Is Diaspora the Future of Free Software Funding?

Glyn Moody writes "Diaspora, the free software project to create a distributed version of Facebook, has been much in the news recently — not least because it has raised $170,000 in just a few weeks. But what's also interesting is the way they've raised that money: through a series of graded rewards for pledges of financial support. This is an approach adopted by some forward-thinking musicians: for example, Jill Sobule funded her last album in the same way, garnering $75,000 in pledges from fans. Is this a model that could be applied to other free software projects, or is it just a one-off?"

Re:Pledges eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to have a look at kickstart (the pledge funding/rewards system) then.
You actually have to put the funds on hold to make an actual pledge.

If the thing goes ahead, your funds get taken and delivered to the group you're supporting.

Don't forget Blender

[MikeV]

IIRC, it's source code was purchased from the license holders and made open-source thanks to this same sort of thing.

Other Projects

[LBArrettAnderson]

I realize that this article isn't really about diaspora itself, but I feel it's an obligation to point out that there are other, more promising and further along (nearly finished), projects out there, such as Appleseed [sourceforge.net], that have the same goal, and aren't being run by people with almost no experience.

Re:"Prior Art"

[s73v3r]

Studio time, sound engineers, money to live off of while you actually write the songs. These are things that come to mind.

Re:Jewish diaspora

[Apple Acolyte]

Glad someone brought this up already. Yes, diaspora primarily refers to the Jewish dispersal across the globe as a result of the Roman occupation and destruction of the Jewish commonwealth in the land of Israel. Diaspora literally means dispersion, and while it can refer to dispersals of other groups of people, the primary denotation of the term refers to the exile of the Jewish people. If others want to contest that, check out the definitions on m-w.com.

Why the project creators used this term for distributed funding of software and other projects is somewhat beyond me. They want to use an unconventional term for dispersal, but diaspora has a unique meaning and isn't really a term with a positive connotation.

Re:I'm not advocating Diaspora, but...

[dominion]

It was actually more like one year, although I was silently committing to the svn without doing much promotion for the year before that. We just couldn't get momentum going, so at some point, jobs and personal lives took over.

This time around, it's different, though. I have to thank the Diaspora* folks, even if they don't end up coding anything, they've really gotten people to start thinking about open source, distributed social networking. And that's a positive for everyone.

We're trying to raise money the same way Diaspora* did, using a similar website. I don't expect to get as much as they did, but I think it's definitely possible to meet the goal.

http://indiegogo.com/The-Appleseed-Project [indiegogo.com]