You would be surprised at how much presentation affects open source projects.
Professional logo design and some very professional usability focused themes for the site/project would do wonders.
Compare the presentation of Deki Wiki to ScrewTurn, ScrewTurn would obviously be my choice, but at face value most would explore Deki first due to presentation.
I would absolutely love to see ScrewTurn with some high dollar makeup on. I think it would be amazing.
Iām suprised people complain about the administration overhead of a project that already has time donated? What is more free than free?
While I agree this is unlikely to get readā¦
Do things that will invigorate the project that never seem to get done otherwise
a) Graphic designerā¦ a more attractive site / product / packaging will help the number of people using your product. 50-100 hours of graphic designā¦ sweet. Doesnāt seem like much - well host a user contest (win bragging rights) for ideas to serve as creative input into the process
b) Test Harness / Regression Frameworkā¦ not sure if you have one or how it fits with your product but anything that allows you to make future development/testing more efficient is a good idea.
c) Blitz and party? Help offset the cost of plane tickets to someoneās house for X number of core programmersā¦ Itās cheap to camp at someoneās house, spent X days in programming blitz / X days in bug blast / and a day left to partyā¦ then everyone goes home tired but energized about the project because of the tonne of work that just got done.
One more +1 for Dave (up to +4 now?) but Iād go a step further:
You set them up for failure.
Hereās why. By going back on your promise of no strings and publicly airing your crushing disappointment with their (non-)use of the money thus far, you have created thousands of potential users of ScrewTurn Wiki who think that they are screw-ups. Or, at the very least, anyone reading your post who had never heard of ScrewTurn Wiki (I hadnāt) will first wonder whether they ever got around to spending your money. I wouldnāt ever have known that they hadnāt spent the money if you hadnāt posted on it.
Youāve attached powerful strings to your money with this huge guilt trip, even if you maintain that they still can spend the money however they want. Is that what you intended?
One big problem is that often money alone does not change much.
I think we need to put the human factor more into account.
I think money alone wonāt necessarily change many of the above things.
Personally I think the biggest factor is motivation, then comes knowledge. Both things take time.
But I guess one thing what money could improve is forming and shaping small communities of programmers THAT CAN WORK together, AND to help big and good projects like KDE grow more, because they will stimulate more and more growth.
It is like a hotspot for future growth.
I see a lot of responses along the lines of hiring artists or other designer/arty types. The thing is, $5000 is only going to buy you a small, finite amount of work for what is supposedly an ever-evoloving program.
If thereās a need for good artistic or visual design work on a project, the Right Thing to do would be to hook up the devs with artists who might want to contribute their work for the same reasons the coders are contributing theirs. The incentives might even be higher for them than for coders. For an artist or designer looking for work, it would be awesome to be able to point to a project online already using their work.
Again, we are in a realm where money doesnāt help a lot.
Jeff,
five grand are sitting in the account because five grand are not enough - not enough to attract a larger team, start a larger marketing effort for the platform and not enough to have a deadline by which a project should be done done.
Open source projects are driven by enthusiasts. Their motivation is not money. However, a possibility to use their labor of love to jumpstart a commercial product would require money - far more than five grand.
Think Linus Torvalds. He would not be a millionaire today had Linux not become a commercial product (Red Hat gave Linus a tons of shares as a thank you) and had it not found a wide acceptance in other commercial products. Money alone cannot spread the word, but marketing supported with money certainly helps. Coding and development of open source projects will not be helped with money.
How about you ask for that money back and spread the word about their platform instead (another blog?)
Hey, this is Jeff. About that five grandā¦ since it is not working for ya, I want it backā¦
You donated the money for any purpose on that project. Since money has no purpose there, money back seems in order.
You know, you should not re-invent the wheel. There are at least 3 very well establish models for giving money, the reason for and the goal for giving the money may be different, so the system most fit the goal and spirit. but it seems to me you went way to liberal with your no system, hurting both the goal the spirit and from a philosophical point of view, you did not went the utilitarian wayā¦
My guess is that the best model you should have followed is the one used by researchers that try to get grants to fund their research. If some organization wants to give 100K to support cancer research, he wants to give it to whomever will use it best (highest ROI, where the goal is advancing cancer research). You should have had people apply by saying why the money will be put to best use, and choose based on that. The money should go to whoever knows how to make the best use of.
