[HN Gopher] FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects
        
       Author : joice
       Score  : 368 points
       Date   : 2024-10-16 09:02 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (floss.fund)
 (TXT) w3m dump (floss.fund)
        
       | theragra wrote:
       | Interesting that these kind of things are done by less known
       | companies, not the big names. At least that's my (uninformed)
       | impression.
        
         | olibhel wrote:
         | FYI - Zerodha is the biggest platform for retail investors in
         | the Indian markets.
        
         | louthy wrote:
         | To be fair Microsoft have been making contributions. I've
         | received two $1000 contributions from them in the past couple
         | of years.
         | 
         | It's obviously not enough to give up the day job, but it dwarfs
         | all other contributions I've had.
        
           | oefrha wrote:
           | In my experience developers as a whole are very stingy, even
           | though they complain about companies not donating to open
           | source all the time, and complain when companies do donate
           | but the amount is too little for their liking. (For instance,
           | when I google "microsoft foss fund payout" the first result
           | after the official landing page is
           | https://lobste.rs/s/wyvnuu/microsoft_foss_fund_winner_curl
           | complaining about the amount.)
           | 
           | As a data point, my open source web app for a casual game
           | received thousands of dollars of donations (not remotely
           | covering the development cost if we go by hourly rate but
           | that's never the goal), while my open source developer tool
           | with a couple thousand stars on GitHub received <$50 over
           | several years. I don't beg for donations in either case, just
           | an inconspicuous link.
           | 
           | Disclosure: I donate a very modest amount to various projects
           | every year.
        
             | rvnx wrote:
             | I have a theory for why developers complain it is too low.
             | A large recurring "donation" can be a bit of a trap.
             | 
             | In practice it can be an hidden freelancing or employment
             | relationship.
             | 
             | Donators actually expect you to do things in return, for
             | example with cURL they expect the developer to do security
             | fixes.
             | 
             | Otherwise they will not get the "donation" the next month
             | 
             | It may not be written on a paper for legal reasons, but it
             | is made for a good reason.
             | 
             | A true donation you do not expect for anything in return.
             | 
             | This could explain why they consider donation too low. A
             | gift cannot be too small. But a gift where the giver has
             | very high expectations in return may be too low.
        
               | oefrha wrote:
               | > Otherwise they will not get the "donation" the next
               | month
               | 
               | Claw back this month's "donation" if I don't meet your
               | expectations -- sure, that's an air quotes donation.
               | 
               | No donation next month if I don't meet your expectations
               | -- that's just a bona fide donation like any other.
        
             | carlosjobim wrote:
             | I hate open source and would consider myself the chief
             | anti-open source crusader online. I always try to avoid
             | FOSS and pay indie developers for their software. However,
             | in a few cases I've been forced to use FOSS solutions when
             | there's been no other alternative, and then I donate to the
             | creator of it. And I always see the same thing. Thousands
             | and thousands of downloads over the years and the creator
             | has earned only a hundred dollars in donations.
             | 
             | It's pathetic, and just shows that most people haven't
             | evolved spiritually beyond being freeloaders whenever they
             | can.
             | 
             | No wonder millions would rather stand in line the whole day
             | to get free bread than pay just a little for their food.
        
               | soulofmischief wrote:
               | For every perceived freeloader is someone who selflessly
               | donated their time and energy so that someone else could
               | benefit from it and improve it if they wanted to.
        
               | carlosjobim wrote:
               | Somebody who selflessly donated their time and effort to
               | people who won't even make a symbolic donation as thanks.
               | And the biggest freeloaders of them all are giant
               | businesses and high salaried engineers working for them.
               | Shareholders are laughing their ass off at open source
               | developers helping them rake in millions and getting
               | nothing in return.
               | 
               | In the real world, if somebody invites you for dinner you
               | eat for free. If you get invited a hundred times for
               | dinner without inviting back or bringing a bottle of
               | wine, then you're a freeloader. And the guy inviting you
               | is being taken advantage of, he's not being generous.
               | Especially if you start charging other people for eating
               | dinner for free at his house.
               | 
               | Funnily, I've noted in tech circles, that they many times
               | in the real world do not understand reciprocity. They get
               | invited or treated to something and say "that was great,
               | thanks!". Then they keep getting culled from the
               | invitation lists, because they never invite back.
        
