That, sir, is a silly remark. If Microsoft don’t like Reactos, then I should never donate :P Someday Reactos will become mainstream, and if Microsoft choses to close it down, then all of our money would be out the window.

Some years ago Reactos had some problems with tainted code, if this is still an issue, then reactos should not take our money, if it isn’t, then there would be no problem putting it on kickstarter :)

I’m not quite sure what you mean by the two kind of people. AFAIK, reactos consists of mostly type 1, but they are asking for our donations, so they can have more of type 2..

The only problem I see with the first type of developer raising funds through kickstarter-like services is convincing people that answering emails, reviewing code and organizing things constitute a kind of job that deserves funding.

I mean, usually “big” projects (like an OS) need 2 types of people in order to thrive:

1) The “coordinator”/”maintainer” (the “Linus type”), i.e., someone willing to spend most of the days
and hours in their life answering email, encouraging / cursing / testing / measuring / reviewing etc
every contribution, thus making them (both the contributions and the contributors long-term) better
and transforming even the “amateur” contributions into something valuable.

2) The “focused developer” type. Someone with a specific goal (e.g., “make the USB subsystem
of ReactOS work for the virtual USB 2.0 controllers of qemu, vbox and vmware until July”).
This type should be mostly or completely anti-social (at least within the duration of the project,
in order to stay free from ADD) and also completely determine to finish a specific goal until a
specific deadline.

Kickstarter works great for funding the second type but not for the first type. So far the first type
is being funded by either a foundation (e.g., Linus) or by a company which has a stake in the project.

Unfortunately ReactOS almost by definition can’t become “mainstream enough” to achieve this
type of funding since companies know that if it were ever to become successful, lawsuits from MS
would start immediately.

So, at least for now, the only way is if the users would fund a project maintainer / coordinator
(at least one) thus this direct fundraiser (I think GNOME has done something slightly similar
in the past, but for a community manager or something, not for a developer).

I hope ReactOS users will chip-in and we will see more progress coming from this project.

yeah, I know I’m from Denmark, so my grammer sux, but I hope it’s understandable.

I love reactos and have been following it for years. I even donated back in the day when Alex Ionescu had some kind of plan for the money,but this time I didn’t want to donate, because I’m a student and don’t have that much cash. But this article, nomatter how ignorant, totally convinced my to donate to reactos a second time :) keep up the good work.

Not at all. As I explained to Ancurio (also stated in the post above), paid development is already happening in the FLOSS ecosystem. The difference is that those devs you refer to get paid by the corporations they work for and usually development is driven by the needs of those corporations.

The ReactOS community’s approach and what I suggest in the post above is that projects should explore the opportunity to raise funds directly from the community through micro-payments. This is an entirely different approach than what you’ve just written.

Hi. Thanks for your feedback.

At the beginning, you imply that “conservative forces” have strongly opposed your idea of paying people to work on FOSS.

No. I do not imply that. What I’m saying is that any discussion about improving the currently established development model is usually extremely difficult to go on because some people would never let it.

It’s not about my idea. Paid development is not my idea anyway. It is already happening in the GNU/Linux ecosystem. The difference is that currently it is only the companies that pay developers. It would be interesting to explore the possibility of users directly funding the development of the software they use and rely upon.

But then, what part of your argument remains?
.. Simply, “FOSS needs more money”. Wow. That’s really the only point I could read into your article.

Exactly, FOSS needs more money. That’s pretty much all this post is about.

It is impossible to produce high quality complex software that serves the needs of its users in the best possible way, while working on it in your spare time. Quality requires dedication.

Now, let’s look back at ReactOS.. current donations: € 1,382 / € 30,000

This page seems to be cached and not refreshed often. Let’s wait for a few days.

I dislike your article because it’s yet another “I finally know what’s been wrong with FOSS this entire time! Listen to me!” tone, while your only point (“FOSS needs more money”) has been known for ages.

It might be known for ages, but I’ve yet to see anything happening. We usually wait for a company to fund a project for us, while it is entirely possible to do it ourselves with micro-donations.

I agree that ReactOS will benefit from full time developers dedicated strictly to that OS software, but that perspective does not inherently make the project any more worthy or efficient that those named above.

In it, you state that a) many FOSS projects “suck”, because b) their developers can’t afford to work on them besides their sparse free time.
a) is just a complete over-generalization. Or rather, it gives off the wrong impression. In a world as huge as that of FOSS, there will always be better and less good software, just as in the proprietary world. On should not forget that aside all the usual AAA software (Office, Photoshop) given as examples, there are millions of small proprietary and usually not very good/helpful programs lingering hidden in the shadows of shareware sites.
As to b).. you just kind of make it sound like the “spare time development” is the state of the art model which everyone employs because it widely accepted. And that is obviously plain wrong. But wait, what if you meant to say “the current way of FOSS development, although without any financial help unavoidable, isn’t ideal”? Of course. I’d wholeheartedly agree. Almost every FOSS developer would tell you they’d much rather work on their hobby projects full-time, if only they were paid. That’s definitely not an unknown fact. But then, what part of your argument remains?
.. Simply, “FOSS needs more money”. Wow. That’s really the only point I could read into your article. And is it a new one? I don’t think I have to answer that.

“a Do-It-Yourself mentality reigns the FLOSS ecosystem”.
No. I dare saying most of these people would love to be paid full-time to work on it.
Everyone is going to tell you that if suddenly VLC received donations in the range of thousands, they would immediately consider paying someone full-time. The only problem: it’s simply not happening.
Now, let’s look back at ReactOS.. current donations: € 1,382 / € 30,000. That’s about 5%. For 2012. Of which almost half has passed. See? Just Not Enough Money. When I saw this count a few days ago, I immediately decided to donate 20 bucks because I would totally love this to happen, but at the same time, I know the chances are very, very slim.

At the beginning, you imply that “conservative forces” have strongly opposed your idea of paying people to work on FOSS. Is that really what happened? I don’t believe it, even someone considered as hardcore as RS would never say something like that. Maybe there was some sort of misunderstanding where the other party thought you meant funds in exchange for restrictive re licensing.

tl;dr: I dislike your article because it’s yet another “I finally know what’s been wrong with FOSS this entire time! Listen to me!” tone, while your only point (“FOSS needs more money”) has been known for ages.
Oh, and talking about “great example[s]“: Don’t wait for ReactOS, there are already many more (Diaspora, Kdenlive..)