[HN Gopher] GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to f...
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GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
Author : evakhoury
Score : 184 points
Date : 2026-01-14 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.greg.technology)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.greg.technology)
| rglullis wrote:
| Great. That would mean that 98% of the github users would leave
| it.
| falloutx wrote:
| He said only for org users. Orgs are already paying github,
| 4-20$ per month per user.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The post is about users who have paid plans
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| should be the transitive dependencies, not just top-level (so the
| lock file or equiv) or you just reward the "barely wrap it and
| give it a new name" js crowd even more.
| porise wrote:
| I paid 1 buck for WhatsApp back in the day. Better business model
| than what meta did with it. But we're moving closer and closer to
| 8 companies controlling the world. Both WhatsApp and github are
| owned by them.
| ksec wrote:
| > we're moving closer and closer to 8 companies controlling the
| world.
|
| Which 8? In the control the world domain I see Meta, Google,
| Amazon, Apple, Microsoft. In terms of Market Cap you would add
| Tesla, Nvidia and TSMC, but these three aren't any where close
| to "controlling" the world category.
| porise wrote:
| I would put Disney in there. I picked 8 arbitrarily but those
| companies have substantial pull in governmental regulations
| and the state of the web. Probably missing some Chinese
| companies.
|
| imo corporations have more pull on governments than
| governments have on businesses at this point as far as long
| term culture goes.
| ksec wrote:
| Had you said these 8 companies controlling the world 5 to 6
| years ago I would have partly agreed.
|
| But right now I see so many cracks in their game I am
| optimistic they wont control world and there will be new
| competition to challenge them.
| helterskelter wrote:
| The trick will be getting around the regulations that are
| being set up to protect interests of government and big
| business at the expense of everybody else. This will only
| become more difficult as time goes on.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I disagree, due to github copilot and other AI crap Microsoft is
| adding to GitHub, they should pay us 5 USD per month.
| csomar wrote:
| Did you read the article? Though I can agree the title is bait.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Yes I read it, but still, charging me $1 so M/S can spy on
| what I do and make money off of it by selling my work to
| large corporations is wrong.
|
| But if they really wanted to do what the article says, create
| a project and people can donate what the want. For example,
| if M/S sends me $5 per month, I can redirect it to various
| open source projects instead.
|
| When I was on GH, I did donate a little per month to 2
| projects, it was a nice way to do that. But I moved off
| because I do not want to give M/S more personal information
| (like my Cell #), so I send a few $ to them using other
| means.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| The first order effect of this would be great, but the following
| onslaught of schlinkert spam would be devastating- its bad enough
| now with people making garbage dependencies and sneaking them in
| everywhere just for clout
| Aurornis wrote:
| Sadly I think this is true. There is already a problem with
| people making useless dependencies and pushing them into
| projects with PRs to increase their download numbers.
|
| Showing high download numbers on your resume is more valuable
| than anything a fund like this could provide. There will always
| be a company who views high NPM download numbers as a signal of
| top 1% talent, even if it has become a game in itself.
| abraham wrote:
| It might make the maintainers of if the rest of the pie
| vigilant for dependency spam that would cut into their end.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Well now you've got me wondering.
| falloutx wrote:
| I do like this idea, as it seems easy to implement. Github can
| just increase its prices by $1/month/orguser and that fund could
| end up with like, i think, 6 million per month. Thats a sizeable
| amount of money and could help in making open source more
| sustainable & attractive.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| >it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky and
| is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing it
| for their own enjoyments
|
| Yes it absolutely is. That is the exact social contract people
| 100% willingly enter by releasing something as Free and Open
| Source. They _do_ give it as a gift, in exchange for maybe the
| tiny bit of niche recognition that comes with it, and often times
| out of simple generosity. Is that really so incredible?
| Aurornis wrote:
| Agreed. Supporting open source maintainers is a great idea in
| general, but shaming people for using something according to
| the exact license terms it was released with is getting old.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It's crazy to expect someone to pay for something that you're
| giving them for free.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Correct, but if there's a bug/enhancement/support they want,
| it's perfectly reasonable to ask for compensation for it.
| securesaml wrote:
| The problem is more so maintenance.
|
| The expectation of FOSS is that the users and maintainer work
| together to resolve bug fixes/features/security issues.
