... Myth #4
Free software is great, but some projects take real money. Theres no way the community can raise those funds.

The truth is that it is hard for the free culture community to raise actual cash for projects, but it has been done. And there are parallels with mainstream culture that suggest it can be taken even further.
Starting commercial with Blender

A number of large-scale projects in the free software world such as Mozilla, Zope, OpenOffice.org, and Blenderustarted out as fairly standard commercial/proprietary development projects. During their incubation phase, the simplicity and structure of a commercial environment with capital investment and salaried programmers made their development fairly straightforward. It was only after these programs had released operational software that their supporting companies made the decision to go to free software distribution.
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Communities certainly can raise funds if the community is large enough and there is a high level of trust that the contributions will produce results. The free culture community has about an order of magnitude to go to catch up to such mainstream funding levels, but theres every reason to believe that the potential for that kind of growth is there.

• Windows Taskbar is hidden by default.
• Moving the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen doesn't activate the taskbar.
• Balloons from the Taskbar Notification Area popup as normal.
• Pressing, and holding, the <Win> key brings up the Taskbar.
• Releasing the <Win> key autohides the Taskbar.

But the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators. Individual artists, producers, inventors and makers are overlooked in the equation. The long tail does not raise the sales of creators much, but it does add massive competition and endless downward pressure on prices. Unless artists become a large aggregator of other artist's works, the long tail offers no path out of the quiet doldrums of minuscule sales.

Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail? One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans...

• All entries are available to play immediately.
• Each entry is represented by an icon on the left.
• Clicking an icon will reveal more information about the game. Click the "Play" button that appears to play it.
• A section for comments will also appear, so please provide your wonderful feedback and constructive criticism to the game designers as the JIG community is known for.
• The competition period will span 3 weeks and all of your plays of each game will be counted toward the $1,000 Viral Prize, awarded to the game with the most plays at the end of the competition period.

Small World is regarded as the leading forum for showcasing the beauty and complexity of life as seen through the light microscope. For over 30 years, Nikon has rewarded the world's best photomicrographers who make critically important scientific contributions to life sciences, bio-research and materials science.

Welcome to THEBLOG WEEMADE!
Here at THEBLOG WEEMADE, we find the artwork and creativity of kids inspiring, thought provoking, entertaining, and unpretentious. We think that reminding ourselves how children see the world is a valuable and enlightening process.
THEBLOG WEEMADE is a user-generated showcase. We accept posts from anyone and everyone. Scan and post your children's artwork or your own artwork from when you were child. Found artwork. Anything! ...