I would argue that Kickstarter funding is basically equivalent to a sale, and dissimilar to angel or venture funding. For one, you don't give up equity for Kickstarter funding.

In general, regardless of how much funding one might have, one would also like to have the maximum dollar value of sales possible. Kickstarter facilitates this both by enabling sales-like revenue in the first place, and by enabling price discrimination. I'd need to learn more about the Kickstarter funding mechanism to understand whether the sales analogy is totally appropriate or just partially so, but it seems to me to be the far better analogy when compared to venture funding.

Absolutely, and I threw him some dosh because I think that even if it fails horribly this is the kind of tool evolution we need to look in to.

All I'm saying is that it's not like he's going to run out of money to build in Python support.

My apologies, I completely misread the title of the post and therefore misunderstood your comment as well.

This is definitely somewhat true for a project like this. It's basically generating an initial batch of sales to fund the production of the product, which is great in my opinion.

What's amazing about this is that this -- funding development through sales -- is incredibly difficult to do for free software projects otherwise. You have to front all the costs and rely on the generosity of donations or recoup the money through support and services.

Edit: And I think the point stands notwithstanding the fact that Light Table won't be free software.