Re: Kickstarter for Emacs

[Nikodemus Siivola <nikodemus@random-state.net>]

On 19 April 2012 03:45, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> Is it likely that Emacs development would excite people who happen
> upon it in such a site?  Or would most of the funds come from people
> told about the project by the FSF?  I expect the latter.

Neither. Most successful crowdfunding projects get most of their
publicity in a viral manner. Most of the funds would come from Emacs
users who have no contact with FSF, but read about it on some blog
they follow, on Twitter, Facebook, on a mailing lists, etc -- by their
someone who has donated and is excited about it.

That would be my guess, anyways.

The is-it-worth it isn't about most people, though, but about getting
+10% extra $donations or not. More than that and it's a good deal.

I would also /strongly/ suspect that while FSF itself could probably
run a successful crowdfunding campaign to fund it's activities in
general, that for a specific software project the more it is about the
individual developer(s) wanting to implement Their Thing and the less
it is about FSF, the more chance of success it has.

Not because some people don't like FSF, but because they want to give
money to the people who write the code.

Apropos: IndieGoGo is open to non-American fundraisers, unlike
Kickstarter, and uses PayPal instead of Amazon as the payment
processor. (Maybe there was also a direct bank deposit option, I
forget.) There are some other differences as well, but those are the
biggest ones.

Cheers,

 -- Nikodemus