The Kickstarter says that it might get you access to a packaged build, and that the price might be pay-what-you-want -- sounds a lot like the NeoOffice business model ( https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/mirrors.php?file=NeoOff... ).

But making money from open source projects is hard enough, and varied enough, that it makes sense to spend a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with this one before committing to anything. It looks like that's what they're doing. So I don't think there will be a firm answer to this until they're much closer to launch -- or that it would be a good idea to offer one.

If LightTable wants to be the 'Eclipse' of clojure and Python then it needs to be open source.

Mass adoption, patches, test cases, design, feedback and money comes only when it reaches crazy adoption and a lot of people hack on it.

That is why it is important for LightTable to release a minimal usable version ASAP and then improve it in further releases.

All this needs a open source set up. A Cathedral set up earlier but a bazaar set up later.

Indeed, I'm very curious about this one as well.

Going for YC is clearly a great starting point for building a scalable business, so I wonder what the business logic will look like. As in genuinely, positively interested to know. :-)