Saw on: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1946197

Open Octave Studio
Free music software
Goal: $50,000
Tue May 15 at 11:59PM PT

Kdenlive Refactoring
Video editor
Goal: $4,000 (reached)
Mon Apr 30 at 11:59PM PT

CraftStudio
Real-time collaborative game-making
Goal: $16,000
Fri Apr 27 at 11:59PM PT

PressurePen
Open-source pressure sensitive stylus
Goal: $50 000
Friday Apr 20, 12:51pm EDT

$50,000 is free? Wow, you must have so much money.

And $50,000 requirement for them to make the software, regardless of whether will be open source, closed source or whatever after release is NOT free either.

Windows is free, when you pay XXX $ for it too.

You're not free to decompile and rebuild Windows after getting a license for it.

The thread title clearly says "as in freedom", which is "free speech" (freedom), not "free beer" (no cost).

Although, I must admit I missed the "software" part of the title. PressurePen is mostly intersting as open hardware, although the software will be open-source as well.

Sorry, I don't follow the marketing crap of FOSS and other similar organizations (and also don't care about the whole licensing stuff).

I don't care if I'm allowed to decompile it or have the source code or whatever, forget the whole licensing stuff, $50,000 software is in no way free.

Wether you care or not has little to do with it, there's still quite a difference between freedom and zero cost. "Free" in English is an annoying word as it can mean both, the thread title clearly stated which one was intended.

Wait, you have to pay for Windows?

I never knew....

You mix different things together, either by accident or deliberately. With Kickstarter you donate money to projects. Sometimes they promise you some kind of reward. They are not obliged to it, but it's then like pre-ordering. If it's a commercial product all the others will have to pay for it later, if they want it. The profit will go purely to the initiators of the project.

With FOSS obviously they cannot promise you a copy of the software as reward, since everybody will get it for free. FOSS means you need to provide always the source code and this property is inherited further, effectively this sets the price to zero or near zero. So it's purely like a donation. Not different from any other donation campaign like Wikipedia is doing yearly.

In your model of thinking even Wikipedia would not be free because they rely on getting paid by donations. No donations - no Wikipedia. However compared to what Wikipedia delivers the price of continueing it is embarrassingly cheap. :)

Ah: I see a bit of a problem with the PressurePen project. Obviously additionally to the software the design of the necessary hardware is to be open sourced. You only get the design for free. You still need to find somebody that produces it. Kind of difficult to carry the FOSS concept over to physical products.

Not the concept (freedom to modify and create derivative products), the price to produce a working product is really independent of that.

Would you consider Windows to be free if you had to pay $0 for it? No? Yes? Even though developers still needed to be hired to make it one way or another?

I assume that your comments are directed toward Open Octave Studio, since that's the one with the $50000 funding goal. From the page: "Free", in the context of money, means zero purchase price. As you can see from the quote, the price tag is $0, not $50000. The word "free" has never at any point meant no production cost. That wouldn't make sense.

Unless we finally fix those last few problems with the infinite monkeys and their typewriters...