Interesting times! It seems to be increasingly popular that developers are trying to raise money so they can start open source projects.
It's impossible to say how this trend will work long term but I suspect a lot of the open source software I love today wouldn't exist if it had relied upon raising $50k up front.. not only because of the likelihood of raising the cash but because the lesser extrinsic motivation suggests, perhaps, that there was more intrinsic motivation for developing and releasing those projects?
I think it's great if proven projects take donations or sponsorship to kick things up another notch or to support full time developers, but merely to start a project? I'm on the fence about that, and will be interested to see how it plays out as a model.
For those not a part of the Django community: Toastdriven is not new, Daniel Lindsley is a staple for us. Haystack and Tastypie on their own are wonderful projects with untold hours of unpaid OSS. This is more of a full-stack project than either of those, but I have a huge amount of faith in their ability to execute, given the time required. I would much rather see them working on OSS than consulting, it's better for everybody (except maybe clients who can't have them exclusively)
Just so it's clear, I don't question the sincerity, stature or trustworthiness of these guys. They come across well in their video. My lines of thought are about the project, not them personally.
What I find confusing is why a big upfront investment is necessary merely to start the project and, perhaps more importantly, why it wouldn't be a true open source project and only open sourced at the end. Why not open source what they have already and see if it sells itself by attracting collaborators?
It's not clear from the page or the video if they've open sourced the work done on the prototype already, but if they have and people are already playing with it and seeing promise, it becomes a much easier sell. Many good open source projects got significant sponsorship or raised money for people to work on them after initially proving itself, and that's great.
Your concerns are valid. It costs nothing but a few minutes to start an open source project. Projects of this scope, however, do benefit from some amount of early design and planning. After reading PHK's recent rant [1], and reflecting on Brooks's idea of "surgical teams" [2], I wonder if some initial work in isolation is such a bad thing.
Or maybe the lines between a startup and an OSS project are just being blurred in some weird new way.
Or maybe the lines between a startup and an OSS project are just being blurred in some weird new way.
A response from the people running the project leads me to believe this is true. Essentially it seems they're seeking funding for their product but the open sourcing of the project is a big cherry on top (rather than it being purely an "open source project").
Understandable. For us, if it were just a library or an extraction, we wouldn't be trying to fund it. However, what we're trying to build is more like an open-source product, essentially an entire service made public so anyone can use it.
Because of the time commitment involved, we're trying to fund it so we can work on it (as well as the software we'll be building on top of) full-time from the start.
However, what we're trying to build is more like an open-source product, essentially an entire service made public so anyone can use it.
I think the part of this that got me pondering is that typically a basic prototype or initial version would be open sourced, people would play with it, and then funding or sponsorship would come along. Projects like Redis, WordPress, TravisCI, jQuery, Node.js, Ruby, Phusion Passenger, and PHP come to mind.
Your approach is different in asking for money up front and then promising to open source only when the project is finished.
While it seems you are awesome guys, much loved, and do good work, it's that leap from the previously established model that gets me wondering if it's a good approach. Maybe it is and I just don't realize it yet. Maybe I'm being nostalgic. But if this project were already open sourced and you were asking for funding to make a serious go of it, it would, to me, seem an easier sell than "we want to build X, give us the $ we need, and we'll open source it when we're done."
I suspect I'm just being a bit of an old fogey, but without questions come no answers.. ;-)
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I see it more as crowd-funding (I feel dirty using that term) a useful service with the added benefit of being able to run it yourself. The goal was to spur more/better discussions (than what private chat or crappy forums currently do).
We could certainly open up the code sooner, it just won't be polished enough to use from the get-go.
Most of all, it's an experiment for us. Do other people want this service as much as we do? Is this a valid way to try to bootstrap something? Can a service 100% (K, so 95%) open-source itself & still make ends meet?
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I see it more as crowd-funding (I feel dirty using that term) a useful service with the added benefit of being able to run it yourself.
That's a better way for me to interpret it actually. I latched on to the "open source" aspect as being of utmost significance, but really it seems you are taking the well trod route of getting funding for your product - much like anyone who applies to YC or seeks investors - and the open source part is a nice big cherry on the top when you're done. Given that, your approach makes a lot more sense vs my initial "we wanna do an open source project, give us $ to start!" interpretation ;-)
Well, good luck! You have certainly picked an area of software that is crying out for better solutions.
I would agree if it was an unknown entity or lesser known developer starting this. However Daniel has created two very heavily used Django libraries Haystack (http://haystacksearch.org/) and Tastypie (http://tastypieapi.org/) so that should reduce the worry of being able to deliver.
I Kickstarted to begin working on The OpenPhoto Project [1]. I had quit my job already so even if it didn't get funded I was going to start the project.
We successfully raised about $25k [2] about 14 months ago. It took that long before we could get any additional money since the service we were offering (similar to what Automattic does with Wordpress, wasn't generating revenue yet).
I spoke with a handful of angels and seed stage investors. Never got much traction with them. Applied at the standard incubators and got a few interviews but no offers.
Oddly, what did stick was a fellowship we received from The Shuttleworth Foundation [3]. It's been an interesting journey at what started with traditional angel and VC funding to something more in line with our vision, a fellowship from a foundation that focuses on "open".
I've got ton of blog posts about the experience so far...
It's impossible to say how this trend will work long term but I suspect a lot of the open source software I love today wouldn't exist if it had relied upon raising $50k up front.. not only because of the likelihood of raising the cash but because the lesser extrinsic motivation suggests, perhaps, that there was more intrinsic motivation for developing and releasing those projects?
I think it's great if proven projects take donations or sponsorship to kick things up another notch or to support full time developers, but merely to start a project? I'm on the fence about that, and will be interested to see how it plays out as a model.