[api]

That's what I meant. I've done open source work on a donation-only basis before. I ended up with stuff that was used by tens of thousands of people and ended up earning the cost of a pizza and a six pack. You can't make a living in sub-Saharan Africa off that kind of economics.

There have been artists that have made money off donations before -- Trent Reznor and Radiohead come to mind -- but these are huge artists. If they release something on a donation basis and 0.00001% of people donate, they do pretty well. Only a tiny fraction of the top 1% of artists can do this.

[dllthomas]

I think we're agreed on this point. Uncoordinated donations aren't a real solution at all - that top 1% doesn't really need money to keep producing anyway (not that I begrudge them it!).

Existing approaches to Coordinated donations (KickStarter/IndieGoGo) do better than uncoordinated but not better enough.

I didn't really expect you to disagree, was just trying to clarify.