> What happened to building something and selling it?
Since they are already providing it for free to those who need it, and producing at as free software, selling it as a finished product is unlikely.
> If you were truly concerned about online privacy, you'd build it anyway.
Many people do altruistic work during their free time. crowdfunding means you can do the same work, but not be limited by what scraps of time that exist after work.
The extremely few people in the world that would quit their job to do altruistic work is few. They are so few that almost every time it happens, it get posted here as news.
If I made a poll, asking how many people here cared strongly about something in the world, I would get close to 99% hands that said yes. If I then asked how many of those people would agree to quit work to work altruistic on that subject, how many hands would I see?
I have actually been working on Mailpile "altruistically" for a while, but sorely missed the ability to dedicate myself to it full time. Thus the fundraiser.
Totally get it, but why not share some of the risk with your supporters and meet them halfway? Asking for a full (decent) salary for two people for a year places all of the risk on your supporters and makes you look uninspired.
Edit: I can't reply to child, so I'll do it here.
It has nothing to do with a free ride. I don't want the product because the solution isn't right for me, but I would much prefer to pay a monthly fee for something than give a 'free ride,' as you call it, to a developer, in advance.
I have no sympathy for the family argument, because I spent a year building a business on the side while I was employed full-time, so that when I quit my job, I could support my family.
I believe there's something to be gained when the venture does not include a parachute.
I don't understand your objections at all. These guys are making a proposal, which individuals are free to accept or reject as they see fit. Those who accept it know what they're getting themselves into and accept the risk. No one is getting scammed. If these guys want a parachute, that's their prerogative. Just because you wouldn't take the same approach doesn't mean the approach is a bad one.
Point blank - I'm tired of people abusing crowdfunding as some sort of money grab (Spike Lee's recent Kickstarter as an example) and because I'm involved in the industry, I have a vested interest in seeing crowdfunding, as an industry, prosper.
These guys probably have a great product, and are probably great people, and for that reason alone, I feel bad that my comment leads the thread. However, I never said anything that suggested this was a scam, and I don't believe it is. Like I said, people get what they pay for. It's just that I see this trend getting worse, and I think long-term it will hurt crowdfunding.
I can see where you're coming from and I think that your argument would be stronger if you took your own feelings out of it. For example, you say that you find it insulting that they'd ask you to pay for their salary. Well, why should it matter to anyone else that you feel insulted? If that's your reaction then they're probably not talking to you. Besides that - why should anyone care about whether you feel insulted? You also mention that you feel no sympathy for the family argument because of your experiences. In this context, why does that matter? I don't mean this to be dismissive of you personally; I'm just trying to share my minor analysis.
You also say that you're not suggesting they're running a scam but at the same time you compare their outreach to a money grab.
I don't know, perhaps your arguments are very good ones and I am a heartless bastard because they don't sway me. At their root, it seems like you're saying that these guys are proposing something that violates your sense of fairness somehow. I'd be interested in seeing an argument that applies more universally, and not just that you personally find it unfair.
Myself, I think the cool thing about crowdfunding is that it's so open and free. I might personally find it frustrating or unfair that money gets allocated in a way that doesn't match my values, but too bad for me!
You make some great points, and I can't say that any of them are off-base. My comment is obviously filtered by my experiences in the industry, which might be unfair to the founders in question.
However, my comment seems to have resonated with many others, so could be offered as advice for ways to improve the campaign.
> I'm tired of people abusing crowdfunding as some sort of money grab (Spike Lee's recent Kickstarter as an example) and because I'm involved in the industry, I have a vested interest in seeing crowdfunding, as an industry, prosper.
I'm curious, what does "abusing crowdfunding" mean, in precise terms? What is wrong with what Spike Lee's request for money? I understand crowdfunding to be simply a kind of transaction. A banker's job is to facilitate transactions between people, not to discriminate in favor of the ones he likes.
Crowdfunding will continue to diverge into two camps: Kickstarter-style, curated and reputable, and IndieGoGo-style, a roll of the dice where you might get left hanging, or even scammed. Given that it is now trivial to roll your own crowd finding site, you can't make the latter go away. The best you can do in terms of perception management is to put yourself in the former category: "We're not like those other crowdfunding sites..."
True, an engineer could make twice as much, but discussing compensation rather than strategy might be missing the forest for the trees.
Why do the Mailpiles believe privacy is the best angle to help people the most in taking email back? If you were to work on only one thing to fix email, would privacy be the most important thing to work on?
The counterargument here isn't examples of specific cloud services like Dropbox that people can trust. It's an argument for general global security. Organizations like the United Nations Security Council and NATO generally provide a much stronger joint defense against evil than individual pieces of armor offered to citizens.
There certainly are engineering jobs at $150K and higher, but every survey I've seen -- and this more or less matches the offers I've seen -- suggests the median engineering salary here is just a little over $100K.
I could not disagree less. Asking him to "meet supporters half way" makes it sound like you want a free ride. No offense. These are adult guys, who need to support themselves and possibly a family. The software is already open source. And you want them to take even more risk although the Mailpile author has given a lot of his time to the community already? You seriously think everybody would be better off if he risks the financial stability of his family?
I think you mean, "I could not disagree more." What you wrote means you agree perfectly. It says that if you take the amount of disagreement between you and your parent, there could not be less disagreement, i.e. there is zero disagreement.
Ask for enough money to have say 3-6 months of resources, which would force them to figure out pricing/business economics before the money runs out, and forces them to invest in the idea as much as their backers do.
First reaction for me was: 'Wow, this is awesome, and I'm looking for something like this. How much do they need? Wow, 100k to build a mail app? No thanks.'
I get that this is a free product and is open source, but I'd like to know what they plan to do after the 100k is gone? Instead of a proposal a) pay us to work on it for a year, I'd like to see proposal b) help us bridge between now and phase 2, which is where we'll x.
I'd just like to see a little more thought put into it.
We have actually put a fair bit of thought into this, but the pitch has to be relatively focused. Publicly speculating about things which may change is not a good way to manage expectations.
One core question is: how big a team will we need in a years time to continue development? The answer to that depends on many factors - since this is open source, it is actually perfectly OK to work for a year, ship something awesome and hand off to the community once things are a bit more mature.
However, since we do assume there will still be quite a bit of work to do in a years time, our preferred business model is actually listed in the pitch: backers are joining a community and we will reach out to them again in a years' time and ask them to continue supporting us if they are happy with the work we have done. Mailpile has a broad enough appeal that it may be possible to sustain the team using this model alone, which would IMO be ideal.
However, plan B includes things like grants from human rights / free-speech orgs that need better tools for activists in the field, corporate support from companies unsatisfied with the current crop of tools, and subscription support services (like https://pagekite.net/, SMTP relaying, etc) which help the average Joe run his own Mailpile.
The majority of backers are paying $23. That's not even 15 minutes of software development time. I fail to comprehend how backers are investing as much into the idea as the developers.
Well I can say that being married and having obligations makes bootstrapping a company extremely hard. I know because I'm currently doing this and the added stress for me has been 5x what it could have been.
Since they are already providing it for free to those who need it, and producing at as free software, selling it as a finished product is unlikely.
> If you were truly concerned about online privacy, you'd build it anyway.
Many people do altruistic work during their free time. crowdfunding means you can do the same work, but not be limited by what scraps of time that exist after work.
The extremely few people in the world that would quit their job to do altruistic work is few. They are so few that almost every time it happens, it get posted here as news.
If I made a poll, asking how many people here cared strongly about something in the world, I would get close to 99% hands that said yes. If I then asked how many of those people would agree to quit work to work altruistic on that subject, how many hands would I see?