Iāve just noticed that https://codefund.io is no more.
If there was a page that could list projects with interviews and post-mortem writeups, that would help others bring new iterations of the ideas with increased chances of success.
Having a reference like this will also help to argument for a better, sustainability friendly legislation.
In addition to CodeFund, I would be also interested to read up on Gratipay project there.
I love the idea of collecting these stories.
@coderberry and @jdorfman would be the right persons to talk to about CodeFund 
+1, as long as we learn from them. Otherwise, it would be a sad & long list that keeps growing
For Gratipay, this should be the last article: The End of Gratipay
For CodeFund, @eric can confirm, but this should be the last one: CodeFund is shutting down
Although not post-mortems but some other articles that come to my mind that I define as open-source tragedies (successful adoption in the industry but receive very low-income):
I support the idea to keep a record of failed projects too and perhaps have as much information about launching projects as there is for closing them. Sme of these may have lost support over time and maybe if there were teams or other projects interested in improving it they could get connected before it shuts down to keep it going. But Iām also ware thereās a trend to fork and take over dead projects to use to create malware that can be used to update dead projects. So perhaps have a revocation of keys for dead projects published?
Iām happy to chat anytime about the rise and fall of CodeFund and the complexities of funding open source.
There seems to be a blind spot when it comes to funding emerging Free Software projects.
By āemergingā I mean the thousands of new projects that start every year because an individual had an idea and worked to create a piece of software around that idea during a few months full time.
A month of developer work is arguably worth at least $6,000, therefore a passionate developer dedicating six months of their time to bootstrap a pet project is effectively funded with over $30,000. They would all benefit from some kind of support to move forward with diversity, governance, funding, press, community building, etc.
This kind of incubation does not exist anywhereā¦ or am I missing something?
Rather than a āmausoleumā, it needs to be branded a āschool of experiencesā, perhaps? As long as it is presented right, I think we could avoid it becoming a saddening experience.
Maybe projects that fail isnāt the only feature that causes the experiences to be collected? Alongside stories of growth despite certain challenges, like funding, would also be good? Itās not just āgetting fundingā but getting it to the right places, for example
I am concerned that over last 10 years time tracking and human resource management practices are so involved, that there is no luxury of doing any Free Software projects while maintaining a full time job anymore. It could happen that going anonymous open core instead of public open source is the only support option left for many.
It is truly a saddening experience, but my feeling is that it needs to be solved by other means than soothing the media. Although I agree that things that are normal for a death/doom metal fan may scare away other concerned people who are passionate about solving the problem. So I do not want to limit the freedom of those who liked the idea and want to push it further.
Speaking of media, today starts the course Product Strategies for Journalism: Free online course teaches how to align editorial, audience, business and technology | Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and I find some intersection in āmaintaining media as a productā and in things that are happening in this forum. Well, I am enrolled, but without peers it might be hard to follow and do the homework.
They were by no means limited to free and open source software, but long ago I helped start the practice of doing āFail Festivalsā in our industry which ran as standalone events for quite a while, and also made their way into side events and tracks at larger conferences. It would be great to see those types of ālightning talksā or other opportunities be integrated into the many gatherings we join each year.