The Meson manual crowdfunding campaign

The Meson Build system has existed for over six years. Even though we have a fairly good set of documentation, there has not been a standalone user's manual for it. Until now.

A crowdfunding campaign to finance the manual has just been launched on Indiegogo. The basic deal is simple, for 30€ you get the final book as a PDF. To minimize work and save trees, there is no physical version. There are also no stickers, beer mats or any other tchotchkies. There are a few purchase options as well as opportunities for corporate sponsorships. Please see the Indiegogo project page for further details. If there are any questions about this campaign feel free to contact me. The easiest way is via email.

Overall I'm quite excited about this campaign. One reason is obviously personal, but the other has to do with sustainability of FOSS projects in general. There has been a lot of talk about how maintainers of open source projects can get compensated for their work. This campaign can be seen as an experiment to see if the crowdfunding model could work in practice.

So if you are just getting started with building software and want a user manual, buy this book. If you have basic experience with Meson and want to dive deeper, buy this book. If you are a seasoned veteran and don't really need a book but want to support the project (specifically me), buy this book. Regardless of anything else, please spread the word on your favourite social media and real world venues of choice.

Let the experiment begin!