[HN Gopher] Funds for Open Source
___________________________________________________________________
Funds for Open Source
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 245 points
Date : 2021-03-25 11:27 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.opencollective.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.opencollective.com)
| caniszczyk wrote:
| One problem with this approach is still that depending what
| country you're from, you're essentially creating an "open source
| gig economy" where developers work for scraps from company
| donations without health/retirement benefits:
| https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-...
|
| What I'd like to see instead of see people encouraging developers
| and open source maintainers start companies and create positive
| sum dynamics in wealth created.
| alannallama wrote:
| Open Collective team member here. I totally agree that the gig
| economy approach is unhealthy. A big goal of ours is to help
| open source creators earn a decent living making open source
| that can rival what they'd get paid working for a commercial
| company. We've managed to facilitate that for quite a few
| projects, but as an ecosystem we have a long way to go. We need
| way more companies to step up to the plate and way more money
| flowing in. We also support projects who build companies and
| commercial offerings out of their open source projects, as long
| as they remain genuinely open source, and have many Collectives
| with parallel companies in addition.
| prepend wrote:
| What's the take for coordinating this Fund API? If I donate $1,
| what percent gets to projects and what percent is overhead?
|
| I want more open source software and more great open source
| software. But I think the best projects (Apache, Linux, etc)
| aren't in need of funds and function more as common goods with
| multiple companies paying for work and contributing back.
|
| So I think their heart is in the right place, but the
| implementation won't lead to better software.
| david_allison wrote:
| Unsure whether they're using a different fee model for the
| "Fund" payments. But they're open about the fees for payments
| from individuals (each transaction on a collective's page shows
| the fee breakdown).
|
| > Open Collective takes 10% + credit card fees (usually 3% +
| $0.30/transaction) [0]
|
| A few concrete examples (dependent upon payment processor
| chosen)
|
| For $1, a collective got ~$0.56
|
| For $100, a collective got ~$86.60
|
| I was getting very close to the inter-bank exchange rate for
| payouts.
|
| [0] https://medium.com/open-collective/what-is-open-
| collective-h....
| piamancini wrote:
| Hi! Pia here from Open Collective - In the FUNDS case the
| fees are taken when the Fund is created. Donations from the
| Fund are free of fees afterwards. Since the Funds are
| generally bank payments, there's no Stripe fees in this case.
| lallysingh wrote:
| So for bank payments, what kind of fees are we talking
| about?
| piamancini wrote:
| It's 10% which gets shared 5% & 5% between the platform
| and the non for profit that is the custodian of the funds
| (and provides compliance, tax filing, 1099s,etc)
| Zababa wrote:
| > Open Collective takes 10%
|
| That's honestly a lot.
| piamancini wrote:
| Open Collective takes 5% and the other 5% goes to the non
| profit that provides fiscal sponsorship for the projects.
| prepend wrote:
| That's still a lot, I think. Compared to other charities
| using a site like charitynavigator.org you can see that
| is a high price for a charity.
|
| It's also an odd legal structure to separate the platform
| from a non-profit to do admin tasks, since non-profits
| are not really that good at doing admin and compliance.
| prepend wrote:
| 10% is a lot of overhead for just being an index fund.
| Imagine if vanguard took 10% overhead for their management.
|
| I'd rather go through things like GitHub sponsorships that
| take 0%. Or I'd rather see a community oriented process that
| is OSS and just tries to connect donors to projects so I can
| donate directly to projects and just pay credit card
| processing fees.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Who is this intended to get funds from? From corporations, or
| from average consumers?
|
| IMO corporate funding is a death trap in the long run, because
| then _they_ choose what gets priority and they have all the wrong
| incentives - they 'll do right by the user when they can _afford_
| to.
|
| More corporate funding is useful as a stepping stone, but in
| long-term planning it's a mirage.
| alannallama wrote:
| Open Collective team member here. This particular initiative is
| aimed at funding from major sponsors. Our platform also has
| crowdfunding functionality so projects can fundraise from
| individuals, too.
|
| Almost all the corporate funding we facilitate is no strings
| attached, meaning the project creators and maintainers stay in
| the driver's seat when it comes to prioritisation. Some
| projects opt to make other commitments to funders but that's
| totally up to the project.
| maxrev17 wrote:
| Love the idea!
| rapnie wrote:
| > So, open source projects want to be supported, and companies
| who rely on open source want to invest in them but there's a
| massive pain point:
|
| > In the open source world, formal contracts and partnership
| agreements don't happen the way they do in the business world.
|
| In a way what OpenCollective offers here is much needed. The OSS
| world has a really hard time to get funded, while at the same
| time big tech is thriving upon their works.
|
| Another pain point not mentioned in the article is that big tech
| corporate world also doesn't like FOSS (copyleft) licenses. They
| favor permissive licenses, as this is what their empires are
| built upon.
|
| I fear this funding initiative will favor OSS to the detriment of
| FOSS. I also feel that OpenCollective - which I found aligned
| with FOSS principles at the start, hence really attractive - is
| moving towards raking in the big money now.
| alannallama wrote:
| Open Collective team member here. All the money involved in
| this initiative goes to Open Source Collective 501(c)(6). As a
| non-profit, all revenues are reinvested back into the mission
| of building health and sustainability in the open source
| ecosystem. We're not really "raking in the big money" but if we
| do, it will all go toward supporting open source.
|
| FWIW I agree with you about copyleft licenses, philosophically.
| But we've taken the approach of being very pragmatic when it
| comes to working with corporate sponsors, and we can't make
| them accept certain licenses, etc. Our approach is to build up
| funding for open source projects so they can be stronger and
| healthier and have the power to advocate for what they want to
| see in their ecosystem.
| rapnie wrote:
| I really appreciate your response. Thank you very much.
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| So this is only for projects with paying or willing to pay
| customers, right?
|
| Say, I have a small, permissively licensed personal project
| (bittorrent implementation), that has some userbase, including
| for-profit companies.
|
| There is a lot of shit code in there, and many features are
| missing. Let us assume for the sake of the argument that given
| sufficient time I would be able to turn it into a state-of-the-
| art reference library. But given the current state of my
| financials I'm finding it hard to justify putting any effort into
| it for free at the moment and end up purchasing other
| opportunities not related to OSS.
|
| I'm pretty sure it is not a unique situation and wonder if there
| are any solutions for this (e.g. angels, incubators, something
| like that?)
| choeger wrote:
| For such a small-scale project, I suggest you seek out the
| corporate users of your project and offer consulting /
| development contracts as a freelancer. This can be on a per-
| ticket basis on their side.
|
| If it turns out that they have real use cases for your software
| they should be glad for the offering. Make sure to either
| request a high rate, as you are the leading developer and
| leading expert for the software. This high rate basically pays
| for further development (as a kind of training or investment
| into your offering).
|
| If they don't have a use case, code quality might not be as
| important and you can thus justify to scale down your
| involvement until such use cases appear.
