link to their eBay profile and ratings, thereby implementing a degree of trustworthiness."

So I pay my money and get my software delivered. After a month, I discover it has a bug in it. Do I get my money back then? Or does the developer go back to fundable to raise more money for the fix? Seems like people would be unhappy with this system over a long period of time. For simple, atomic operations, fine. But for ongoing software development and maintenance? I don't see how it would work.

Under The Hood

Re:Is Software Tangible Enough For This?

[Rolan]

It's called trust. If you don't trust the project intiator to do what they say or to do the right thing, then don't give the money.

funny how i see paypal and moneybookers but...

[root-kun]

the official fck website doesnt list fundable.org as a donation channel. I just see paypal and monkeybookers.
The idea of fundable.org is good, especially since paypal is so miserable to work with, but when dealing with large money transfers, I would expect to know what kind of financial backing they have, and how reputable they are. I dont see any of that information on the page.
I must say though, posting a donation link on the slashdot main page is a tad bit of advertising for my taste, even if the project is good (which it appears to be)

I would much rather see a bonded Escrow house

[gte910h]

This should be a bonded escrow house. If its not, you'd be a fool to trust them with your money. Also, they should offer escrow services (Where the money is not disbursed until it passes some test). --Michael

Re:I would much rather see a bonded Escrow house

[gstoddart]

This should be a bonded escrow house. If its not, you'd be a fool to trust them with your money. Also, they should offer escrow services (Where the money is not disbursed until it passes some test)

Well, given that OSS projects don't have the money to pay for a bonded escrow house, that's not very applicable here.

Yes, for large coporate software, that is the kind of thing you do.

That would be like saying if the HURD could spend $1billion on R&D they could probably produce a finished OS. The lack of the $1 billion is the key here.

For buying code

[Harbinjer]

This could be really useful for buying the code to open source projects, especially older applications, or stuff from companies that are dying.

This might've been really useful for getting Blender at the time. I'm just saying it could work well for this stuff.

It could also be used for code bounties...ie how much do you want a feature, added to an OSS program.

I have to agree with some previous posters that this may not work out great for continuous OSS support, meaning paying people full-time to work on stuff, cause that requires lots of money, and you aren't quite sure what you'll get each month.

Re:Like Linux Fund

[ZephyrXero]

What we need now is a site that combines the ideas behind Google's Summer of Code with this new site...

As far as LinuxFund goes...maybe we need to setup a new site (spreadlinux.org maybe?)that has users submit advertisements and promotional/awareness campaigns and then once they're approved by the community, they setup a Fundable account to pay for it...Kind of like SpreadFirefox and their New York times ad, but on the next level...