|
| However many companies will dump these issues to the maintainer
| and take it for granted when they are resolved.
|
| It's not a sustainable model, and will lead to
| burnout/unmaintained libraries.
|
| If the companies don't have the engineering
| resources/specialization to complete bug fixes/features, they
| should sponsor the maintainers.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| It's OK to say "No" or "Pay me and I'll do it right now" to
| companies doing this.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| (And on the flipside, nothing is owed for a bugfix the
| maintainer made out of their own free will. Again, a gift.)
| securesaml wrote:
| The problem is lots of open source is
| unmaintained/insecure, and there aren't any security
| engineers on those open source libraries.
|
| For the library to be secure, there needs to be funding,
| not by magic and expecting maintainers will do stuff on
| there free will.
| overfeed wrote:
| The person needing a feature can do implement it
| themselves or pay for it. They may even share it, in the
| spirit of open source, but they probably don't have to
| (depending on license conditions).
| securesaml wrote:
| Correct, maintainers can say that and get shamed.
|
| And it leads to unmaintained libraries, since companies
| don't want to pay.
|
| At some point, is open sourcing your work a liability?
| carllerche wrote:
| Help normalize saying no? As an OSS maintainer, the sense
| of entitlement many have is quite frustrating. After
| years in OSS, I have built up a thick skin and am fine
| saying no, but many aren't.
| edwinjm wrote:
| I'm sure many companies like to pay. It's probably the
| cheapest way to solve a business problem. It should be
| the norm. If a company wants to have a bug fixed or a
| feature added, they should pay. And GitHub should make it
| easy to do so.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Correct, maintainers can say that and get shamed.
|
| And then they can shrug and move on with their respective
| days. If I open source something it's a gift to the
| commons, not a promise to work on it for free in
| perpetuity. I don't really care if someone tries to shame
| me for that, as there's nothing to be ashamed of.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| If you look at the issue list for any significant open
| source project, it's probably of nonzero size. That's a
| way of saying "no": just don't do it.
|
| Maybe you're overloaded, maybe you just don't feel like
| it. It's totally normal, and different projects have
| different levels of resources, some with none anymore.
| securesaml wrote:
| I have seen small utility libraries like tj-actions get
| compromised because there aren't any security specialists
| looking at the library.
|
| My main concern is supply chain compromise.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Unless you're talking about a different event, tj-actions
| wasn't _" compromised because there aren't any security
| specialists looking at the library"_. Instead, an API key
| was used, maybe by the author, maybe by someone else, to
| replace good code with bad code, including modifying
| historical release tags to point to the bad code.
|
| That said, everything in my previous post still applies:
| a nonzero buglist is totally normal and widely accepted.
| securesaml wrote:
| I'm not too sure about the root cause about tj-actions.
| IIRC there are some libraries that compromised by actions
| injections vulnerabilities, where a security specialist
| could have helped.
| carllerche wrote:
| I 100% agree with this. It also is 100% OK to fork
| aggressively and patch yourself.
| tehjoker wrote:
| A natural solution for this kind of problem would be either a
| private or public grants program. Critical infrastructure built
| by random uncompensated people... ideally there would be some
| process for evaluating what is critical and compensating that
| person for continued maintenance.
| grayhatter wrote:
| > it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky
| and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing
| it for their own enjoyments.
|
| I am. I enjoy making things, and it's even better when others
| enjoy them. Just because you have expectations that you should be
| compensated for everything line of code you write; doesn't make
| it ubiquitous, nor should your expectations be considered the
| default.
|
| I'd argue If you're creating and releasing open source with the
| expectations of compensation, you're doing it wrong. Equally, if
| you expect someone creating open source owes you anything, you're
| also part of the problem, (and part of why people feel they
| deserve compensation for something that used to be considered a
| gift).
|
| All that said, you should take care of your people, if you can
| help others; especially when you depend on them. I think you
| should try. Or rather, I hope you would.
| Barbing wrote:
| Redistributing unwanted funds would be a good chore to have to
| do!
| pixelready wrote:
| I think this is the piece so many that are stuck in the hustle
| culture mindset miss, and why they are so quick to dismiss
| anything like UBI or a strong social safety net that might
| "reduce people's motivation". There are many many creative,
| caring people that are motivated to create things or care for
| each other for the sake of it, not for some financial reward.
| Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, crafts,
| artworks, animations, performances, literature, journalism,
| hobby clubs, support groups, community organizations that would
| spring into existence if we all just had more bandwidth for
| them while having our baseline needs met.
|
| Would it be chaotic? Sure, in the same way that open source or
| any other form of self-organization is. But boy it sounds a
| whole lot better than our current model of slavery-with-extra-
| steps...