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| Did consulting, yes. Two concerns: 1) Some guys want IP on
| improvements to the original codebase 2) When I work on
| client's problems, I have less time to work on the original
| codebase, so the earned money is not exactly reinvested into
| the project, which is the primary point of donations.
| 7steps2much wrote:
| Yes, the way I understood this is that customers can contribute
| to projects more easily. If you don't have any customers /
| users willing to pay then you don't get any money.
|
| As for your situation, put a notice up on your project that you
| are willing to fix bugs / code new features for a fee? If these
| companies use your library they might be interested in
| sponsoring your work.
|
| If they are not however, then I don't think there is a way to
| fund your development.
|
| As for incubators etc., they are probably not all that
| interested in a BitTorrent implementation, considering how many
| are already around? Unless of course the library provided some
| value nobody else does.
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| Yeah, right. So this is not what I had in mind -- a way for
| the society to invest into projects that might not have an
| obvious immediate business value. Like society invests in
| raising and educating kids, for example, hoping that some of
| these kids will bring positive value to the world when they
| grow up.
| shrubble wrote:
| OpenCollective as a company signed the open letter against RMS
| at: rms-open-letter.github.io .
|
| The FSF is in some ways a competitor to this for-profit company
| ... is that a fair statement?
| benjamuk wrote:
| Hey Executive Director of Open Source Collective here.
|
| I signed the agreement on behalf of >2,500 open source projects
| (and the communities who maintain them) because I agree the
| call to action would strengthen the community, not weaken it.
|
| This is not about the FSF or the GNU Project, it's about
| building a safe space for people to participate in and build a
| commons that is as diverse and welcoming as it is free and
| open.
| luckylion wrote:
| > I signed the agreement on behalf of >2,500 open source
| projects
|
| Did you ask them for a vote, or is there a general
| arrangement that you / OSC speaks for them?
| erezsh wrote:
| I'm generally a fan of the open collective, and I appreciate
| your contributions to open source. But I'm disappointed to
| learn that you took part in this irrational attack on the
| FSF. I feel that it has in fact made the open source space
| weaker and significantly less safe. I hope you will
| reconsider your stance on this issue.
|
| (I'm not a fan of RMS btw, this isn't about him at all. It's
| about principles and protocols)
| undefined1 wrote:
| not exactly welcoming to neurodivergent individuals and those
| who don't perfectly conform to the approved orthodoxy. that
| letter is gross, slanderous and cult-like ("dangerous force",
| "These sorts of beliefs"). it's straight out of Scientology's
| Suppressive Person playbook. it does not speak for the open
| source community. it speaks for a small set of authoritarians
| who wield weaponized empathy and threat of banishment as a
| means to control people.
|
| please reconsider.
| rimutaka wrote:
| I would love to see their pitch deck with the TAM and that sweet
| x10000 ROI with their 10% fee! :)
|
| Although they may add value to OSS in the short term by bringing
| in the $$$ we wouldn't otherwise get, their ultimate purpose as a
| business is to maximize the return to the shareholders, who are
| not you or me.
|
| What we really need is more competition in this space to drive
| the fees down.
| caniszczyk wrote:
| ...or use services that are run by non profits? there's a lot
| of funding platforms out there https://www.oss.fund
|
| this type of service should be a public common good imho
| AKluge wrote:
| The ultimate purpose is to fulfill the will of the
| shareholders. While this is usually dominated by profit
| concerns, other factors can come into play as well. Especially
| social good and community impact.
| artembugara wrote:
| There is one basic thing about open source and market economy:
|
| 1. People open source for free. They already do that. So, there
| is no real need to pay them as they are willing to do so for
| free. Greatest minds work for open-sourced projects.
|
| 2. If you want to pay/fund/support open source. Great, but these
| numbers we're talking about (like $1k/mo) are nowhere near what
| devs make at corporations.
|
| I think Funds for Open Source is a great initiative! I just do
| not think it can be a real alternative to a career path.
|
| I think the best open source support is done by big companies who
| open source their work. For example, Airflow by AirBnb.
| xbar wrote:
| I think it is likely an alternative career path for a handful
| of FOSS unicorns whose work is so instrumental that private
| corporations desperately need their work to continue.
|
| Among us, some "entrepreneurs" will produce 100 little projects
| and try to get them all funded and then Show HN how they make a
| living off of dozens of lightly funded projects.
|
| Funds for Open Source will globalize some work inasmuch as some
| developers will get paid some money in places where no
| development career paths exist now. Look at the World Economic
| Forum's Global Competitiveness report and you can find at least
| 20 countries where tech companies do not hire.
|
| To your point, the reason people open source for free is that
| they cannot produce free software and get paid. There is no way
| for them to be compensated for working in alignment with their
| own values. Funds for Open Source attacks that problem.
|
| I don't know that Funds is a good organization, or that they
| are fair in their pricing, or whether they are the best
| equipped private, for-profit company to wedge themselves
| between free-thinking developers and the corporate entities
| that consume their work for free, but I think the business
| model for Funds makes a lot of sense.
| piamancini wrote:
| You have a point! The goal though is not for one FUND to
| support they entire ecosystem but for many funds supporting it.
| 1k from one fund and 3k from another for example + recurring
| subscriptions from individuals, end up adding up. (disclosure,
| I am OC co-founder)
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The problem is that projects by big companies are often
| encumbered by their business decisions. Companies rarely find
| privacy profitable, so it's usually the first feature to get
| rid of, but if they use or need an open source tool that
| respects privacy, they may pay for it.
|
| Funds from tech companies won't alone make open source
| development sustainable, but it'll help.
| prepend wrote:
| All projects are encumbered by business decisions.
|
| I think open source improves on this problem because now I
| can fork and extend because a company open sourced something.
| This is not perfect, but it's better than when I can't.
|
| I think a better approach is trying to encourage more of a
| gift economy with people working on stuff for free and
| sharing it.
|
| It's funny how I'm willing to accept some hair and do work
| myself as part of a community, but if I have to pay for it, I
| lose that community motivation.
|
| For example, I'm willing to spend time writing up an issue
| for an OSS project with a test script, etc. but I won't do
| that for a commercial company.
| lallysingh wrote:
| I don't think the $1k/month would fully cover a full time
| engineer. A few similar contributions would. Or an engineer
| doing this work as a side project.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I would rather make 1k a month and work on something I like on
| my terms than to have a stressful/meaningless job around the
| clock with unpaid working hours all around. There only so much
| shit you really need. And you need time for your friends/loved
| one. You'll live poorer but longer.
|
| Edit : This is not a fantasy about poverty being more genuine.
| Poverty makes you die sooner. My point is a life spent running
| after money and positions is a meaningless life.
|
| Edit 2: I may have a bias here since I live with under 1k a
| month, under my country's minimum wage that is .
