Normally I'm not a fan of crowdfunding OSS projects, because the person(s) leading the project tend to walk away from the project as soon as the money runs out.

In this case, the fact that this person has contributed for such a long time speaks in their favor. However, the kickstarter raises a valid issue: there is only a single maintainer and that has led to this situation. The campaign itself then talks about what kind of features will be implemented using this money, but to me as a user I care far more about the long-term sustainability of magic. In other words, the actual problem raised in the campaign is not solved by the campaign; even worse, it might even make the problem worse.

Don't get me wrong, I love magit, but I would be more likely to donate for past contributions that for future commitments.

I think it's a shame that the fellow behind something as awesome as Magit is willing to settle for less than $60,000/year. Magit's worth so much to the world; he deserves twice that at least.

Backed! I hadn't heard about this Kickstarter campaign, thanks for posting.

Magit is such a great tool that I think it's worth learning emacs for, even if you just use emacs for revision control and spend the rest of your time working in a different IDE.

Using Magit has been one of my best workflow improvements of the last year. I'm happy to back its continued development.