I'm loving this Kickstarter model for major open source software. Just in the Django community we're getting incredibly high quality work between migrations in Django 1.7, Django REST Framework 3.0, and the PostgreSQL extensions Kickstarters.
I've only been paying attention to the Django world with these Kickstarters, but is this catching on in any other sphere of software development (Ruby, Java, .NET)?
From a business perspective, chipping into a Django kickstarter headed up by someone like Tom is an investment with an incredibly high chance to return something valuable.
In this case, Tom exceeded expectations with an excellent 3.0 release. We are going to save some developer time, improve the quality of our code, and be better equipped to handle whatever unexpected needs the future throws at us.
Ditto for Andrew's Django migrations project.
I hope we can all continue to show strong support for these projects, regardless of the ecosystem in question (Django, Rails, etc). We all come out ahead, as long as we make sure that the project leader has a good chance of delivering.
Agreed about the Kickstarter model for open-source software. It's the best of both worlds - developers can contribute to the community while still getting paid for it.
I've only been paying attention to the Django world with these Kickstarters, but is this catching on in any other sphere of software development (Ruby, Java, .NET)?