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Appreciate that's the case for you, but under 1k in either
| the UK or US or many European countries is completely
| untenable for independent living.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I live in Paris so it's quite expensive. Not making a case
| about my lifestyle which is quite spartan I admit but I am
| tired of reading people complaining they can't make a
| living with only 3k a month, like my father, which feels
| kind of obscene to me. The reason my father is complaining
| about his financial situation all the time is because is
| always trying to buy shit to compensate the time he lost
| doing the job he doesn't like. It all ends up in the
| basement and when the basement will be full, it'll finally
| end up burnt in a land fill next to a village in Malaysia
| or something. Don't be my father.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I'm more surprised you can even pay rent in Paris & eat
| for <1k a month.
|
| You have to remember peoples circumstances too - many
| people have families or live in very expensive areas,
| they can't just suddenly stop everything to live on a
| lower amount like an individual can.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I think I live in an expensive area. Rent is 500 euros a
| month (which is cheap, but I get what I pay for). Phone
| is five euros/month. So is internet (shared). I don't pay
| transportation because I think it should be free since I
| am not polluting common air with a car. Else I have a
| bike. Then I have 400 euros that need to be shared among
| food (which is swiftly shoplifted if expensive ;),
| clothing (which I already have plenty so I am fine) and
| nights out (which at the moment is rather quiet you know
| why). I cut my own hair or ask a friend. Short period of
| more intense work paid for all the *ware. Rather fine I
| must say.
|
| As I said my point is not to say that everyone should be
| like me although I like to show off how not-wealthy I am
| for the high of moral superiority. My point is that
| thinking you need more money is often intricated with
| irrational emotions. It has happened to me various times
| to have someone I know is doing fine complaining about
| being "tight". When a person that's poor say "I have no
| money", it's means the account balance is dangerously
| close to 0,when a well off person says so, it means "I
| wish I did not have to cut down expenses so I can
| maintain my standard of living".
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > it means "I wish I did not have to cut down expenses so
| I can maintain my standard of living"
|
| Well, we did move on from living in caves for a reason,
| you know.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Yeah that's exactly the reaction I get from those people
| when you tell them that maybe they don't need that new
| expensive sofa to replace "that one that is already four
| year old": "Why u want me to live in a cave? " So I guess
| there are only two ways of living : Either live in a
| cave, or have two big SUV because you know why moving
| 1500 kg of plastic and metal anywhere I go when I can
| move 2500 kg? I wish I could insert a Louie Ck video
| snippet saying "I deserve a golden watch"
| artembugara wrote:
| I think my co-founder (CTO of NewsCatcher) is in a very
| common situation. He's in a 500 euro flat in 13th
| district.
|
| It's literally everything in one room. Everything.
| varispeed wrote:
| The exploitation of developers by big corporation must end. It is
| crazy that companies make billions out of software they use
| without paying contributors a penny. Some companies were able to
| amass incredible wealth on the backs of volunteers. I think we
| should start pressurise politicians so that they force companies
| to pay royalties to open source contributors based on % of
| revenue. In many countries (for example in the UK) it is illegal
| to work for free (even if you want to) and every worker has to be
| paid at least a minimum wage. The same principle should apply to
| open source projects. If your company makes money over a certain
| threshold you should start paying. Open source software should
| only be free for individuals and small businesses.
| jahewson wrote:
| This is silly. The vast majority of non-toy open source is
| written by corporations. I've made substantial open source
| contributions over the years but I've consumed far more value
| than I ever created, all for free. Maybe you think I should be
| paying those corporations?
| jayp1418 wrote:
| Something like this ? https://licensezero.com/
| hpoe wrote:
| I don't disagree with the sentiment but I do disagree with the
| implementation part of way Free Software (free as in speech)
| works is because I can do whatever I want with it, if I don't
| want to charge I shouldn't be forced to. Tbh what you are
| suggesting sounds like getting rid of FOSS entirely and
| bringing it back under the guise of Freeware.
|
| If you really don't want corporations to benefit off your work
| without contributing back go GPL or stop maintaining it.
| varispeed wrote:
| The thing is that not every developer is in a privileged
| position to provide work without payment. Good example are
| unpaid internships - if you want to gain experience, but you
| are coming from a poor background, you are unlikely going to
| sign up for such internship, because you will not have means
| to pay bills and so you are forced to find job that pays, not
| even necessarily in the field you would want. This creates
| divide, because only people from privileged backgrounds can
| gain experience this way and in the end get better jobs.
| That's why in many countries (for example in the UK) unpaid
| internships are illegal to create a level playing field. I
| think it should not be allowed to give away your work for
| free (to corporations) because of that. Then if you really
| don't want this money, you could send it to a charity of your
| choice. Such way would be much fairer to everyone.
| hpoe wrote:
| Sure but we are talking about developing FOSS software not
| unpaid internships. So what relevance does your comment
| have towards me wanting to realease Free Software?
| varispeed wrote:
| Not every developer is in a privileged position to
| contribute to open source projects, because they have
| bills to pay and have to commit time to do paid work.
| This can compromise their changes at getting better jobs,
| as employers tend to look whether someone has open source
| contributions in their resume. Very often it is not even
| possible to show any code from previous jobs, because it
| is confidential. This is just one of angles where this
| kind of model creates social divide.
| matz1 wrote:
| Sure, its not everyone. On the other hand it also suck to
| be forced to pay.
| DC1350 wrote:
| > The exploitation of developers by big corporation must end.
|
| Why do people choose to work for free on open source projects
| that are mostly used by businesses? I can completely understand
| making things that are hard to monetize, user facing
| applications, or trying to learn something. But when I see free
| contributions to things like infrastructure management I just
| don't get it. Why wouldn't you just get a job doing this if
| there's obviously a business demand for it? If I made something
| for free that was primarily used by people who made money off
| of my work it would completely kill my motivation and I would
| feel taken advantage of.
