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Under review

Crowdfunding?

burrum 11 year бұрын updated by Alex Jenter 10 year бұрын 0
Have you considered crowdfunding business model?

I am aware of several forms of it. I see them this way.

On Kickstarter you fund project start for a reward. Apparently this is why such name. Popular projects tend to attract big money. Abruptly.

On Flattr you give X bucks monthly to "charity" and they distribute to projects you clicked proportionally to how many you clicked them. Funny model, but not really clear what you pay for. foobar2000 uses it.

Next model is "fund the feature". I first met it at OsmAnd project:
http://www.bidforfix.com/p/osmand.net/
This is my favorite so far. It allows opening the project and still getting money, but only for solving problems that have not yet been solved. Want faster search or more UI polishing? You can fund it!

Last is the classic "Donate to support the project" model. I don't know where it is good at.

These are just models. I have no experience in business and am curious if any of these could be better for this project, than current "pay for extra features" model.

What I like about current model:
* I have an option to support the project.
* Premium features are good reason to pay.

What I don't like in current model:
* Less eyes looking at premium features means poorer testing of them.
* Extra code for licencing, limitation and protection drains machine resources to compute it, human resources to maintain it, and increases overall complexity of the system (lowering reliability). All that while not doing any application work.
* Licences, copyrights and other ethereal "you have the right to ..." do not fit well into digital information era. They were designed for physical objects that take time and effort to manufacture.
licensing