Rieti, Italy -- (ReleaseWire) -- 03/06/2019 --Utopian, a startup empowering open source innovation, has launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign (https://igg.me/at/utopian) with an initial goal of $35,000, to complete the development of Utopian Colony - an inclusive collaboration platform for digital professionals passionate about open source.
Utopian Colony is the culmination of over a year of research, experimentation and a successful proof-of-concept on the Steem blockchain. During that time, Utopian facilitated the submission and professional review of 70,000+ unique contributions made to 9,000+ open source repositories by a community of over 5,000 active digital professionals.
Analysis of the contributions submitted revealed that only 7% of the contributions facilitated by Utopian were code-related. The remaining 93% were contributions by graphic designers, translators, content writers and marketers - people who previously had few ways to contribute to the open source ecosystem and participate in the community.
Based on insights gained working closely with numerous open source projects (such as Coingecko, Actifit, and MineColonies) as well as extensive feedback from the contributor community, Utopian Colony will include a set of key features necessary for project growth and community participation:
Personalized Profile & Project Pages
Bounty Marketplace & Tipping System
Incentivized Knowledge Sharing
Tools for Collective Financing of Project Development
Community-Powered Contribution Quality Assurance Process
Diego Pucci, CEO & Founder: "As a developer it's clear to me that the open source ecosystem is missing the involvement of non-developers. Programmers should not be spending time designing logos or marketing their product, especially if there are people out there who would be happy to do so. Instead, they should be incentivized by the community to contribute their skills to the projects that need them. Utopian Colony will not only connect projects with open source contributors, and give the community the power to incentivize the development of innovative projects, but also provide project maintainers with a professional community-based quality assurance review of each contribution to their project."
Ilana Brudo, CMO & Co-Founder: "I have always been passionate about the ideals and vision of the open source movement. Unfortunately, as a non-developer there was no simple and inviting way for me to contribute to projects I liked and could use my skills. Utopian Colony will open the door to the open source world to anyone with a relevant skill, and our experience operating the POC has shown that non-developers are ready and willing to contribute to open source innovation."
In exchange for their support, Indiegogo contributors will receive early access to Utopian Colony, unique profile badges on the new platform, as well as special offerings for open source projects. The campaign was launched today, March 1st, and end on March 31st.
About Utopian
Utopian was founded in September 2017 as a proof-of-concept platform on the Steem blockchain to explore the needs of projects and contributors in the open source ecosystem. The initiative quickly attracted a community of contributors from all digital professions as well as open source projects looking to connect with these contributors. To date, Utopian has facilitated the submission and community view of over 70,000 contributions to over 9,000 open source repositories.