| varispeed wrote:
| In my opinion those people are in privileged position - they
| already have money, they don't have to worry what they are
| going to eat if they don't do work and so on, so they show
| off. It's kind of like a rich person driving around in his or
| hers Lambo. They do this work for free and then there is less
| work for people who cannot work for free. Why would company
| hire anyone if they get free contributions.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| Is there really a lack of demand for software developers of
| the level that can contribute quality open source
| contributions?
| glsdfgkjsklfj wrote:
| people do not stay on projects forever and then they are
| literally stolen. Or companies adopt a project and then throw
| their weight around.
|
| for the former case: do you think former gnome contributors
| (who started the project exactly because their feared the
| ossification of window managers trying to copy windows, see
| their https://web.archive.org/web/19990224084927/http://www.g
| nome.... manifesto) would be happy with designers that ignore
| users and copy everything from osx?
|
| for the second case, just look up how much linus fought
| against tainted kernel and still ended up giving up because
| of corporate/funding pressure. Also how google employees do
| whatever they want to chromium, for example, removing every
| single contribution to restrict referrer because that is how
| they made money from clicks on google search ads.
| mb7733 wrote:
| > I think we should start pressurise politicians so that they
| force companies to pay royalties to open source contributors
| based on % of revenue.
|
| ...If someone makes something and gives it out for free, the
| government can't retroactively force users to pay for it. It's
| up to the creator to choose a different lisence.
| varispeed wrote:
| It is not retroactive, but "from now on" with a grace period.
| Granting a free license will not be legal, except for
| individuals, charities, non-profit organisations and SME. You
| may think that this is wrong, because this has been a status
| quo and big corporations were doing a great PR to keep it
| that way, but this is extremely damaging to society.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| The government makes people retroactively pay for stuff all
| the time. It's the basis for torts.
| leppr wrote:
| Yes, so the first step is to stop demonizing projects that opt
| for alternative "source available" licenses, and stop idolizing
| one canonical definition of capital O "Open-Source" licenses.
|
| Despite most everyone implicitly associating open source with
| gratis, it's not a requirement or even preferable in my
| opinion. The benefits of OSS to users are all still there with
| paid software.
|
| Tangentially this makes me think of a recent phenomenon I'm
| sure many OSS advocates love to ridicule or trivialize, but
| which shows at least an attempt to solve the problem of
| compensation for freely replicable work: NFTs. If you manage to
| see past the mainstream view that people are "buying links to
| jpeg files", and rather understand that people are paying for
| public recognition of patronage, there's something to be said
| about their ability to get people to pay for "open source"
| work.
| karussell wrote:
| Can you list a project with a big community that has a
| "source available" license right from the start? I won't
| demonize these projects but people prefer "open source" over
| "source available" for a reason.
| kfarr wrote:
| JWPlayer
| Qwertious wrote:
| The problem is that sources available destroys the antitrust
| forking feature that's core to open source.
|
| MySQL/MariaDB, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, Cyanogenmod/LineageOS,
| a couple others had the IP go to someone who didn't have an
| incentive to develop it properly, so didn't. Source Available
| permits this with no real recourse.
|
| Agreed on the NFT comment, BTW.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> The exploitation of developers by big corporation must end.
|
| GPLv3 plus a commercial license will go a long way toward that.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I was about to post the same. Pragmatically a collective
| company that could help carry the administrative work with
| open source projects would be interesting. Project with a
| nominal GPLv3 license while allowing paid relaxation of the
| terms (GPLv2 or commercial, etc) could bring in some revenue.
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| Majority of FOSS development is paid for - by big companies.
|
| There is this sticky idea of imaginary army of open source
| developers who produce full time job worth of effort and live
| from thin air and don't have to pay rent. And who do all that
| boring routine and difficult work of maintaining, merging,
| reviewing, patching, testing and so on for passion alone.
| vpattons wrote:
| This is not true except for very specific projects like the
| Linux Kernel.
|
| On other projects that weren't started in companies from the
| start you _see paid FOSS developers doing maintenance_.
|
| Whether that is money well spent or if these developers ever
| do anything creative or original is another question.
| watwut wrote:
| > On other projects that weren't started in companies from
| the start you see paid FOSS developers doing maintenance
|
| How is that not development paid by companies and how
| exactly is that exploitation by big companies? You
| literally claimed it is paid by them.
| karussell wrote:
| It may sound unfair but that is exactly what an open source
| license means: you release something for others to use without
| a payment requirement. If you are a developer and your
| intention is to make money then you should create a business
| around your project or if you find it unfair just stop
| releasing it under open source :)
| vulcan01 wrote:
| > In many countries (for example in the UK) it is illegal to
| work for free (even if you want to) and every worker has to be
| paid at least a minimum wage.
|
| This is slightly off-topic, but how does volunteering work?
| varispeed wrote:
| The exemption is for charities and not for profit
| organisations.
| monocasa wrote:
| Surely I can, say, build a fence for my pensioner neighbor
| without them having to form a non profit or pay me?
| dt3ft wrote:
| The change has to start with us. Developers should value their
| work, and stop going for virtual stars and points.
|
| I used to determine my self-worth through the number of stars
| my GitHub project had. Boy oh boy was that silly, looking back
| at it. 1.2k stars on GitHub... and god knows who profited off
| it. Me on the other hand? Meh. Would someone like to buy my
| 1.2k GitHub stars? :D
| aaron-santos wrote:
| Monetize your Github stars with a NFT.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| Open source, like open science, is public good, that's value
| enough for me. It's a way to do good that's both aligned with
| my principles and personally stimulating. I'm not motivated
| by points or stars, recognition, money or self-worth, and I
| suspect I'm not in the minority.
| pimterry wrote:
| How does this compare to https://tidelift.com/?
|
| My impression is they're fairly similar at first glance:
| companies can pay open-source funding to one central service, who
| redistribute to each of the appropriate individual maintainers &
| projects behind the scenes. I'm sure there's a bunch of practical
| differences in the details though?
| benjamuk wrote:
| Hey, Head of Product at Open Collective (and former Tidelift
| employee) here:
|
| As far as I am aware Tidelift pays maintainers in exchange for
| a minimal set of commitments, which is used to sell the
| Tidelift subscription. They curate packages of 'known good'
| open source projects for enterprises and provide a set tools
| for users to better understand what software they depend upon.
|
| Funds is a little more free-format, facilitating a relationship
| between maintainers and organisations on their own terms. No
| contracts, no promises, no agendas. We take on the work of
| administrating payments to projects and of ensuring companies
| have what they need in their procurement processes.
|
| In doing so we hope to lower the barriers to the degree that we
| broaden access to funding for open source.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >we hope to lower the barriers to the degree that we broaden
| access to funding for open source.
