Will Open-source Crowdfunding Help Sustain the Hardware Startup Boom?

Jarred Sumner is just 16 years old, and he has launched two products this month: Lockitron, a gadget that lets users open doors with mobile phones, and Selfstarter, an open source alternative to Kickstarter. Kickstarter, which actively curates fundraising projects, declined to host Lockitron's pre-orders. So Sumner and his colleagues wrote their own code. On Thursday, they open-sourced it on Github. By Monday, it had been forked, or modified, 150 times, and 500 users were following the project.

Jarred Sumner is just 16 years old, and he has launched two products this month: Lockitron, a gadget that lets users open doors with their mobile phones, and Selfstarter, an open-source alternative to Kickstarter.

Kickstarter, which actively curates fundraising projects, declined to host Lockitron’s pre-order process. So Sumner and his colleagues wrote their own code. On Thursday, they open-sourced it on Github. By Monday, it had been forked, or modified, 150 times, and 500 users were following the project.

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