Here is an example where the relentless drive to free (as in $) results in something ceasing to exist that had real value.

People need to make a living. sigh

I know, dear. hugs

www.kickstarter.com/ is interesting but will only fund people if people already see the value in it.

ya, kickstarter. I thought about trying it to raise 5K to buy a quilting machine to start my own biz

, but I saw someone else on there who tried the same thing and failed. her story wasn't so hot though. :-\

works best if you had, say, a quilting blog and were known.

How much can one sell quilts for?

Couldn't Kickstarter help support an already known free product like Kirsten's? "Need $5k or I hafta quit." Not a kickstarter though.

Reckon that would get more support than an unknown group lookin' for money.

I think it can. Support the next version...

a kickstarter project for Kirsten's would likely get funded too, there's already a lot of support in the SL community for it.