Also, think how it took 400 million USD (Appleās acquisition of NEXT) to convince Steve Jobs to work for $1/year at Apple.
Open source rocks, man. Especially when it is greased with millions (people, dollars,ā¦)
Well, that was food for thought !!
By the way why does not the word orange never change??
That it had to be a .Net project was a pretty big string. There are some OSS projects that rely on donations to hire employees to do the kind of work thatās too hard or boring (or big) for the volunteer devs to manage.
5,000 was 10% of NetBSDās most recent fund drive for instance.
Itās entirely possible that there just arenāt that many .Net projects that have sections so hard, boring, or big, that they have to pay someone to work on it. That was essentially your only real restriction on the money, maybe itās time you relaxed it.
Itās my impression FOSS projects really hurt for good:
So thereās 5 places ScrewTurn Wiki couldāve used that money.
Except for #1 these things are kind of unfun, uncool and labor-intensive. Most people donāt want to spend their free hours (or employerās 20%) drafting press releases. To get good results in these fields, you usually need to PAY someone to do it. They have no add-on network effect, either: if I open-source my icon, what happens is everyone uses my icon and that kind of defeats the point of having a DISTINCTIVE icon.
That said, didnāt you offer this without strings? Why do you care what they donāt spend their money on? I say chalk this up to experience and promise yourself to attach some strings to your next grant.
Dario, please do not spend that money on a party or holiday.
At a stroke, it would make an industry that is not really known for discipline and professionalism look even more slack. It would also make other open source projects struggle that much more to raise money. The publicity from a no strings donation being spent that way could be catastrophic ā¦ whether that criticism is justified or not.
And Jeff, cut the man some slack! I know this is a tech blog, but I think the world would be in a much better shape if more people had Darioās attitude, and didnāt seek something to spend as soon as money was plonked in their account. Sure, they might not need it now. This attitude toward money will pull them through leaner times.
Buy the best software development tools. Examples: profiler, post-compile optimizer, load-tester, automated testing tools.
Thatās assuming you already like your editor and compiler.
Thank you Jeff, this was the most insightful post in the last months 
For my personal project p300 (http://p300.eu/) Iād throw a party and save the money for working on it for a while after university.
They can put the money to better use by donating it to any project that doesnāt use .NET.
As the project maintainer for Miranda IM, I have to agree with your assertion that OSS projects run primarily on time, rather than money, although I also believe that there is a balancing point on which each of these sit, one that meanders somewhat over the course of the projects lifetime. For Miranda, contributions open doors and give us options to better serve our community.
Self-sufficiency and independence is something that developers in general, and the OSS community at large hold in high regard, and perhaps it is this view and determination that results in project leaders not knowing what to do with generous contributions such as yours. Not because itās not needed, but rather they havenāt had the luxury of time to think about it.
Keep up the support, itās appreciated.
Regards,
Koobs
Project Maintainer
Miranda IM
Why doesnāt Dario just pay himself for the time heās put into his project? (And other developers).
Alternatively, put the money in a sort of trust account for any future expenses or to maintain the site in case other revenue goes away.
Iād suggest you take back your money first, before deciding plan B. You may not even be able to have your money back, as was demonstrated in Hong Kong Linux User Group during the disband of all exco (Iām not one of them, but familiar enough with the situation). You know, as people are so busy, they may not even have the time to return you the money.
Afterwards, you can use it on anything you see fit. If you really want to donate to open source projects, Iād suggest you donating to some real foundations like Apache or Mozilla, which most certainly makes better use of your money (no matter on PR campaign, on paying staff, on hiring people, or whatever). Anything else is better than keeping the money in bank (sans throwing them out of window). Somehow I remembered a quote from bibleā¦
Youāve admitted to doing a little bit of vanity searching but just in case this one slips through, youāve made it to WIRED magazineās webmonkey sectionā¦
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/What_Do_Small_Open_Source_Projects_Do_With_Money__Not_MuchDOT
Contrariwise, I suspect Dario Solera sent $5000 to Jeff Atwood for this peace of viral marketing. 