|
| Q: who is the primary demographic of funders this is aimed
| at? Am I correct in saying it's mostly aimed at getting more
| _corporate_ funding for OSS? (Non-rhetorical question)
| genericone wrote:
| Doesn't this enable maintainers to look at someone's
| submitted code, deny its inclusion for any reason
| personal/financial, and include it at a later date and claim
| expense? Since the code submission is open-source, isn't a
| malicious maintainer able to basically copy the code in-
| spirit under a pseudo-account, and then claim the benefits
| from the fund for themself? I'm just saying that once
| monetary benefits are involved, incentives skew away from
| code quality and community, and towards number one.
|
| Maintainers are above the other developers, is there going to
| be some community oversight?
|
| Who decides how much expense can be claimed?
| Sargos wrote:
| I prefer the quadratic funding method over direct corporate
| sponsorship as it allows more niche projects to get funded and
| average people to participate in the system. You can even have
| Google add $1million to a pool and then have individuals in the
| open source community distribute that out to projects based on
| need and utility.
|
| For background see https://wtfisqf.com/ and Gitcoin Grants.
| Quadratic funding has been used to fund Ethereum public goods for
| a few years and it works pretty well.
| alannallama wrote:
| Just correcting the quadratic funding link: https://fundoss.org
| - launching soon!
| piamancini wrote:
| yes~ check this out: funoss.org coming soon (disclosure, I am
| Open collective co-founder)
| pron wrote:
| Some people are under the impression that the corporate world and
| open-source are separate, whereas a very significant part of
| open-source is already corporate. Linux, Chromium, OpenJDK, V8,
| MySQL, PostgreSQL, Tensor Flow, Elastic Search, Kubernetes,
| Redis, and many, many other of the biggest, most influential open
| source projects are overwhelmingly developed by people paid by
| for-profit corporations to work on those projects. Getting
| corporations to fund smaller, more independent, projects might be
| a good idea, but those two worlds are already just one.
| karussell wrote:
| nit-pick: Elastic Search is not open-source (anymore)
| bosswipe wrote:
| It is not Open Source(tm), but it is open source.
| cperciva wrote:
| Indeed, that should say Open Distro for Elasticsearch.
| erezsh wrote:
| nit-pick: Only according to the OSI, whose credibility within
| the community isn't what it once was.
| karussell wrote:
| Also according to many people in and outside of the
| community. OSI or free software definitions are meant to
| give the contributor the same rights which they don't have
| for a "source available" license. Under a "source
| available" license ES would have never gained the same
| popularity nor commercial success. (Don't understand me
| wrong: ES can do what they want with their code but
| advertising it as "it is the same for most people" is
| untrue)
| erezsh wrote:
| I'm not saying Elastic's model is the open-source ideal.
| But a product that can't find a financial model won't
| exist either.
|
| ES may not give their contributors the same rights on
| paper, but in practice there is no discernable
| difference, other than that the contributors aren't
| allowed to directly compete with them (iirc).
| Daho0n wrote:
| So open but not free.
| erhk wrote:
| So how do you crowd source a project worth keeping right now? A
| tool that poisons data for Google analytics would hardly be
| funded by them. At a certain point we simply cannot allow
| companies to be the only ones holding the reigns.
| wolftune wrote:
| No easy answers. We're trying to address that at
| Snowdrift.coop but are ourselves struggling volunteers not
| getting fully launched still (but not giving up, still at
| it).
|
| Most efforts do seem focused on corporate open-source. The
| under-funding of that stuff is indeed an issue. But it
| doesn't result in real public goods that treat the public
| well if it's all upstream stuff that only serves to make
| proprietary downstream end-user products.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| Thank you for the work you've put into Snowdrift -- I'm
| still very excited for the project. Getting fairly close to
| my first charge now, actually :).
| david_allison wrote:
| Kudos to Open Collective (for this, and for existing in general).
|
| The article doesn't go into detail, but it also appears to
| streamline the workflow of requesting money from an open source
| project's perspective.
|
| Each fund[0] appears to have a "Request Grant" button, which is
| great, as it'll mean maintainers will hopefully have a curated
| list of contactable organisations if they need funding for a
| specific initiative.
|
| The barriers to entry here are extremely high: a few days ago I
| was looking into corporate sponsorship for a non open-source-
| related event, and after a couple of hours of Googling I was
| mostly unable to find contact details for relevant companies.
| It's definitely a natural barrier to entry which will be reduced
| with experience, but it will gatekeep a lot of interesting
| projects where organisers aren't experienced in fundraising.
|
| Reducing this friction for Open Source projects should allow the
| money to much more easily go to where it's needed.
|
| [0] Example fund: https://opencollective.com/indeed
| alannallama wrote:
| Open Collective team member here. You're so right! We have been
| able to form partnerships with many big tech companies and
| grantmaking foundations, and it really opens up possibilities
| for projects to access them. Since we collectively represent so
| many projects we can use that scale to open doors, and on a
| practical level once we're in their supplier systems and have
| gone through their due diligence processes once, future funding
| is much easier.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Everything moving forward in this space is great.
|
| Ideal world - You declare your stack, from OS, distributor up to
| all dependencies used.
|
| Non-profit/individuals non-profit don't pay anything.
|
| Everyone else/companies pay $0.01 per dependency, per month. Each
| package (at each layer) describes its own dependencies. So a
| docker image, installing ubuntu (ubuntu declares its own
| dependencies - libc, curl, git, whatever), running npm, and all
| node packages, and you take a bill of cost from this "bundle". If
| dependencies share dependencies it only counts as 1 no matter how
| many times it's repeated in a single setup.
|
| If there's 1million servers running linux, that's 10k for the
| linux foundation per month. Probably there would need to be a
| tiering of cost/distribution, as a left-pad node package isn't
| worth the same as a linux distribution, and companies with + a
| certain threshold should perhaps pay more.
|
| The benefits would be that people would stop installing 10.000
| npm libs as they gets expensive fast, so people would try to
| write more comprehensive libs and the quality would go up.
|
| You don't need to poke holes in the idea, it's basically an open
| ocean, but it would be nice to see something totally automated
| like this.
| benatkin wrote:
| That isn't ideal at all. That's gittip - people forced to
| publicly receive contributions whether they want them or not.
| wolftune wrote:
| You are thinking of tip4commit. Gittip later became Gratipay
| and then closed (but the fork at Liberapay still exists).
| Gittip never collected contributions for people who didn't
| first sign up. Gittip/Gratipay did _other_ reckless things,
| but that 's a separate matter.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Well perhaps this vapourware platform would have an option
| for you to redirect whatever funds to somewhere else?