               | Vegenoid wrote:
               | I'm not quite sure how these are supposed to balance each
               | other? User who benefits and contributes nothing is
               | balanced by the hardworking contributor? And there is
               | certainly not a contributor for every user.
        
               | normie3000 wrote:
               | This is a really interesting perspective! When have you
               | been forced to use FOSS? What OS do you use? Is big-
               | company FOSS ok for you?
        
               | carlosjobim wrote:
               | I've had to use FOSS in cases when there's no paid option
               | of equivalent features. When I do, I donate. When I
               | donate I see how little other people have donated. People
               | who certainly are richer than me, but are spiritually
               | still stuck on freeloader mentality.
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | I think any employee in tech should appeal to their employers
         | to donate / contribute to the open source projects they use.
        
           | ignoramous wrote:
           | Appealing will only get so far in any bureaucratic mess,
           | especially if those responsible for the decision are way
           | above your pay grade.
           | 
           | These companies instead should carve out a matching donation
           | program for employees funding FOSS projects.
        
           | candiddevmike wrote:
           | Playing devil's advocate/CFO, what value does "the business"
           | receive from this transaction?
        
         | pritambarhate wrote:
         | Actually many big name companies do contribute a lot to open
         | source. Few Examples:
         | 
         | https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members
         | https://openjsf.org/members
         | https://www.python.org/psf/sponsors/
        
         | rwmj wrote:
         | Red Hat funds FOSS developers to work on open source projects
         | to probably 100x - 500x this amount every year.
        
       | ignoramous wrote:
       | To apply, the project must place a _funding.json_ in their public
       | code repository or at a _well-known_ uri location on their
       | domain: https://dir.floss.fund/submit
       | 
       | That's already 10x more simpler than the 20 page document some of
       | these other orgs have you fill. Looking at you Llama Impact
       | Grants, OpenAI Cybersecurity Grants, NLNet, & OpenTechFund.
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | Disclaimer: A project I co-develop was granted PS3.75k in 2023
       | back when _FOSS United_ grants were co-sponsored by Zerodha (the
       | same company behind FLOSS /fund). The entire process was over in
       | like 3 days from the date of application.
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | They probably need more stuff for tax (tax deduction) reasons,
         | after all it can be considered a (deductible) donation.
        
           | rileymat2 wrote:
           | I am curious, out of ignorance, if business many expenses are
           | deductible anyway, what would be the fundamental difference
           | between calling it a Marketing/Advertising expense to buy
           | community good will compared with a charitable deduction?
        
             | doctorpangloss wrote:
             | The IRS doesn't like businesses that only lose money, also
             | known as hobbies.
             | 
             | That's why you can't say you are a musician and expense
             | your $700 Fender pedals.
        
               | philipwhiuk wrote:
               | huh I thought they were called startups ;)
        
             | j33zusjuice wrote:
             | I don't know the answer, but I _think_ it depends on how
             | the money gets appropriated. You can't buy a TV spot and
             | call it good will, but could you setup a food drive in a
             | large target city and you setup a bunch of fun shit for
             | families and kids, and during which you also promoted your
             | business. Can a corp write that off? Seems like the answer
             | would be yes, but maybe not.
        
           | alephnerd wrote:
           | > They probably need more stuff for tax (tax deduction)
           | reasons, after all it can be considered a (deductible)
           | donation.
           | 
           | Zerodha is India's Robinhood.
           | 
           | In India, it's very difficult to get a deductible donation
           | exemption because of how easy it would be to game.
        
         | traceroute66 wrote:
         | > That's already 10x more simpler than the 20 page document
         | some of these other orgs have you fill. Looking at you
         | 
         | I guess somebody has to point out the obvious ....
         | 
         | First, the process is probably simpler because the donation
         | amounts are going to be smaller. If there's only $1M per year
         | in the bank, I somehow don't see them giving out the sorts of
         | large sums the others you mentioned do, e.g. OpenTechFund says
         | it will give up to $400,000 ... I don't see that happening with
         | a fund that only has $1M a year to give out.
         | 
         | Second, building on the above, giving out large sums involves a
         | greater amount of due diligence.
         | 
         | Finally, sadly, the most obvious point .... a longer form helps
         | sort the wheat from the chaff. Both in terms of cutting down
         | the volume of applications some poor soul has to trawl over,
         | but also helping keep the quality of applications high.
        
