GiftNet

Problem

Many developers of copyrighted works (such as novels, software, blueprints, and others) decide to give their work away to the public to benefit society instead of trying to profit from it. They do not charge licensing fees, even though they often spend much time, effort, and even money creating these works. They rely on voluntary compensation for their generous act, but that is often too little, too late, and too difficult.

Existing solutions such as PayPal, Amazon, and Billpoint are insufficient for many reasons:

• They place all burden of promotion and solicitation upon the already resource-limited developer.
• There is little control over the interface, limiting branding and customization.
• They force whoever is giving money into extra steps and registrations, which is a big disincentive to giving.
• And they do not allow select information such as total amount of funds collected or names of top givers to be publicized, which would help build community.

These existing solutions provide only the first steps of the solution, but fail in everything else.

Solution

GiftNet benefits developers who give their copyrighted works (such as software, blueprints, or books) to the public by helping the public easily give back to them. It is flexible, member-oriented, low-cost, and of course secure. It makes receiving financial support easy and giving it even easier.

GiftNet is the solution: the network that works for developers, doing all of the promotion and solicitation so developers can focus on developing.

Specification

In short, a GiftNet uses a common database of member developers who have signed up to receive financial gifts for copyrighted works they have freed to the public. This database is used by member agents to solicit these gifts from contributors, on behalf of the developers . As a profit incentive, agents receive a percentage of the gifts for themselves, as a commission.

The contributors only directly interact with the agents to allow for complete branding and customization, but the financial transactions are processed centrally by the GiftNet to ensure fairness and security. This creates a highly effective, scalable, and efficient system to allow generous developers to benefit financially. Please read more about the features.

Scenarios (coming soon)

Step-by-step scenarios of using GiftNet: Developers, Agents, Contributors, more....

Glossary

Definitions of terms used in this project: Holder, Agent, Contributor, Commission, more....

Background

This project began from a brainstorming thread Theo started on Crynwr's Free Software Business list asking about methods of profiting from open source software. That resulted in this project, as well as the Ransom project.