Making money from something people get for free.

As a sort-of follow up to last week's rant, I'd like to say that I'm very happy to see that the next release of Krita has been fully funded.

If you don't know (and I'm guessing you don't), Krita is a very nifty, FREE AND OPEN SOURCE, painting application that funds its development through community contributions. Every six months or so, they announce the features they'd like to put in the next release, then they ask the Krita users to chip in and raise the money to pay for a professional coder to make it happen. For every additional €1500 raised, contributers get to vote on extra features they would like to see implemented.

And if the money doesn't get raised, the work doesn't get done; simple as that.

In this round, they raised over €10,500 more than they were asking, so if they're working true to form, the next release should be packed full of extras. Looking forward to it.

Now, I don't usually talk about software projects, since I'm guessing nobody's particularly interested in hearing about them; so you may well be wondering why I'm talking about this one, and how this all relates to the rant on intellectual property. Well, you see, my general thinking is that this sort of thing is probably going to be the way forward for artistically minded people who want to make a go of it too.

… Wishful thinking? Time will tell, I guess. And at least it's something nice and positive for a change — so I'll take it.