           | ignoramous wrote:
           | > _First, the process is probably simpler because the
           | donation amounts are going to be smaller._
           | 
           | I've applied to each of those funds for ~PS5k. The process
           | remains the same.
        
           | patcon wrote:
           | From the post:
           | 
           | > Put money where the mouth is--a minimum of $10,000 and up
           | to $100,000 for a single recipient, totaling $1 million per
           | year, which we will increase once we understand the dynamics
           | of running the fund.
        
             | traceroute66 wrote:
             | > once we understand the dynamics of running the fund
             | 
             | I suspect that phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting and
             | would not be surprised if the length of the required
             | paperwork increases in good time.
             | 
             | It is also worth reading the FAQ, it very much sounds like
             | it remains the case that you are not going to escape 20
             | pages of paperwork, just that they are kicking the can down
             | the road:
             | 
             |  _" If your application is accepted, our team will reach
             | out to you for the necessary paperwork (such as tax
             | residency documents required by Indian laws) before
             | processing the funds. This generally involves back-and-
             | forth communication over email and can take up to 4 weeks"_
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | > just that they are kicking the can down the road:
               | 
               | "Just" does a lot of heavy lifting here, considering that
               | you only need all that paperwork if you are accepted ;)
        
               | traceroute66 wrote:
               | > "Just" does a lot of heavy lifting here
               | 
               | No, it does not.
               | 
               | Might I invite you to consider the context of what I am
               | saying ?
               | 
               | The OP here was boasting about "all you need" is a
               | _funding.json_ and none of the 20 pages of forms of the
               | other organisations the OP chose to name and shame.
               | 
               | What I am saying is you're not going to escape those 20
               | pages. Do it now or do it later, you're still going to
               | have to put in more effort than "just" a _funding.json_.
               | 
               | That is why I took issue with the OP naming and shaming
               | the other organisations. It is both misleading and unfair
               | on the other funders.
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | I considered the context, and lo and behold, it says "To
               | apply".
               | 
               | Which makes a huge difference, because you do indeed
               | escape those 20 pages if you are not accepted.
        
               | kelnos wrote:
               | > _What I am saying is you 're not going to escape those
               | 20 pages._
               | 
               | I don't think that's clear at all. The part you quoted
               | mentions tax forms as an example of what will need to be
               | filled out afterward. Of course you'll need to fill those
               | sorts of things out, and that feels very distinct from
               | some sort of multi-page application where you have to
               | tell them why you believe you deserve the grant. And the
               | start of the sentence you quoted is, "If your application
               | is accepted", which to me implies that they're going to
               | make a firm yes/no decision as to whether to give you
               | money based solely on the funding.json thing.
               | 
               | Of course only time will tell how this will work out in
               | practice, but their initial wording seems to suggest they
               | will make a go/no-go decision based on a very simple
               | "application".
        
           | breck wrote:
           | > Finally, sadly, the most obvious point .... a longer form
           | helps sort the wheat from the chaff. Both in terms of cutting
           | down the volume of applications some poor soul has to trawl
           | over, but also helping keep the quality of applications high.
           | 
           | Opposite effect, actually. Longer forms get you a lot of the
           | top 10%, but you miss out on the top 0.0001% who don't want
           | to waste their time with people who aren't smart enough to
           | design a brief form.
        
             | Larrikin wrote:
             | Is there any actual evidence of this? It seems to just be
             | something lazy people who believe themselves to be smart
             | would say.
        
               | breck wrote:
               | > Is there any actual evidence of this?
               | 
               | Great question.
               | 
               | Some starting ideas to look for datasets: look at quality
               | of innovation coming out of YC (short form that can be
               | completed in < 10 minutes) versus many government
               | agencies such as NIH (long, horrible application process
               | that require attending training sessions).
        