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The _hikikomori_ [1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of
| creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't,
| plain and simple.
|
| There is effectively zero evidence suggesting a population on
| UBI will result in some sort of outpouring of creativity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori and it's not a
| phenomenon limited to Japan.
| adezxc wrote:
| and yet their hypothesis is true, there are already many
| people, with or without UBI, that volunteer, create things
| and in general help people surrounding them without any
| reward and they are the backbone of every society, not the
| career-chasers
| pixelready wrote:
| I think phenomena like hikkikomori have more to do with
| (at least perceived) social rejection than lack of
| motivation. If the only acceptable message you receive
| from society is that you must chase the brass ring
| constantly and any setback means you are an abject
| failure, then withdrawing from the pain of that rejection
| makes sense for anyone who has experienced enough
| setbacks or strongly feels alien to that culture. A
| broader societal shift would occur if it was truly
| universally understood that everyone has value as a human
| being separate from their labor market leverage or
| capital accumulation.
|
| There will always be strivers who measure their self
| worth against superficial standards (Russ Hanneman "doors
| go up" hand gesture here), I just don't see why everyone
| should be forced to play that game or starve I suppose.
| Giving everyone the option to settle for a life of basic
| dignity while caring for those around them, or going all
| in on some academic / creative pursuit seems equally
| valid investments for society.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Yes. The only real conclusion from people like NEETs is
| that society failed them. Outside of a fraction of total
| people (or when addictions are at play), it is very rare
| that someone never wants to be productive.
| dpark wrote:
| Hikikomori seems to be largely a symptom of mental illness.
| NEETs almost by definition are not productive.
|
| The fact that these groups are not producing mass amounts
| of creative works in no way implies that currently-
| productive people would not produce significantly more
| creative works if they had the time and resources to do so.
| christoff12 wrote:
| a) I'm not sure it logically follows that the hikikomori
| would be a particularly artistic group, thus don't
| understand the assertion; b) how do we know they aren't? By
| definition, they wouldn't be out promoting their works or
| gaining recognition.
|
| Also, there is at least one example of UBI contributing to
| an increase in activity:
|
| "According to the research, 31% of BIA recipients reported
| an increased ability to sustain themselves through arts
| work alone, and the number of people who reported low pay
| as a career barrier went down from one third to 17%. These
| changes were identified after the first six months of the
| scheme and remained stable as the scheme continued." [1]
|
| [1] https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/ireland-s-basic-
| income-fo...
| tehjoker wrote:
| The UK music culture of the 1960s was in large part due to
| the "dole" or cash payments to poor people.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| No that wouldn't. If the zeitgeist, culture, society at
| large are antagonizing toward you, if you are meant to feel
| like a useless negative part of society, why would we
| expect amazing output from them?
|
| This reinforces others talking about the flaws of hustle
| and grind culture. The status quo create the conditions for
| the negatives and then point to that and say "see".
| zweih wrote:
| People who are specifically not employed because they
| aren't motivated to do anything at all don't seem to be the
| best sample for what average people could do if they had
| more free time during their waking hours.
| nickff wrote:
| It seems unlikely that the most motivated people will
| take up UBI; the most likely UBI recipients are those who
| are marginally employed, and likely marginally motivated.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| did you mean to write the opposite of what you wrote?
| nickff wrote:
| Accidentally posted in the middle of an edit; corrected
| now, thanks.
| weirdmantis69 wrote:
| Guess what the U stands for
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| Um, hikikomori are a hotbed of creative works, though. Your
| entire premise is false. I don't know that you could get
| reliable statistics proving this claim, but Japan likely
| has the highest number of creatives per capita of any
| country in the world, and a ton of them are NEETs who spend
| their time drawing fanart or writing trashy webnovels. The
| vast majority of this creative work isn't commercially
| successful, of course, which is part of why they're NEETs.
