Build Awesome's Kickstarter is Cancelled

After only a couple days, [Build Awesome's Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fontawesome/build-awesome) has been cancelled and rescheduled for a few months from now due to ["launch emails reach[ing] maybe 5-10% of the people they were supposed to"](https://blog.fontawesome.com/pausing-kickstarter/) which ended up ruining the project's "momentum" despite the fact they had reached their funding goal in a single day.

Here's what my fellow 11ty devs had to say:

"lol. lmao. and no update on 11ty's blog, or zach's blog which feels really weird." > > — [🌸 melanie kat 👻](https://social.lol/@zicklepop@nyan.lol)

"@zicklepop (🌸 melanie kat 👻) it really does I have soo many questions" > > — [Adam DJ Brett](https://social.lol/@adjb@hcommons.social/116184560394281621)

"@brennan that's really strange..." > > — [David Bushell ☕](https://social.lol/@db/116183878622565615)

"@brennan There's definitely some other kind of shenanigans going on, then. Because that makes absolutely no sense." > > — [HisVirusness](https://social.lol/@HisVirusness@mastodon.social/116183856471700341)

"@brennan Hm, that's sketchy AF. They already reached the goal, just fix the emails." > > — [James Huff](https://social.lol/@macmanx)

"@brennan That sounds like whoever is running the Kickstarter is trying to optimize profit over actually funding a project. Given that I was suspicious before, now I'm convinced that 'Font Awesome' is driven purely by avarice." > > — [Ben Overmyer](https://social.lol/@skysong@floss.social/116183969650707522)

Now, I want to clear some things up from [my original article](https://brennan.day/the-end-of-eleventy/): My criticism is not with the fact Build Awesome exists, or even that it is replacing 11ty. Rather, it was with how the Font Awesome team plans to monetize Build Awesome. The case studies of GatsbyJS, StackBit, and NetlifyCMS that I provided demonstrate that the following isn't a viable business model for static site generators:

* Collaborative visual editing (another way to say "headless CMS") * Build-in-a-browser (no local dev setup, no terminal needed) * Premium built-in templates and hosted import tools

I do wish that the Font Awesome team would have more community advocacy in place for their own benefit.

If it isn't obvious, I love 11ty. I think it's one of the best software systems out there. I have built my site and plenty more with it. I donate to their OpenCollective and backed their Kickstarter before it was cancelled (albeit just for the cute stickers) but I believe there are foundational issues that I wanted to be vocal about, as someone who's been JAMstack developer for years.

Regardless, though, this is the end of Eleventy. 11ty is dead. Font Awesome is rebranding the project and did not ask for input