| Thank you for your detailed comment. We really do appreciate your feedback - it will help us to get better! Our KickStarter style funding events are called Initiatives. Please visit our early Initiatives page and you will find two projects we are already helping to get funding. We say it is a KickStarter for open source projects because it is a marketplace where companies that use open source software can connect with companies/individuals that will commit on a commercial basis to advance project roadmaps and maintenance. This is similar to KickStarter in the sense that the public (one side of the market place) is funding the project (other side of the marketplace) in return for a promise to use a product/service in the future when it is available. Unlike Closjure, the projects that start an Initiative will be open source. Additionally, the feature/maintenance that the project releases as a result of the Initiative will also be open source. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and many other large companies donate to open source software for a number of reasons. Typically, it is to fund a new feature or to help maintain the project. We are creating a platform for these companies to better fund the projects they rely on (and already fund). These projects aren't restricted to one Initiative. They can start as many Initiatives as they desire. Of course, the success of the Initiative is dependent on the supply of funding. With regards to ongoing funding, projects can create an Initiative for maintaining the project which, while it is a lump sum, can be distributed to the maintainers over time (under contract). In this sense, it is similar to the world of startup funding: when you've run out of money, you ask for more and continue to grow. |
One suggestion I have is to use plainer language when describing what this actually is, especially on your landing page. Here in the comments, when describing the project you've repeatedly described it as a marketplace, which makes sense to me. However that word or description doesn't appear at all on your landing page, and after reading the whole page I'm really none the wiser about how it works.
The way you describe all this, it sounds very complicated, but I'm wondering if it really is that complicated in practice. I'd suggest trying to have a "How does the funding work?" section on your landing page, and try to get that section under (say) 100 words. If you can't describe it that briefly, I'd gently suggest that you should try to make the way it works simpler.
In this sense, it is similar to the world of startup funding: when you've run out of money, you ask for more and continue to grow.
I think that's fair enough, especially once it's understood that it's mostly companies who are putting up the money, not individuals. Personally, I'd stay clear of the Kickstarter analogy because Kickstarter doesn't have this ability to go back for more money, and that's a killer for software funding.