           | specproc wrote:
           | I worked in non-profit funding for many a year, and in the
           | more traditional charity space, there's zero -- even negative
           | -- correlation between grant value and effort.
           | 
           | It's also not just about the initial (typically multi-stage)
           | application, but then the reporting and compliance
           | requirements, the random donor requests.
           | 
           | This sort of thing is often objectively worse for smaller
           | funders, but also relatively worse with smaller amounts of
           | money as it's harder to resource for people to deal with the
           | crap. Grant money ain't free.
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | Applying for an nlnet grant generously takes like an afternoon.
         | Like the entire rationale for their organization is to prevent
         | you from having to write 20 pages of fluff to appeal to EU
         | bureaucrats, so you can be to the point and chat with
         | technically minded people instead.
        
           | j33zusjuice wrote:
           | Are you saying that as a good or bad thing (an afternoon)? I
           | have no clue if that's good or bad, never done this kinda
           | thing (more of a sysadmin than a SWE).
        
             | marginalia_nu wrote:
             | Comparatively very good. There are cases where it's weeks
             | worth of paperwork and documetation.
        
         | chubot wrote:
         | I concur with the other reply -- in my experience, it's not
         | difficult to apply for an NLnet grant, or receive funds from
         | one
        
       | Kovah wrote:
       | I wonder what projects will end up receiving money from this
       | fund. It's nice that more funds are available, but my best guess
       | would be that these will go to projects which probably don't
       | really need them anyway.
       | 
       | From my experience, open source projects are either big and
       | massively funded, able to pay their own developers a salary, or
       | the projects end up in a void filled with burned-out maintainers
       | whose only appreciation is an occasional $15 donation and issues
       | filled with negativity and sometimes even hatred.
        
         | skeeter2020 wrote:
         | Doesn't this target exactly your second case? Successful
         | projects in terms of usage and impact that can't be maintained
         | by volunteers alone?
        
           | kijin wrote:
           | What does a one-time donation between $10k and $100k do to
           | help the second case? Perhaps it will allow the maintainer to
           | take a few months off and work full-time on the project, or
           | maybe hire someone to clear the backlog. But what happens
           | afterward? Without a clear pathway to making the project
           | self-sustaining, you've merely postponed maintainer burnout
           | by a couple of years at best.
           | 
           | The biggest problem with occasional $15 donations is that
           | they're _occasional_. Sustainability requires a somewhat
           | stable ARR.
        
             | asicsp wrote:
             | >Perhaps it will allow the maintainer to take a few months
             | off
             | 
             | Depends on where you live too - $10k would take care of 5
             | years for me.
             | 
             | From my experience though, it is better to figure out a way
             | to sell something in addition to the open stuff.
        
       | talelcool wrote:
       | The owner of this website (floss.fund) has banned the country or
       | region your IP address is in (TN) from accessing this website.
        
         | talelcool wrote:
         | Our regional view of your open fund :)
        
         | edm0nd wrote:
         | is your IP on any blacklists?
        
         | mr-karan wrote:
         | Hi, I'm from Zerodha. Thank you for bringing this to our
         | attention. It was a misconfiguration on our end, which we've
         | now patched.
        
       | youssefabdelm wrote:
       | * Fine print: For successful projects only, and up to $100K per
       | year per project
       | 
       | ----
       | 
       | From their FAQ:
       | 
       | > Currently, our focus is on supporting existing, widely used,
       | and impactful projects to specifically contribute to their
       | sustainability. Very new projects or projects with minimal usage
       | are not considered for the time being.
       | 
       | > A project can apply for funding of up to $100,000 in one year.
       | To keep the logistics and operational overhead of the fund
       | reasonable, we accept requests in denominations of a minimum of
       | $10,000 and multiples of $25,000 thereafter.
       | 
       | https://floss.fund/faq/
       | 
       | A better title: Floss/fund: Up to $100K/year for popular open
       | source projects
       | 
       | Still admirable though...
        
         | doctorpangloss wrote:
         | Charitable giving ought to have less conditions than an
         | investment. Of course, the opposite is true.
        
           | BoiledCabbage wrote:
           | > Charitable giving ought to have less conditions than an
           | investment.
           | 
           | You should give a "why" with your statement.
        
             | j33zusjuice wrote:
             | Agreed. Isn't it better to donate to something that's
             | actually used than something that might have an audience of
             | 1? It'd be nice to see donations to newer projects gaining
             | momentum, but they get to choose how to hand out the cash.
             | I just hope it's not projects that are already
             | exceptionally well funded (it'd be kinda ridicous if they
             | gave $100k for Linux, for example).
        
