[ScottBurson]

Is anyone building a website similar to Kickstarter but focused only on open source software?

Actually, I am :) I'm not quite ready to go public -- please contact me privately.

I think that getting crowdfunding contributions for a completely new project would be extremely difficult, unless you are already very well known in the Open Source world. I think you have to just write version 0 and put it out there and see what happens. Well, you can talk it up in appropriate forums, but if that doesn't attract users, I don't know what else you can do.

If it does attract users, though, you have at least demonstrated that you're solving some problem that affects people other than yourself. Then I think you might have a chance at raising some money.