| nickff wrote:
| Can it really be a 'hotbed' if there is no demand (or
| even maybe awareness) of the works? That just seems like
| a hobby done for selfish reasons.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| Quoting GGGP:
|
| >There are many many creative, caring people that are
| motivated to create things or care for each other for the
| sake of it, not for some financial reward. Imagine the
| incredible programs, websites, games, crafts, artworks,
| animations, performances, literature, journalism, hobby
| clubs, support groups, community organizations that would
| spring into existence if we all just had more bandwidth
| for them while having our baseline needs met.
|
| As it happens, the Japanese internet is absolutely rich
| with content created by individuals, most of it done for
| the sake of love for creative work rather than financial
| motivation. I spend much of my free time either consuming
| it or contributing to the pool of such work myself. The
| entire point of this discussion thread was about the
| potential for creativity if you were to unshackle it from
| the demands of financial self-sustenance.
|
| As an aside, I believe this phenomenon manifested as
| strongly as it has in Japan because of the extremely low
| cost of living relative to the level of economic
| development; a studio apartment can be had for less than
| the equivalent of $200 USD per month, and many parents
| can afford to and are willing to pay this price to get
| the NEETs out of their house. In essence enabling them,
| not that they want to enable their adult children to
| depend on them but the burden is small enough that they
| can tolerate it.
| nickff wrote:
| I have no problem with people doing whatever they want,
| but if nobody else values it, there's no 'contribution'
| to society, art, or anything else.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| I think that's an unbelievably cynical worldview, one I
| don't agree wtih at all, but within that view: what of
| the things people value, but which they do not pay for?
| Much of the tech of the world is built on the free labour
| of FOSS developers. Are they not contributing to society
| because they are not compensated for their contributions?
| robrtsql wrote:
| NEETs are, by definition, people who are either unwilling
| or unable to do anything productive, so I don't think they
| are a good example. I expect you'd get better results if
| you include the people who are employed today.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| Counterpoint to your counterpoint: the flourishing of the
| arts in Bohemian districts[1] in the 19th and 20th
| centuries.
|
| Maybe there's a feedback loop with societal expectations
| regarding the hikikomori / NEETs? The more they are
| demonized as unproductive, the less productive they become.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism
| kiba wrote:
| Not really against welfare programs...but...
|
| UBI and safety net would just get eaten by economic rent.
| Basically your landlord would just raise the price of renting
| space leaving people right where they left off.
|
| You need to impose a tax called the Land Value Tax to prevent
| landowners eating up the public money. Even then we got a
| long list of much needed public spending before we can even
| think about a Citizen's Dividend.
| keybored wrote:
| UBI is an idea from another money-centric ideology, namely
| "libertarianism". It's not an idea for fostering creativity.
| It's an idea for dealing with less employable dependents of
| society, while the true dependents (parasitic capitalists)
| take the real spoils of industrialized productivity.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I've made my living working fulltime on a single open source
| project for more than 15 years now.
|
| I think it is important to differentiate between different
| kinds of projects that people might undertake, and 3
| particular categories always come to my mind (you may have
| more):
|
| * "plumbing" - all that infrastructure that isn't something
| you'd ever use directly, but the tools you do use wouldn't
| function without it. This work is generally intense during a
| "startup" phase, but then eases back to light-to-occasional
| as a stable phase is reached. It will likely happen whether
| there is funding or not, but may take longer and reach a
| different result without it.
|
| * "well defined goal" - something that a person or a team can
| actually finish. It might or might not benefit from funding
| during its creation, but at some point, it is just _done_ ,
| and there's almost no reason to think about continuing work
| other than availability and minimal upgrades to follow other
| tools or platforms.
|
| * "ever-evolving" - something that has no fixed end-goal, and
| will continue to evolve essentially forever. Depending on the
| scale of the task, this may or may not benefit from being
| funded so that there are people working on it full time, for
| a long time.
|
| These descriptions originate in my work on software, but I
| think something similar can be said for lots of other human
| activities as well, without much modification.
| dgacmu wrote:
| I agree with you, but I do think we have a bit of a problem in
| which an open source creator makes something and then suddenly
| finds themselves accidentally having created a load-bearing
| component that is not only used by a lot of people and
| companies, but where people are demanding that bugs be fixed,
| etc., and we lack great models for helping transition it from
| "I do this for fun, might fix the bug if I ever feel like it"
| to " I respect that this has become a critical dependency and
| we will find a way to make it someone's job to make it more
| like a product".
