Re: Model for FOSS financing by consortium

[email protected] (David N. Welton) wrote, in part:

> How does one control the 'leaks' as the software comes into the hands
> of more people, who all have the rights to relicense it in turn?

You can't and do not need to.  The distributor can decide to estimate
the shrinkage (leakage) and set price accordingly.

Risk-averse distributors will estimate the shrinkage as

       (100% of the market - 1 customer)

meaning they can sell to the first customer, and that is it.

No problem with that.  The developer may have to convince a consortium
or group of individuals to pool their money.  I suppose with
modification a developer could allow a venue to collect pledges
until the magic amount is reached, then do the work and release
the code to those who pledged after they paid.  

The developer would have to estimate a different shrinkage then:
the percentage who pledged but didn't intend to pay.

But, and this is the advantage: the developer is not obligated
to distribute to everyone at that point, just those who were
part of the pledge group.  If someone comes along later, they
have to start another pledge group, at a possibly higher total
price.  (Hmmm, clause 4 might have to be rewritten, but the
idea is the same....)

This could make "collection of pledges" succeed where cosource.com
failed: the developer is the admin and the customers do their
own decisions about contract satisfaction.