Before you hate me, I think kickstarter is a fantastic site. But I also think this is a great idea.

Why?
Rule of the internet – if you don’t do it, somebody else will.

Really, Why?
We think Kickstarter is fantastic, both as an idea and in execution.
But it’s lacking in some ways. Kickstarter is curating internet awesomeness for the grand community.
And there is no doubt that Kickstarter.com has a very bright future ahead of it.

But we believe the masses of brilliant internetizens can do a lot more with this idea.

For example, say an arts community in Columbus, Ohio wants to help its members raise money:

• to curate a community arts event
• to start an art-mobile for local schools
• for an local artist to create a public works sculpture.

Kickstarter is great not only because of their technology, but because of the community they are creating around an idea.

A benefactor is going to come to the site for one project, but may not browse through hundreds of open projects to find other interesting ones.  There are countless local groups who can run with this idea, creating a community of benefactors to surround a group of creators and more precisely target their fund-raising. (local arts orgs, public radio, community blogs, businesses)

What are you, some kind of asshole?
I guess so, but if wordpress.com can open source wordpress, and people can create clones of Basecamp, Digg, Delicious and others, why not?

Really?
Honestly, I don’t expect the goal to be met, but the fact that it could be is intriguing. Plus I believe their is value in using Kickstarter to show thegreat and not-so-great aspects of Kickstarter.com

Technical Details?
OpenStarter should be really easy to install, setup and use. As in for people adventurous enough to install WordPress or Indexhibit themselves. That is, it should have a fairly low barrier to entry, so should have clear documentation and be tested to install on cheap hosting (like Dreamhost for instance)
PHP, MySQL with no crazy extensions. Support for Amazon Payments and Paypal are obvious requirements.

This project won’t have every single feature that kickstarter.com does, but will have the essentials executed very well. We’re professional web developers, we do this stuff for a living, it will be good.

I’m thinking a goal of $5000.

Think of the social internet commentary.  Think of the lulz.

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