Have been managing a few open-source projects for years and have wanted to get paid for the work that I put into it in my spare time. I am aware that it is much more difficult getting people to pay for support for free, open-source projects, especially after the maintainer has been supporting them for free previously, but I feel like I have nothing to lose since the product will only get better if I am more motivated to work on it. Any advice?
So I keep noticing that wikipedia keeps changing their pleas for funding on their site. While not quite as annoying as public radio interrupting their programming with boring people asking for money with ringing phones in the background that I never give to, I'm starting to wonder why Wikipedia is free if they need money (and the same goes for public radio). Unlike many of you, I grew up with encyclopedias. Real encyclopedias, not some encyclopedia on a disk or CD. They were huge and intimidating books of knowledge. When I read them, I felt like I was holding the last bastion of knowledge- that I had something substantial. Parents appreciated this and would shell out the money for them. Today, we have an incredible amount of information in Wikipedia and rely on it during the year without giving it a second thought. Why aren't we paying for it? I pay for Pandora and appreciate it. I would pay for Wikipedia, but for some reason non-profits think they they are doing a greater service to us by being free. But, libraries could buy subscriptions to Wikipedia and still provide those services for free. The only way to get people to pay for it is for them to give everyone a deadline for donations, then shut it down, and then startup a for-profit with the same information.