         | ohashi wrote:
         | I was curious how they might handle something that isn't ready
         | yet, but in the process of being built. But that answers it,
         | it's not eligible. Oh well :( Plenty of good open source out
         | there deserving as well.
        
           | DowagerDave wrote:
           | you're describing a startup with no business model.
        
           | didgetmaster wrote:
           | So while this effort is commendable, it will do nothing to
           | help open source projects that are good, but just have not
           | become popular yet.
           | 
           | It makes you wonder how many projects are out there which
           | have tremendous potential but still lack a critical feature
           | or two that a bit of funding would help bring to fruition.
        
         | herpdyderp wrote:
         | I want to know what their criteria for "widely used" is.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Thanks--we've taken the dollars out of the title above.
        
       | chiefalchemist wrote:
       | I wonder if they would fund a fork of WordPress given the mess
       | that's become as of late.
       | 
       | Perhaps such move would spark others to also fund such a fork.
        
       | jph wrote:
       | Great idea! I'm trying it now by adding the file `funding.json`
       | to two of my FOSS projects. Feedback welcome. Donations welcome.
       | :-)
       | 
       | 1. Assertables is a Rust crate that provides assert macros for
       | smarter testing: https://github.com/SixArm/assertables-rust-
       | crate/blob/main/f...
       | 
       | 2. BoldContacts is a mobile app that helps people who have
       | disabilities: https://github.com/BoldContacts/boldcontacts-
       | mobile-app-for-...
       | 
       | Results so far:
       | 
       | 1. The JSON spec validation seems to be problematic. For example,
       | I get an error message and there's no obvious way to handle it:
       | "entity.webpageUrl.url and manifest URL host and paths do not
       | match. Expected entity.webpageUrl.wellKnown for provenance check
       | at https://linktr.ee/joelparkerhenderson/*/.well-
       | known/funding-..."
       | 
       | 2. An opportunity for improvement is for the JSON spec to favor
       | each project having all it's own information in the JSON file
       | i.e. orient the file toward the project, rather than toward a
       | specific developer, and definitely not toward the naming
       | convention of "/.well-known" subdirectory (which doesn't exist in
       | many projects and has a history of glitches because it's a hidden
       | dot directory).
       | 
       | IMHO success looks like making the file spec simpler, even it
       | means skipping some of the manifest capabilities.
        
         | mr-karan wrote:
         | Hey, I'm from Zerodha team.
         | 
         | 1. Regarding the validation, this error seems to be related to
         | the provenance check mechanism in the spec. This is to prove
         | ownership of that project/domain. The wellKnown field is
         | designed to handle cases where the webpageUrl doesn't match the
         | manifest URL.
         | 
         | 2. Will definitely be passing the feedback to our team and
         | evaluate this further!
        
           | breck wrote:
           | Aloha! I think there's something novel you could do here that
           | would catch on like wildfire. Here is me coding up the
           | basics:
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/4BH8DRXwVRw?t=317
           | 
           | Feel free to connect via email if you want to chat more
           | breck7@gmail.com
        
           | jph wrote:
           | Thanks for the reply. It turns out the current JSON file
           | approach can't prove ownership of the project nor the domain,
           | so perhaps there's a gap in my understanding or your team's
           | understanding...? Feel free to contact me about this a
           | because I believe in your mission:
           | joel@joelparkerhenderson.com
           | 
           | Some options that I use successfully with other donations
           | services and funding services...
           | 
           | - A unique token per project published in a project file
           | 
           | - A unique token per domain published in a DNS TXT record
           | 
           | - A verification of the project's existing setup, such as
           | using GitHub API access or OAuth
           | 
           | - A forwarding to the project's existing funding link, such
           | as using a project's GitHub sponsors link
           | 
           | - A heuristic with the person's existing payment links, such
           | as contact info being identical on GitHub and Venmo
           | 
           | - A challenge/response, such as verifying a small random
           | payment
           | 
           | - A dedicated KYC process such as with a background checking
           | service.
        
