Is Diaspora the Future of Free Software Funding? 146
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the better-than-nothing dept.
from the better-than-nothing dept.
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?"
This project is fundamental... (Score:2, Insightful)
This project (and others like it*) has to succeed, we need something that makes the net lean toward P2P as an organisational structure.
Without these types of fights the net is in the long term going to suffer a lot from corporate control and stifle people's ability to start new ventures.
* http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Group:GNU_Social/Project_Comparison [fsf.org]
Got code? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll get excited about Diaspora when they actually start putting out code...
Re:"Prior Art" (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this different from the model used for NPR pledge drives?
The key difference seems to be that you are paying for something specific to this project. In NPR, you're paying for some future costs of running it but also by and large shows that are already filmed and done. You're helping keep the access up and running. In Diaspora and Sobule's cases, you're paying for the coming work. You're really funding the creation of this project. Both are pledges for the future but in this case you are instrumental in creation, not accessing what's already created. I suppose locally produced shows may enjoy your money but you're not attached solely to that project when you contribute. And you're often rewarded with non-personal items. A duffel bag? A coffee mug? An old DVD of WWII? Old crap they have laying around? Red Green signatures? (Note: I would actually enjoy the Red Green signature)
Diaspora has to ship 4,241 CDs, 3,267 bunches of "cool disaspora stickers", 2,488 t-shirts and then all the hosting and phone support in the remaining groups which isn't anything to sneeze at either. It's all personalized to the Diaspora project and you're a part of that project now.
That's my interpretation anyway.
major problem with social netwrk wannabees (Score:5, Insightful)
For small projects (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem comes in when the project get very successful and starts needed professional management. Now people are not paying to directly create product, but for support and management services. I may be willing to donate $20 so that some coder buy food while writing a device driver, or some artist can rent studio space to record and album, but I am willing to donate that money for an administrative assistant? I don't know.
this is the part that blew my mind: (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-open-alternative/ [wired.com]
they haven't started programming it!
"hey, i got a cool idea, wanna give me $115K?
holy the awesome power of media coverage batman
Re:this is the part that blew my mind: (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I don't understand why people keep giving them money. Give your money to a project that has actually been started (and actually close to being finished), like appleseed - http://appleseed.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] .
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Why does anybody need hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop software? You're using a computer right now as you read it. Start coding. What's the money thing all about?
2. These people haven't gotten together as a group (that I'm aware of or have ever heard of) and done anything together. Why would I throw money at an unproven group(?) of people?
3. If an idea is good enough, people will expect to make money on a project and want to invest on their own. This guy wants to get free of Facebook control by writing an aggregator that collects Facebook data? This is truly moronic.
Good free, open source software is generally written by a brilliant person or group of people who do it because they can and they want to. Proprietary software will be backed by people expecting to make some kind of return on their investment. This is some horrible mash-up of those two ideas that nobody has managed to think through.
Re:Other Projects (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:major problem with social netwrk wannabees (Score:5, Insightful)
People never thought Yahoo could be displaced in the search engine market in the late 90s either.
Re:Got code? (Score:3, Insightful)
It will be fun to see after the guys get their "first version" running and see all the "real world" issues they will get. IIRC Friendster got canned due to scalability issues.
IMHO the Diaspora guys have a "good idea", but it is still to be implemented. However I have seen a *lot* of people with lots of good ideas for software, unfortunately the implementation is what counts.
Best of luck to them anyhow.
Jewish diaspora (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, I agree it won't be Diaspora because they have a terrible name
It might become popular with Jews out of Israel [wikipedia.org].