The infrastructure for starting and maintaining new commons just got a big boost in Spain with the founding of Goteo.org, a new crowdfunding website. The explicit mission of Goteo.org is to help finance and support “the independent development of creative and innovative initiatives that contribute to the common good, free knowledge, and open code.”
The site is obviousy inspired by the crowdfunding website Kickstarter and other distributed-funding innovations, but Goteo.org differs in being dedicated exclusively to funding open-source and commons-related projects. It is also dedicared to fostering distributed collaboration on proposed and ongoing projects.
Most of the Goteo.org website is in Spanish, but here is an English FAQ describing the project. Geoteo sees itself as “a platform for investing in 'feeder capital' that supports projects with social, cultural, scientific, educational, technological, or ecological objectives that generate new opportunities for the improvement of society and the enrichment of community goods and resources.”