       | from-nibly wrote:
       | Would be even more interesting to start an endowment type fund.
       | Donate some of that fund directly save some of it and extract the
       | interest over time. After a while the fund would be self
       | sufficiently pumping out donations.
        
       | amadeuspagel wrote:
       | > Has the project received any funding in the past? Is it in dire
       | need of support, or is it doing reasonably well?
       | 
       | I think it would be better if funding for open source was more
       | based on what it's worth to you then what the project needs, just
       | like paying for a commercial product. That would more strongly
       | encourage valuable open source projects, risks, creativity,
       | efficiency.
        
       | myprotegeai wrote:
       | I've maintained a fairly popular open source project for over 13
       | years[1]. The software is basically "complete." How does funding
       | work for someone like me? I have no initiatives with it that
       | require funding. Occasionally, I need to fix a bizarre obscure
       | bug, or support a new python version/feature (async/await being
       | the last big one). But otherwise, I just field questions a few
       | times a month.
       | 
       | Truth be told, I'd rather be done with the project completely.
       | It's like a little monkey on my back that I can never be rid of,
       | that I must always tend to. But at the same time, since I can
       | never realistically receive funding for it, the only value I get
       | is the fact that my name is on it. I wish a big, legit company
       | would just buy it off of me somehow, but there's no incentive for
       | them either. I don't know how this ends.
       | 
       | 1. https://github.com/amoffat/sh
        
         | FooBarWidget wrote:
         | It's always an option to just publicly announce that you will
         | no longer maintain it anymore and that you are either looking
         | for a successor, or encouraging the community to fork it.
        
         | andris9 wrote:
         | I had the exact same experience with Nodemailer, a popular
         | open-source project I started 14 years ago. My solution was to
         | empty the README file and set up a dedicated documentation
         | website. Since the project is popular, the documentation
         | website receives around 70,000 visits per month. I initially
         | tried paid ads, but they only netted about $200 per month--not
         | great. So, I started a commercial project somewhat related to
         | Nodemailer and added ads for my new project on Nodemailer's
         | documentation page. This brings in around 3,000 visits per
         | month to my paid project through the ads on the documentation
         | page. Even if the conversion rate is low, it's essentially free
         | traffic for my paid project, which is now approaching $10,000
         | MRR. Without the free visitor flow from my OSS project's
         | documentation page, I definitely wouldn't have made it this
         | far.
        
           | black_puppydog wrote:
           | This is a really interesting approach, I hadn't thought of
           | this!
           | 
           | Just out of curiosity, do you think the separate
           | documentation page has better conversion than if you were to,
           | say, include the ad directly into the readme _inside_ the
           | repo?
        
             | andris9 wrote:
             | You have less control over formatting and ad placement in
             | the README file, as rendered markdown offers only limited
             | options. With a dedicated documentation website, it's much
             | easier.
             | 
             | It's also a question of sovereignty. If your documentation
             | is in the README, then GitHub owns the audience. If they,
             | for some reason, close your project, you're finished. With
             | your own documentation page, the risk is much lower.
        
           | aserafini wrote:
           | Very interesting! I wonder if, sadly, the rise of AI-assisted
           | coding will chip away also at this potential revenue stream?
           | As developers simply ask a local or cloud LLM how to use a
           | piece a software instead of reading the documentation.
        
           | myprotegeai wrote:
           | Thanks for sharing. It's an interesting idea, to try to
           | trampoline it into another related commercial project. I just
           | checked my RTD analytics, I get around 1k pageviews to `/`
           | per month. Unfortunately I don't have a related commercial
           | product either.
        
             | andris9 wrote:
             | When I started with Nodemailer, my goal was to build a cool
             | product--not to become an unpaid helpdesk employee for
             | life. But here we are. So, I've been trying to monetize the
             | project in various ways for the past ten years. I've tried
             | everything (license restrictions, freelancing and
             | consulting, paid extensions, etc.), and each approach
             | failed for different reasons. The only strategy that
             | actually took off was using Nodemailer's documentation page
             | as a referral source for another relevant paid project.
        
         | cxr wrote:
         | When someone no longer enjoys the food in a restaurant, they
         | tend to stop going. Why not do the same: just not do the thing
         | that you wish not to do?
        
