Feed Open Source

We need another way to fund software. All the other ways are broken or unscalable. We need to align the interests of the users with developers. We need to feed developers, and the software needs to be freely distributable.

The Problem

Software only needs to be written once.
Bugs need to be patched, but a bug only needs to be patched once.

Why do we pay for software many times, or not at all?
Software should be paid for exactly once.

You can't sell software like you sell physical items, software is too easy to copy.

But here is something you can sell: a promise to write software

The Vision

Take agile consulting to the crowds.

Work is funded in iterations, on a fixed time basis, a week or two at a time. Clients and developers negotiate what features they are most need in the next iteration. The developers implement that, and the clients evaluate it. Repeat. Every one is constantly in the loop.

feedopensource is different to agile consulting because "the clients" are a crowd of people. feedopensource is different to crowd-funding platforms because clients will have real power to influence a project, and keep it on task.

A client does not commit all their money at once, so the developers must keep them satisfied to receive funding in the future. For the client, most of the uncertainty about the project is removed, because they see it improve at each stage.

Less uncertainty means clients can fund more, because they know the value they are getting.

This is not a startup.

This is not Anything as a Service.
This is not an Anything-Platform.

This is just an open source tool for feeding open source projects.

feedopensource has a liberal open-source license.

You may use feedopensource to fund your own projects, as feedopensource feeds itself with feedopensource

The Prototype

The prototype has progressed to iteration 2!

Currently, feedopensource can:

• track the state of a project on github,
• represent this as a png (embeddable in github issues) and as a web page (https://feedopensource.com/iteration/dominictarr/feedopensource/1PTAwipYpP63uNrcxfm5FewxRdZyar6ceu)
• associate a bitcoin transaction with a github user.

This is very simple, but with the support of iteration 1's funders

Iteration 2

Tasks for iteration 2 are listed here

Bitcoin

Transfer btc into 18oBEV9hFdDMEct9Ys2bSAuEY4bi2KSMHi to fund iteration 2.

Please post a comment here with your transaction id.

Not sure how to buy bitcoin? Learn how you can buy bitcoin in your country Also see this issue

Credit-card

If you would rather fund this with normal money please comment with the amount you'd like to pay on this issue

The Plan

Clients and Developers post issues to Tasks and plan Iterations. (on github or similar)

feedopensoure will be implemented as a bot that posts to and scrapes/apis Github. This avoids the problem of having to implement a fresh discussion platform, Notifications, User system, etc!

Please comment on the first iteration!

The Workflow

In the future you might use feedopensource like this:

• Clients post issues requesting features or bug fixes. ("Tasks")
• Tasks are grouped into an Iteration (an "Iteration" is just an issue that links to a set of Tasks with a progress bar) Clients and Developers can discuss that iteration, and decide to fund it or not.
• progress can be tracked by posting to the Iteration issue, or to the Task issues. as the Tasks progress (are closed) the progress bar updates, this time to show work done.
• There will be progress bar pngs representing project status and history which can easily be added into github issues and readmes.
• Users will have a way to associate a bitcoin wallet with a github account, so they can claim their payment