|
| I gather that the open source maintainers who have found
| themselves in this situation sometimes get very unhappy about
| it, and I can see why -- it's not like they woke up one day and
| suddenly had a critical component on their hands, it kind of
| evolved over time and after a while they're like "uhoh, I don't
| think this is what I signed up for"
| ummonk wrote:
| I think expecting to get paid to fix bugs, add features, etc.
| to one's open source code is much more reasonable and there
| should be marketplace infrastructure that makes this much
| easier to do (compared to the current system where developers
| have to apply for corporate grants for long running
| projects).
| kiba wrote:
| Public funding from governments would make sense. Open source
| software are effectively public good.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| My apologies - you're correct. I didn't mean that as "you
| should never expect anyone to have contributed code for
| free/the pleasure/for the puzzle solving aspect". I do it all
| of the time.
|
| I meant - it's unfair to consider that because this labor "fell
| from the sky", you should just accept it - and as others have
| said, in the case of projects that become popular, that the
| burden should just automatically fall on the shoulders of
| someone who happened to share code "for free".
|
| If/when someone ends up becoming responsible for work they
| hadn't necessarily signed up for (who signs up for burnout?) -
| it's ok/necessary/mandatory to see how everyone (and or
| Nvidia/Google/OpenAI etc) can, like, help.
|
| _My insistence is on the opt-out nature of this so that people
| who would be ok being compensated don 't have to beg_.
|
| Consider how the xz malware situation happened [0]. Or the
| header & question 8 from the FAQ for PocketBase [1].
|
| [0] https://x.com/FFmpeg/status/1775178803129602500
|
| [1] https://pocketbase.io/faq/
| echelon wrote:
| Don't apologize.
|
| "Open Source" is hugely conflated in terms of the reasons
| people write open source software.
|
| There are people who truly don't care to be compensated for
| their work. Some are even fine with corporations using it
| without receiving any benefit.
|
| Some people prefer viral and infectious licenses the way that
| Stallman originally intended and that the FSF later lost
| sight of (the AGPL isn't strong enough, and the advocacy fell
| flat). They don't want to give corporations any wiggle room
| in using their craft and want anyone benefiting from it in
| any way to agree to the same terms for their own extensions.
|
| Many corporations, some insidiously, use open source as a
| means of getting free labor. It's not just free code, but
| entire ecosystems of software and talent pools of engineers
| that appear, ready to take advantage of. These same companies
| often do not publish their code as open source. AWS and GCP
| are huge beneficiaries that come to mind, yet you don't have
| hyperscaler code to spin up. They get free karma for pushing
| the "ethos" of open source while not giving the important
| parts back. Linux having more users means more AWS and GCP
| customers, yet those customers will never get the AWS and GCP
| systems for themselves.
|
| There are "impure" and "non-OSI" licenses such as Fair Source
| and Fair Code that enable companies to build in the open and
| give customers the keys to the kingdom. They just reserve the
| sole right to compete on offering the software. OSI purists
| attack this, yet these types of licenses enable consumers do
| to whatever they want with the code except for reselling it.
| If we care about sustainability, we wouldn't attack the
| gesture.
|
| There are really multiple things going on in "open source"
| and we're calling it all by the same imprecise nomenclature.
|
| The purists would argue not and that the OSI definition is
| all that matters. But look at how much of the conversation
| disappears when you adhere to that, and what behavior slips
| by.
| ericmay wrote:
| Instead of forcing Github to force users to pay a fee to
| support OSS, why don't OSS maintainers just charge for their
| work? Then that requires 0 coercion and those who feel
| undervalued for their work/projects can be compensated as the
| market dictates the value of their projects.
|
| There are a lot of dumb and even disagreeable open source
| projects. Why should someone be de facto forced to fund those
| projects?
|
| It's like this ass-backwards way of selling something because
| you're allergic to markets or something. Honestly, it's quite
| rude to go on and on about free software and liberation and
| all these things and then turn sour grapes years later
| because everybody took you up on it. Nobody is forcing anyone
| to maintain any of these projects.
|
| And _maybe_ if you wrote some software that forms the basis
| of a trillion dollar + company and you 're still sitting in
| the basement you're kind of dumb for giving it away and
| that's your fault.