         | kelnos wrote:
         | You can always just stop working on it. You aren't obligated to
         | do anything further if it doesn't bring you joy. Update the
         | README to say you've stopped maintaining it, and to add a bit
         | about searching for a new maintainer.
         | 
         | If you believe you still get an ongoing benefit (reputational
         | or whatever) by being its maintainer and continuing to support
         | it, and if you still want that benefit, then you have to keep
         | up the work. Very little in life is truly free, unfortunately.
         | 
         | You could also see if there's a way to monetize your work on
         | it. If people want support or need bugs fixed, they can pay you
         | to do so, for example. Might even look into GitHub Sponsors, if
         | you haven't already. I do get that it's harder to solicit
         | donations for something that's "finished", though.
        
       | adeptima wrote:
       | "The rise of the "open core" model and the unfortunate license
       | changes in many good open projects recently, are clear signs of
       | this growing turmoil. ... That said, Python libraries raising
       | massive amounts of VC funding in quick time does not look like a
       | healthy trend."
       | 
       | I call it a "happy problem" - kind of problem you get in with lot
       | of money.
       | 
       | All participating parties are having middle class above life
       | style and looking for the way to balance each other.
        
       | chaosprint wrote:
       | I have been developing and maintaining https://glicol.org for 4
       | years. I have donation page on github but only got it from 2
       | people. It seems all the donation service providers requirs
       | login. I don't know why we cannot have a guest mode like regular
       | shopping website.
        
         | ozim wrote:
         | Mostly we cannot have nice things because bad guys will come
         | over and exploit it for some nefarious reasons.
        
       | sheerun wrote:
       | Actually good idea
        
       | hellcow wrote:
       | Instead of structuring this as a fund, why not a non-profit? Then
       | you could solicit tax-deductible donations which get funneled to
       | these FOSS projects as part of your mission. Seems like a
       | possible way to scale this to something much larger than
       | yourselves.
        
         | pacmansyyu wrote:
         | Hi, I'm from the team at Zerodha.
         | 
         | > Instead of structuring this as a fund, why not a non-profit?
         | 
         | Thank you, this is an interesting suggestion. While a non-
         | profit structure could potentially increase donations,
         | implementing this globally would be extremely complex.
         | 
         | Particularly because tax laws vary by country, which would
         | require us to be registered as a non-profit in most, if not all
         | countries, and comply with their jurisdiction. The
         | administrative overhead and legal complexities of managing a
         | truly international non-profit outweighs the benefits for our
         | current scale. We appreciate the idea and will keep it in mind
         | as we grow, but for now, we're focusing on efficiently
         | directing funds to FOSS projects through our current model.
        
       | simonhamp wrote:
       | I am trying to submit my funding.json, it validates when I check
       | the validator, but fails when I submit with the error: "too many
       | lines in the .well-known list"
       | 
       | I have 1 line in my .well-known lists
       | 
       | Here's my funding.json:
       | 
       | https://nativephp.com/funding.json
       | 
       | Can someone help me figure out what I'm doing wrong?
        
         | ocdtrekkie wrote:
         | So my best guess is that even though the validator succeeds,
         | the actual submission is pulling the GitHub page for the well-
         | known instead of its raw content. The problem is you also can't
         | really fix this yourself: The raw file is hosted at
         | raw.githubusercontent.com which wouldn't match your source URL.
         | 
         | Hopefully they will fix their submission tool. I did see one
         | project submitted successfully by having domain.com/github
         | point to their project URL, which the submission accepted, but
         | that causes certificate errors.
        
         | pacmansyyu wrote:
         | Hi, I'm from the team at Zerodha. It seems as if the well-known
         | URL for the laravel repository points to the GitHub page[1]
         | instead of the URL for the raw code[2]. Changing the well-known
         | URL to the raw code path should fix this issue. Will pass this
         | feedback on to the team to improve the experience, thanks!
         | 
         | [1]: https://github.com/nativephp/laravel/blob/main/.well-
         | known/f... [2]:
         | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nativephp/laravel/refs/hea...
        