|
| (while making it clear on your package page that you were
| doing so)
| prepend wrote:
| That sounds very confusing and requires invasive license
| auditing to enforce.
|
| You can also do this by just paying into a commercial stack.
| The beauty of OSS is that it's easy to use and reuse.
|
| I'd rather just pay Microsoft than use a scheme where I pay by
| the number of dependencies.
|
| Also, not that I release a ton of packages, but I do contribute
| some here and there. I would not contribute to commercial
| packages where my labor benefits some org.
|
| And I would still release packages under a permissive license
| that allows for reuse without any compensation to me.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Just for sports.
|
| > I'd rather just pay Microsoft than use a scheme where I pay
| by the number of dependencies.
|
| So you wouldn't want to support OSS, you would rather support
| a company.
|
| > I would not contribute to commercial packages where my
| labor benefits some org.
|
| That would be your call for sure.
|
| > And I would still release packages under a permissive
| license that allows for reuse without any compensation to me.
|
| This would be your prerogative as well.
|
| Let's pretend we have in place the infrastructure. A place
| where anyone can submit a bill of usage, and do payments, and
| this holds the payments and a person can register their
| software there. For your use case it would have even the
| possibility of you redirecting the funds you don't want into
| other projects. Perhaps a badge on your profile,
| "redirector", "open hands", wtv.
|
| Let's imagine that every piece of software besides a
| "readme.md" file, has a file describing its dependencies. NPM
| would be able to do this like they can build a dependency
| graph. Your OS would be able to do this because each
| programs/lib would be able to do this/provide their own.
|
| Let's say there's a piece of software that can pick all these
| little files and coalesce them into a single one.
|
| Now you could build a "package" of what it would cost you,
| see what is in there and then just make it part of your
| monthly payroll.
|
| There's no bureaucracy. If you are a company using software
| and not paying for it, you would be under breach of contract
| and could be sued legally.
| erhk wrote:
| This is so awful. Can you imagine how people would redesign
| tools to minmax their income?
|
| Add my left pad library as a dependency pull request.
|
| The damage this would do to OSS would be irreversible.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Exactly. I agree to split my components into 5 pieces and
| use 3 of yours as dependencies. In exchange, you agree to
| depend on at least 3 of mine.
|
| Next year, we each achieve 33% YoY growth by splitting
| one of our deps into two pieces 'for increased
| modularity' or some other reason totally not financially
| motivated.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Given it was open source you could see that happening?
| You could just like, choose the dependencies you wanted
| to use. Like vote with your wallet or something.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If there's a non-trivial amount of money at stake, I can
| 100% see that happening. I'd bet a nearly unlimited
| amount of money that it would happen.
|
| Find a way to get something into a popular Linux distro
| and you can micro-split the downstream dependencies over
| time.
|
| "Every time I apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y, my
| monthly bill goes up; I better stop doing that..."
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Yeah definitively. But when I wrote that, I meant you as
| an individual consumer wouldn't need to worry about that.
| Or someone who writes libraries or packages. Only if you
| were running a for profit business. The remaining would
| have to be on trust of the community running the packages
| but I can definitively entertain the idea of it not
| working as expected.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm both an individual consumer and a professional
| working for a for-profit business in most computing
| circumstances at home. Same for my permanently working-
| from-home freelancer spouse.
|
| My network gear and proxmox server and TrueNAS and
| Synology all run open-source software and all four of
| those support both personal and for-profit activities to
| different degrees.
|
| The Plex container is clearly fully personal, but the
| Unifi controller and backups use cases are mixed, and the
| standalone Ubuntu container is fully for-profit, all
| running on a mixed Proxmox. Which ones get charged and
| which ones are free?
| gervwyk wrote:
| Yeah. I Agree with you.
|
| Also been thinking about a similar concept for a while.
| For the negative effects some have mentioned, one could
| also argue the possibility of a positive effect to make
| things more open and result in better quality / funded /
| open projects.
|
| As an idea an addition to this could be a community trust
| score where users also get to vote on a few aspects of a
| project, like 'is it well maintained?', 'do you
| understand changes in version updates?' etc. maybe bad
| examples, but a few simple metrics which can give a
| project a good or bad rep based on what the maintainers
| does as presented by the community - not just nit-picked
| twitter quotes. Yes, these will need to be crafted
| carefully so that maintainer cannot game them but the
| result could be projects getting paid well for doing
| things that builds trust and makes the project more
| accessible.
|
| Of course I could just look at the PR history and issues
| etc before I use a new package, but I would trust
| community feedback more than my 30 min deep dive.
|
| Today we only have very vague metrics like npm popularity
| or github stars, which is very hard to accurately judge
| what package to choose or not.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Well, given that you could decide the things you use, I
| would imagine things would move towards some sort of
| cleanup?
|
| And open source maintainers would be open to refuse PR's
| like they're now?
| prepend wrote:
| > So you wouldn't want to support OSS, you would rather
| support a company.
|
| If I'm paying for it, it's not open source. I'd rather pay
| a single company with a "simple"license, than something
| that costs me more when someone uses a leftpad package than
| just writing their own. I don't want to have to have cost
| decisions factor into my design at that level.
|
| Having the legal support to plan out if I'm under breach or
| not is expensive.
|
| One of the things I like about OSS is I can avoid that.
| Paying and still having that threat is the worse of both
| worlds.
|
| Also, unpredictable prices are really hard in my org.
| Having my payroll vary month to month on what's happening
| is really hard. Do I pay based on when I compile? When I
| run? What if I want to have 10 test environments, so I pay
| times 10. What if I need to archive and might never run it,
| but need to make sure I can run it, do I pay. Etc etc.
| There's a million different permutations based on project
| needs that vary by people.
|
| With OSS, I can clearly plan and address all these. With
| commercial licenses, I usually can since I get a perpetual
| license per seat or cpu or whatever.
|
| This new scheme would be really complex and include a lot
| of latent risk, and require that I'm constantly open to
| audit by some org. And audits are expensive to receive and
| support. No thanks, I'll just skip using it and use OSS
| versions.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| It's open source except if you're profiting for it.
|
| I don't know if my english is rudimentary or something.
| No, you would pay per month, it would be automated. We
| could throw it on the block chain, or have an AI
| calculate it.
|
| If you never run it you never run it, if it's part of
| your business backup plan you pay it.
|
| With OSS for sure, you just go 0$ monthly payments, most
| straightforward payment plan ever, can't argue with that.
|
| > I usually can since I get a perpetual license per seat
| or cpu or whatever.
|
| Well, subscriptions are the future.
| prepend wrote:
| > Well, subscriptions are the future.
