Funded Free Software

[originally an e-mail regarding Drupal Dojo / Kata app store involvement]

I have no interest in an app store-- i said all i had to say on the topic before it was branded as such [above]. I have not had time to keep up with the controversy Robert created (congratulations, by the way! i will submit this episode to anyone claiming social media activism has no effect). I've just been collecting the names of most people involved with the intention of reading up and contacting them about collective fundraising.

I would like to see a very broad group of people (including those motivated by opposition to the app store idea or in favor of it!) come together to create 'the' way we in Drupal try to collectively fund our free software. I've talked about this with a few others. Daniel Kudwein i am hoping will write down his thoughts as a specification; with permission i will forward this to him and also Allie Micka and Claudina Sarahe who (all separately so far) are keenly interested in making funding happen.

Maybe i've missed a white paper or three not keeping up with this, but selling an actual application means selling code, and hosting code off of d.o is what the community collectively is spending a great deal of effort to avoid (see git migration), and drush and all our tools revolve around d.o and that's how it should be. Features of course we want to see take off -- drop in and it's all configured -- but they should be modules too.

We should be creating something truly new, not trying to mimic what proprietary software does. I try to make the point in the closing chapter of the Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 that giving money is indeed a way to contribute to the community, so i would be quite happy to see buying support / priority for features / maintainer goodwill as integrated into an overall framework for funding projects-- so any app-store-ish things that dojo/kata/VisionsUnite-PWGD do should be part of it, not a separate effort, in my opinion.

In summary, i'd like to see efforts focus on:
- collecting funds (with threshhold total for putting plan into action) for specific goals and (critically) coordinating and managing the efforts to meet these goals
- the default tip jar widget for all Drupal projects
- making it very easy to subscribe to support, and managing that so that people who do subscribe
- democratic socialism. It, not a market based on supply and demand, is the natural economic system for anything that, once produced, can be shared by an infinite number of people without cost to anyone. Have funds distributed by a decentralized, low overhead, democratic system (such as each contributor distributing 100 shares to various projects) and we have a real win. What this would mean in a community like Drupal is making donations a little less voluntary. Contribution levels to the pool of funds would be public and your treatment in getting free or paid support from conscious Drupalistas (who may be getting a significant share of their income from this collective funding) would differ markedly if you contributed nothing, or appeared to be operating a profitable business and contributing at the lowest level.

Note that i see the latter two points as being way, way off on the horizon.