           | simonhamp wrote:
           | Sure, but that's not how it's demonstrated in the docs...
           | 
           | I've updated it, but that also doesn't work AND fails
           | validation because:
           | 
           | "projects[0].repositoryUrl.url and
           | `projects[0].repositoryUrl.wellKnown` hostnames do not match"
        
             | pacmansyyu wrote:
             | Apologies for my previous misguiding comment. We have
             | figured out the issue and a fix is being implemented right
             | now to handle URLs for GitHub repositories and suffix them
             | with `?raw=true` to automatically to fetch the raw file.
             | The fix should be live soon.
             | 
             | In the meanwhile, if you would like to submit the project,
             | you could use the following URL which redirects to the
             | `raw.githubusercontent.com` page:
             | https://github.com/nativephp/laravel/raw/main/.well-
             | known/fu...
             | 
             | I hope this helps!
        
               | simonhamp wrote:
               | Awesome! It worked! Thanks so much.
               | 
               | Looking forward to being listed and considered for
               | funding :)
        
               | pacmansyyu wrote:
               | Cheers! The issue has been fixed now and is live. Thanks
               | a lot for your feedback :)
        
       | breck wrote:
       | Love this! Love how you start with the BLUF (Apply now up top).
       | Lots of great thinking here.
       | 
       | I think since you are starting this from scratch you can do
       | something pretty revolutionary with your application (and far
       | simpler, long term!). I demonstrate in the user test below.
       | 
       | Here's my user test:
       | https://news.pub/?try=https://www.youtube.com/embed/4BH8DRXw...
        
       | knowitnone wrote:
       | This is great. However, I'd rather Zerodha just award the FOSS
       | projects they use instead of having random projects apply. I hope
       | many more companies do this especially the big companies. I'm
       | guessing there are also tax incentives at play here.
        
         | mr-karan wrote:
         | From the blog post
         | 
         | > In addition, we have given out many sizeable grants to FOSS
         | projects and organisations in India. While funding projects
         | outside India involves significant paperwork and operational
         | overhead, we have reached out to several small and large
         | projects that we use at work and have managed to pay them. This
         | highly ad hoc approach is something that has increasingly
         | bugged me though.
        
       | brynet wrote:
       | This seems very "project focused" rather than developer focused,
       | many people contribute to open source projects but don't
       | necessarily represent their project or don't wish to take away
       | funding from those projects, but could still desperately use
       | funding for their work.
       | 
       | I have a personal donation page but I'm struggling to get and
       | retain funding, especially monthly donations, which would make it
       | easier to spend time on the projects I contribute to (either my
       | time highlighting the work of others on social media, or writing
       | code).
       | 
       | https://brynet.ca/wallofpizza.html
        
       | meonkeys wrote:
       | "projects" top-level key should be labeled "Required" at
       | https://floss.fund/funding-manifest/
        
       | remram wrote:
       | It seems that "plans" are required? Or is that just a quirk of
       | the builder UI?
        
         | meonkeys wrote:
         | Yep, at least one plan is required. See
         | https://floss.fund/funding-manifest/#schema
        
           | remram wrote:
           | So, I should create a plan with amount=0, set the currency to
           | USD anyway, and label it "any donation appreciated"? What is
           | the workflow?
        
       | vishnumohandas wrote:
       | Built a GUI[1] to generate funding.json, with help from Claude.
       | 
       | This XKCD[2] is perhaps becoming less relevant.
       | 
       | [1]: https://vishnukvmd.github.io/funding.json
       | 
       | [2]: https://xkcd.com/974
        
       | bravura wrote:
       | Suggestion:
       | 
       | Add "passthrough" field with a float value, and the idea is that
       | you are sub-awarding a percentage of your grant to projects that
       | you rely upon or want to succeed.
       | 
       | Then, people who are not open source maintainers but do spend
       | their time indexing high-quality open source can have a 1.0 pass
       | through funding.json passthrough to repos they believe are worth
       | supporting.
       | 
       | And people who do not spend their time indexing high-quality open
       | source but trust other people that DO spend their time indexing
       | high-quality open source can have an index fund of donation
       | streams.
       | 
       | In which case we can welcome both people who want to endow but
       | don't have time and the people who have time but can't endow as
       | much.
       | 
       | If anyone is interested in talking to me about this problem, I'm
       | down
        
       | myroon5 wrote:
       | Interesting funding.json made no mention of FUNDING.yml:
       | 
       | https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-16 23:01 UTC)