|
| I hope not. Subscriptions for software are a pain and
| something I try to avoid.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Me too :)
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > If I'm paying for it, it's not open source.
|
| Open source and free are two separate things.
|
| There are many projects out there that require a license
| for commercial use of the software because it's an
| attempt to make the project more sustainable.
|
| Don't be surprised if more and more projects go down this
| route. The current model of giving corporations big
| freebies to make lots of money off of, and then often
| getting no financial or developer support for that, isn't
| sustainable and there's a massive burnout problem because
| of that. Times are good now, but just wait until a few
| things in your core infrastructure don't get patched or
| worse, they get archived, because the maintainer is tired
| of spending evenings fixing your problems for free.
| prepend wrote:
| > Open source and free are two separate things.
|
| When I use the term open source, I mean "OSI license" as
| that's what I think is most important. That means free.
|
| Projects are free to do whatever they want, and choosing
| a closed source license that's not free is their
| prerogative. More power to them. I probably will never
| buy anything from them, but I harbor no ill will.
|
| But when it comes to supporting OSS, I'll do it as I've
| been for the past few decades; using and contributing to
| it.
|
| Note this is different than "fixing your problems for
| free" and I've funded a shitload of consulting to fix my
| problems with OSS. I don't think it's reasonable to
| expect a problem to be fixed for free. Just like it's
| unreasonable to expect that I must pay certain developers
| to fix problems in open source.
|
| I find it funny when people say things aren't sustainable
| and there are 20-50 year old projects and communities
| that are clearly sustainable and on multiple generations
| of developers.
|
| "Not sustainable for me to do it" is very different from
| "not sustainable." It's ok that not everyone who wants to
| make a living doing something can't afford to do it,
| that's not a problem we need to solve as a society.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| > I'd rather just pay Microsoft than use a scheme where I pay
| by the number of dependencies.
|
| The beauty here is if Microsoft was using OSS they would need
| to pay still on their own bills of usage.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Microsoft actually has a pretty cool OSS funding campaign
| that bypasses a lot of the "ugh, but the paperwork to get
| this funded is insane" stuff and just lets engineers
| nominate and vote on projects:
| https://github.com/microsoft-sponsorships/microsoft-foss-
| fun...
|
| I've voted several times and think it's a great model. It
| was pioneered by Indeed and is likely also adopted
| elsewhere.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| I think it's better than nothing to be honest. The only
| thing is, it's voluntary, so in that sense it's always a
| bit like charity, and it's always towards a given project
| at large and not spread. But I have no horse in this
| race.
| ISL wrote:
| That contributions are voluntary can be a strength, not a
| weakness.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Everyone else/companies pay $0.01 per dependency, per month."
|
| Yup. Open ocean. Because that just creates incentive to make a
| looooong dependency list.
|
| Also, don't you think the complexity of packages are very
| different and it is therefore not fair, to make them all equal?
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Of course, but even $500 per month is more than $0.
|
| > Yup. Open ocean. Because that just creates incentive to
| make a looooong dependency list.
|
| Well, perhaps no? Since those things don't get into your list
| by themselves I would think that it would incentivise the
| opposite. If whatever lib you're using has 100 dependencies,
| one for left-pad, the other for right, one for switching
| underscores for hyphens, this would make someone come and
| say, I can make this with much less cruft.
|
| But still, if the dependencies are repeated across
| dependencies they wouldn't increase. So if you use 2 packages
| that both use say "curl", for your "bundle" it would still be
| only 1 entry for curl.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| If money is involved, fraudsters will get involved.
|
| You want to argue with people that their long dependency
| list is totally unneccecary? That will become the norm, if
| this is the metric on how much income everyone would get.
| The higher the number of packages - the higher the pay.
|
| Does not reflect reality, where one package can be a
| million times more complex, than simple 100 packages.
| [deleted]
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Non-profit/individuals non-profit don't pay anything.
|
| >Everyone else/companies pay $0.01 per dependency, per month.
|
| This isn't going to be both scalable and sustainable. You will
| find that people will calculate the cost of this vs. the cost
| of being a non-profit. It also isn't going to work where a
| small dependency gets the same payout as a more complicated
| dependency.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| So, if 0 is sustainable, this would also be?
|
| You mean they would become a non-profit so they wouldn't have
| to shell 50 bucks a month?
|
| The dependency values wouldn't need to be $0.01. Maybe if the
| theory about free markets is true, then it would somehow be
| guided by the invisible hand, and we would let linux charge
| the amount of $0.10 per month. With 1M commercial servers
| that would be 100k per month. Not faang salaries I know.
| Maybe left pad could be paid in bitcoin, so we could have
| like fractionality towards infinity.
| temac wrote:
| > Non-profit/individuals non-profit don't pay anything.
|
| > Everyone else/companies pay $0.01 per dependency, per month.
|
| I don't get that dichotomy? People can do what they want, no?
| So are you simply saying that individual would be far less
| likely to fund open source software, while companies and
| assimilated would?
|
| Or you would just want it to be mandatory for companies?
|
| If the latter, that would be completely incompatible with Open
| Source.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Yes, imagining what I was saying it would be mandatory if
| your company was making a profit while using software that
| agreed to this.
|
| The difference would be if you're setting up a blog to share
| your permaculture posts, you wouldn't need to pay, or
| something like that.
|
| If you as a software author didn't want you could always put
| that the cost to use your package was $0?
| [deleted]
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| What if the company was losing money? What if the
| permaculture blog was monetized by AdSense or something
| else?
| temac wrote:
| There is not even a "what if" to apply; it would be
| _fundamentally_ contrary to Open Source and Free Software
| (violates freedom 0)
|
| And I've nothing against people who want to invent new
| models. Just: this can't apply to the whole current Open
| Source / Free Software corpus and ecosystem. And this new
| model will never be able to mix.
|
| Payed license does not need to be created anyway. This
| already widely exist and this is just proprietary
| software. And among proprietary software, there are also
| licenses that are incompatible between each others. And
| proprietary licenses that don't require monetary paiement
| from individuals.
|
| So does creating new proprietary licenses that would be
| obviously incompatible with Free Software licenses, and
| probably incompatible with most other proprietary
| licenses, would achieve anything interesting? I doubt it.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| You've summed up the problem I have with OP's arguments.
|
| OSS already has a number of available licenses of varying
| levels of freedom that lets the creator decide how their
| creation should be used.
