I am the developer of Gmvault (<a href="http://www.gmvault.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.gmvault.org</a>) an open source tool having its development hosted on github (<a href="https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault</a>).
I really like the idea of crowd funding and would like my tool to be founded like that if possible as I would like it to be open source and available to anybody while providing enough money to run the development server.
I even more like to idea of having bounties on bugs as this would help me prioritizing features and bug fixes while funding the development.<p>However since the release of the tool in may I had around 20000 downloads but less the 20 persons supported the development by donating something. I still hope that having such a facility directly embedded in Github would allow people to be a bit more philanthropic and rewarding for the developers as often developers would probably want to continue full time the adventure of developing a product or a library.
The developer audience is small and targeted. Kickstarter woos the masses. I doubt GitHub would make much money off this idea. The bigger problem is who gets the money from backers. Projects can have multiple contributors, projects can also be forked. There is no way this system could fairly pay the right contributors without massive complexity and pissing people off.
I think you make a good point, but I think it'd make a lot more sense for Github to facilitate donations to projects rather than adding a bunch of crowdfunding stuff. Id much rather donate cash to a project in development, much in the same way I can donate my time, than 'fund' it.
Github's core offering is a hosted git solution. I'm not sure how a crowd funding add on fits into that core offering.<p>Like another user already said, more money doesn't necessarily mean a boost in development speed/quality. I think there is something in "Kickstarter for developers" (there are bounty based sites that work like this), but I don't believe it really fits with the product/value prop.<p>I still think Github's biggest potential for revenue is from the enterprise-sized to medium-sized development shops, by way of creating software collaboration tools. Git can be hosted anywhere, but there are reasons why developers like Github beyond it being a repository.
They used to have automatic Pledgie integration[1] -- guess it didn't work out too well...<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/blog/57-getting-paid-the-open-source-way/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/blog/57-getting-paid-the-open-source-way/</a>
I think this is brilliant for Open Source projects, and running an Open Source project I instinctively felt this is a great idea.<p>There might be issues if the project has contributions from a large number of unconnected developers (on how to split the amount), or alternatively a project getting a decent amount of funding may put off certain developers, who then might not want to contribute for "free".<p>On the other hand, it could become a marketplace for contractors. That would be cool. Each project could make a small proposal and invite bids from freelancers, who could all bid on github.<p>Yeah, lots of interesting possibilities.
Something slightly different....<p>It would be nice if Github gave you the option of adding $1 - N$ onto your membership fee, and then distributed that between the open source projects or authors that you follow.
I had low expectations for this, but I actually like the idea. facilitating some sort of donation, fund, back, etc. income for the developers making the software could be good.<p>chosing whether to give to the main dev, a specific dev or equally spread that donation amongst all devs contributing to a project would make it a lot more fair too. i would use this functionality with a doubt.
The problem here is the massive assumption that if the developers of a project had more money, then that would directly relate to more time/effort being spent on the project. That's not always true.
A bounty on issues would also be interesting... sometimes you have an issue you can't personally fix and isn't critical enough to get a contributors interest. $100 might get their interest though :)
The news about GitHub raising money and this article came right at the time when I was contemplating moving to BitBucket. While comparing the latter's plans with GitHub ones I couldn't help but wonder how Atlassian is turning any profit on BitBucket (the plans seem quite cheaper, and I already wonder how GitHub turns out to be profitable)
This seems predicated on GitHub needing additional revenue. I don't think their announcement signalled that at all. GitHub accepted an investment partner. My assumption is that they got excellent terms since they are very cashflow-positive, they hope to IPO one day, and they require investment-savvy advisors.
I could see this as a possibility but honestly that sounds like a lot of work for GitHub when there is already a means to crowdfund your project. I don't see what is stopping people from just starting their own Kickstarter project to support the project they are storing on GitHub.
They could just partner with [0]flattr, that way I could also subscribe to my favorite libraries.<p>[0] <a href="http://flattr.com" rel="nofollow">http://flattr.com</a>