Feels like I should start by saying that I'm actually one of those weirdos who used to pay for shareware and such. I admit that I mostly used the freely available software freely and without paying for it, but there were also a number of times that I paid for the premium versions, and even a couple of times when I paid the ransom after the free trial period had expired. Unfortunately, I never felt that I got more by donating and in most cases the programs in question soon disappeared anyway. I mostly concluded that competent programmers aren't going to stay with that economic model. My best guess is that some of them were hoping to strike it rich, but they didn't, so they gave up. However, why would I want them to help them strike it rich, even if their program was great? I don't Las Vegas economic models, either.
Meanwhile, I hate the anti-freedom anti-choice policies of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and increasingly the google, too. However, their economic models work. I would prefer to support you with some money, but I still doubt you'll survive. Actually, the Sun fiasco has had me using LibreOffice most of the time these days... What I would like is an option to pay by the feature on a small project basis. I would buy one or more shares in features that I wanted, where the project budget would include such things as testing and programmer time, etc. The new features would be selected as enough people agreed to pay for them. The structure I would suggest would actually leave you holding the money as a kind of charity stock brokerage. Some of the projects might involve support in various forms, of course. However I've been advocating this sort of thing for some years. The closest thing I've seen is Kickstarter, but they seem to be completely lacking in project management. My suggestion would be more like "reverse auction charity shares". Unless someone does something like that, I'm not likely to donate again... I'm convinced the economic model is as important as the software. -- Freedom. It's about meaningful and unconstrained choice, not beer.