|
| This entire discussion reads like "you developers are
| idiots who don't realize you're being taken advantage
| of." Whenever someone starts their argument with the
| (implicit or explicit) assumption that they are smarter
| than everyone else, my experience tells me that there's a
| hidden agenda in there somewhere. In this case it seems
| to be as trite as "corporations bad, people good" which,
| not to put too fine a point on it, is bullshit.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Yeah, the illuminati agenda.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Yeah the word profit was badly used. We could imagine it
| would be a regular cost and just like you wouldn't be
| able to forfeit paying for printer paper because you're
| not turning a profit you wouldn't either in this case.
|
| The AdSense and other forms of monetisation would be
| indeed trickier, as well as more complex usage patterns.
| Like if a business spins up a lot of machines, how would
| that go, perhaps charging for each machine the same would
| be too expensive. But charging just once would be unfair.
| Perhaps that could be somehow split/incorporated into
| what is charged to the end user, where it would just be a
| cost of running the service, the providers would do it on
| their end. Perhaps the licensing would be flexible, so
| you paid for some cloud provider they did the payment and
| as part of the invoice you would have this bill of usage
| as well. I would also imagine that no one would try to
| prosecute a guy using a blog, at the same time if they're
| doing adsense that blog/domain would be registered.
|
| It's not like I've spent more than the time it took me to
| write that thinking about it. If it was to work I also
| doubt it would be something that would come out right at
| the first iteration(s). It was more like, "wouldn't it be
| great if we had some sort of automatic distribution of
| credit that would somehow flow directly back to the
| source" but at the same time keeping the spirit of open
| source. It could possibly also align further, in a
| symbiotic way, service providers and open source as
| better software would mean lower costs, better
| integration, more time for tooling, etc. Or it could work
| the opposite and give rise to a gamed ecosystem.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| See my response to /u/temac below. I think the entire
| problem with your argument is that you're trying to
| decide what someone should do with their work.
|
| If I decide to spend thousands of hours writing software
| (or building a boat for that matter) and give it away for
| someone to make a profit with, that should be entirely
| _my decision._ The entire discussion is so patronizing I
| 'm having trouble believing that I'm reading this. People
| aren't stupid: don't assume you know what's good for them
| better than they do. We all have our various motivations
| whether or not they make sense to someone else on the
| outside.
|
| > "wouldn't it be great if we had some sort of automatic
| distribution of credit that would somehow flow directly
| back to the source"
|
| You mean like GPL2?
| hnedeotes wrote:
| The only one being patronising is you? How would this,
| hypothetical vapourware distribution system, steal your,
| or anyone, choice of doing whatever you want with your
| code? I think that if you read this and that's your
| conclusion it would seem that the only one assuming
| something would be you? You can just scroll up and read
| my post again.
|
| It seems you're the one saying that others shouldn't have
| the choice of doing that? What would it matter to you if
| someone decided to do that for their own packages. How
| would that be different from using GPL on their own
| volition?
| dv_dt wrote:
| It's interesting to look at other copyright collective
| approaches in other copyrightable works like music. Though I'm
| sure the exact models actually shouldn't be followed, it bears
| looking at, with ASCAP being an interesting example.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composers%...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective
| ddevault wrote:
| Linux is one of the world's most popular open source projects
| and represents the collaborative efforts of tens of thousands
| of software engineers. $10,000 per month might pay for two full
| time engineers.
|
| Thankfully, that's not what OC is proposing.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > $10,000 per month might pay for two full time engineers
|
| A good kernel engineer is paid well above $60K a year.
| ddevault wrote:
| Aye, hence the "might". They'd have to accept well below
| market rates.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| ...or the projects would have to accept not-so-good
| engineers. :(
|
| Unfortunately, money brings in risks around project
| quality and integrity.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| That was an example, with an explicit note about it. Geez.
| Nothing would prevent people or companies to further invest,
| donate or write love songs about it.
|
| 10.000 would still be 10.000 more than 0 right or is my math
| wrong?
| ddevault wrote:
| A platitude can often be worse than nothing at all. You've
| "solved" the problem, and now we can all go back to
| ignoring it. I'm more interested in real, scalable,
| sustainable funding solutions, than in continuing to give
| FOSS devs whatever crumbs may fall off of the SV dinner
| table. I'm certainly not going to pat anyone on the back
| for it.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Sure, let's just move forward with the cake then.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| The last thing we need is to reward libraries by popularity and
| quantity rather than quality.
|
| Just like in academia and industry, our work should be reviewed
| by peers with relevant and proven experience.
|
| The fact that some thing of NPM installs, github stars and
| reddit upvotes as a measure of merit says a lot about the
| immaturity of the software industry.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| This would be rewarded by usage?
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| Easier to add OSS tax into the social security payments. The
| difficult part is collecting usage analytics so that funds get
| distributed "fairly".
| zrail wrote:
| UBI and universal healthcare would make this a complete non-
| issue, as well as benefiting the arts and humanities.
| scaladev wrote:
| TBH I have absolutely no desire to pay taxes for yet another
| JavaScript framework. I'd be happy to set aside, say, 5% of
| my monthly salary to be divided between the applications and
| libraries I actually use. (I do something like this, but
| manually and pretty unfairly, because it's difficult to cover
| thousands of projects with any meaningful sum as I don't have
| billions in my banking account).
|
| The OS of my choice has this:
|
| https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/
|
| although it would probably be easy to inflate these numbers
| if your income depended on it.
| bombcar wrote:
| What I would like to see is a "Support Open Source" or similar
| add-on available at the cloud providers.
|
| For example my company pays Linode to do backups - I'd love to be
| add a similar "percentage of the VM cost" to each box for open
| source support (so it goes to support projects). Something like
| 10% of the VM cost would be great - easy to get approval for and
| doesn't have the "donation" wording around it.
| benatkin wrote:
| These funders are more like advertisers - paying for their logo
| on a web page.
| kalyani9 wrote:
| It should be free for cool people. Everybody else, pays. Like a
| club.
| caniszczyk wrote:
| Is OpenCollective a for profit company or non profit? The
| marketing is a bit confusing:
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/opencollective
|
| So a private company is taking a cut of each transaction headed
| to an open source project?
| piamancini wrote:
| Hi Chris! Open Collective Inc. is a for profit company, we
| develop and run the open collective platform,
| opencollective.com The Open Source Collective is a non profit,
| a 501c6 that gives fiscal sponsorship to projects so they can
| receive project directed funding. The value prop is having both
| the platform to receive and disburse funds transparently and
| the non profit that holds the funds, does compliance, reports
| taxes, etc.
| yyy888sss wrote:
| If anything, a platform like this could also itself be an open
| source project.
| piamancini wrote:
| oh but it is! github.com/opencollective :)
| LegitShady wrote:
| Nailed it
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