Crowdfunding Open Source Software Enhancements and Bug Fixes

flok writes "It's nice when your open source pet project is popular, but sometimes the constant stream of feature requests can be intimidating. The CatInCan website aims to help prioritize a project owner's efforts while letting them make some money on the side. Think of it as a Kickstarter-variant where people can raise funds to get functionality in software realized, or maybe to get that long-ignored bug fixed."

Comments

Not so sure about this.

[MrEricSir]

This is of interest to me since at my day job we're trying to (advertisement warning) crowdfund our new email client.

We talked about funding individual ticket bounties, but that didn't make sense to us. For one thing, a lot of code changes aren't easily ticketable -- or the ticketing itself is a lot of work, i.e. planning meetings are required. It doesn't seem fair to pay for the programming but not the planning.

But the big problem is this: how do you get continuous enough funding to have a staff, an office, health plans, etc. when you're doing individual bounties? The funding seems like it wouldn't be stable enough to support the company.

I'd also point out that this very idea has been tried several times already, never with much success.