Yorba is crowdfunding development on Geary

The Yorba Foundation wants to raise money for the development of its Geary email client and has started a crowdfunding campaign as part of that effort. Users who want to support the foundation in its effort have 30 days left to donate money and if the campaign doesn't make its goal, as an IndieGoGo "Fixed Funding" campaign, it gets nothing. In its first day, the project has raised just over $6,000 of its $100,000 goal on Indiegogo.

Unlike the popular funding platform Kickstarter, payments to Indiegogo "Fixed Funding" campaigns are immediately deducted from contributor's accounts and are kept on account with PayPal till the campaign reaches its goal. If it fails to reach its goal, payments are refunded.

The Yorba Foundation currently employs three engineers to work full time on Geary and hopes the campaign can raise enough funds to help it continue to employ these developers. Yorba says its goal of $100,000 is "the bare minimum to make the next version of Geary" and that it will use any extra money raised beyond this goal for further improvements in the software.

Features that the developers want to implement as part of the next version include fast searching, email notifications and the ability to save drafts. Yorba also wants to extend Geary's auto-configuration features to more mail service providers – the goal is to need the user to type in only their email address and password – all other configuration should be automatically handled by the client.

Yorba is a non-profit corporation that has applied for, but not yet received, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status. Its focus is to create open source software, primarily for the GNOME desktop, and it is best known for creating the Shotwell photo editor, which is now the default photo editor in many Linux distributions, including Fedora and Ubuntu.

_{Correction: This article has been edited to clarifiy how the new IndieGoGo "Fixed Funding" option works for campaigns like Yorba's.}

(fab)