Miro adopt a line of code

Miro has just launched a new campaign to raise money to further the development of the Miro multi platform Video distribution application. I decided to participate and give $4 a month, in return I get a dedicated web page where I can see my line of code grow. This is a very nice idea from Miro, and raises an often ignored issue: how to pay for the development of a big free project that will benefit a lot of users but no big enterprise like IBM or Google?

In the case of browsers you have the possibility to sell you default homepage to Google, which will bring you money without costing a cent to your users, but for other application a stable revenue sources is not so easy to come by. Corporate sponsoring is always a possibility, but in the case of Miro this could generate some conflict of interest, as Miro position itself as a champion of open and independent media. The best remaining option is probably to request a donation. In a way this is logic, if we use the software and we want it to be independent, the best way is to pay for it ourselves.

In a world where ad sponsored television and websites has been the norm for decades this may be shocking, but this is not so bad if you take a minute to think about it. Let's compare Miro to iTunes:

- iTunes is entirely free to install, but only works on Mac OSX or Windows, if you want to use Linux you are out of luck, while Miro works on all 3 platforms. Why? because users want to watch vidcasts on Linux, while Apple want it's users to watch them on OSX.

- When you open iTunes you are greeted with advertisement for music in the iTunes store or other commercial content, then you have to navigate to the podcast category. In Miro you are greeted by the selection of the best new free podcast (chosen by the Miro team). Under that banner is a list of the "most subscribed today" vodcasts of random category. Why: miro want you to see the best free podcasts made by your peers, Apple want you to purchase it's partner's content.

- In Miro the ranking of Vodcasts is based on the active subscribers to a stream. this is very clear. In iTunes we don't really know...

The conclusion is clear, if we want really free and open media we will have to make some efforts to get it, whether it is through donations or by creating content ourselves.