Kindware
Software, funded like a sausage sizzle.
- A $5 vote picks the next project, and it ships free to everyone
- Active community contributors
- No ads, no feed, no upsell. Your data imports and exports.
- First vote open. Merch soon, sheep on it.
The client
This one is not a client at all. Most of what we build has a business behind it: a startup with a launch date, an organisation with a mission. Kindware is the range on the other side of that. Some software should exist and never will, because nobody can make money from it. A run tracker that does not sell your data. The thing your club treasurer keeps wishing someone would build. Kindware is a community project that builds it anyway, and we are one of the people in it.
The challenge
Free software usually has a catch. It is free because you are the product, or free until the upsell, or free and abandoned. Kindware needed a way to fund small, useful software that stays free, stays honest, and gets finished.
It also had to be simple enough to explain at a barbecue. If the model needed a pitch deck, it was the wrong model.
How it works
A sausage sizzle. Everyone chips in a little, the tin pays for the build, and everyone gets fed. It runs once a month.
- Idea goes in the box
- Anyone can put an idea in. Next month, two come out as candidates. If there is only one worth building, the second slot is yours.
- $5 in the tin
- Chip in $5 and you get a vote. The vote is for the one you would tell your mum about, and the money pays for the build.
- It ships free to everyone
- Whatever wins gets built and released free, to everyone, whether they voted or not. That is the whole point.
- No ads, no feed, no upsell
- Nothing Kindware ships has a business model hiding in it. There is no premium tier and no attention to harvest.
- Your data leaves with you
- Everything imports and exports. If a Kindware app disappeared tomorrow, you would still have your data in a format something else can read.
- Same standard as paid work
- Free is not an excuse. Our part gets the same engineering our client builds get, because the people using it are the same people.
The outcome
The first vote is open. On the ballot: a run and walk tracker that does not lock your data in or sell it, and a second slot waiting for a better idea. Made in Aotearoa New Zealand.
It is a small thing, and it is the fun one. Being part of it is also the clearest way we know to say what we mean by software that works: it works for the people using it, and nobody else.