| _ache_ wrote:
| You just read the title don't you?
|
| > GitHub should charge every org $1 more per user per month
|
| It's about org, not about every single person using Github.
|
| The idea is basic and should have been written in the
| article. When a contributor release FOSS, it's fair to
| compensate if you business rely on it.
|
| A contributor wouldn't like a free for personal use either.
| The ideal license is the Unreal one free for << Individuals
| and small businesses (with less than $1 million USD in
| annual gross revenue) >>
|
| > you're kind of dumb for giving it away and that's your
| fault.
|
| It happens so many times and no just about software (but
| then it's not a million dollar company). It's not that you
| are dump, you done the right thing and some companies with
| money/power/opportunity to capitalize on it, did it and
| didn't compensate you fairly.
| ericmay wrote:
| > When a contributor release FOSS, it's fair to
| compensate if you business rely on it.
|
| Nope.
|
| Put it in the license, sell the software, or work for
| free, but stop complaining about it.
|
| It's _nice_ if businesses who benefit from specific
| software packages want to pay or show support, but it 's
| not nice to release something "for free" but then jump on
| a moral grandstand and demand everyone pay so you can
| feel good about your ideology at the expense of everyone
| else.
|
| > The ideal license is the Unreal one free for <<
| Individuals and small businesses (with less than $1
| million USD in annual gross revenue)
|
| Then make that your license?
| grayhatter wrote:
| I agree with echelon; don't apologize. I'm not objecting to
| the message, only to the framing.
|
| How to create more code I can enjoy using has been something
| that I've been thinking about for a long time. I've even
| advocated for a stance[0], similar to yours. While I don't
| agree it's correct to conflate the malign intent surrounding
| the xz takeover, with the banal ignorance as to why so many
| people don't want to support people creating cool things,
| (and here I don't just mean financial support.) I do
| acknowledge there are plenty of things about the current
| state we could fix with a bit more money.
|
| But I don't want open source software to fall down the rabbit
| hole of expectations. Just as much as I agree with you,
| people opting-in to supporting the people they depend on is
| problematic. Equally I think the idea that OSS should move
| towards a transactional kind of relationship is just as bad.
| If too many people start expecting, I gave you money, now you
| do the thing. I worry that will toxify what is currently, (at
| least from my opinionated and stubborn POV), a healthier
| system, where expectations aren't mandatory.
|
| The pocket base FAQ, and your hint towards burnout are two
| good examples, describing something feel is bad, and would
| like to avoid. But they are ones I feel are much easier to
| avoid with the framing of "this work was a gift". I have
| before, and will again walk away from a project because I was
| bored of it. I wouldn't be able to do so if I was accepting
| money for the same. And that's what leads to burn out.
|
| I do want the world your describing (assuming you can account
| for the risks inherent into creating a system with a
| financial incentive to try to game/cheat), but I don't want
| that world to be the default expectation.
|
| [0] https://gr.ht/2023/07/15/donations-accepted.html
| asah wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you didn't wake up at 5am to an urgent issue.
| Because I did last night, and for sure __MY WIFE__ expects me
| to get paid for it!!
|
| In general, people's time is not free if only because they have
| rent/mortgage, food, transportation, medical bills, education,
| etc.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| > I'd argue If you're creating and releasing open source with
| the expectations of compensation, you're doing it wrong.
|
| I think this is a little unfair, given that many (especially
| younger maintainers) get into it for portfolio reasons where
| they otherwise might struggle to get a job but stick around
| because of the enjoyment and interest. It still sucks that so
| many big orgs rely on these packages and we're potentially
| experiencing a future when models trained on this code are
| going to replace jobs in the future.
|
| I think a lack of unionisation is what puts the industry in
| such a tough spot. We have no big power brokers to enforce the
| rights of open source developers, unlike the other creative
| industries that can organise with combined legal action.
| saidnooneever wrote:
| thanks grayhatter. well said. been programming for 20+ years
| never earned a dime from it dont want it. its a silly
| assumption that everyone's motivation is money. this is very
| far from the truth.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Agreed. I do this too.
| verdverm wrote:
| I'd support this if only to end the nightmare that is the JS
| ecosystem
| amarant wrote:
| You do not want to add profit incentives like this to FOSS.
|
| Profit incentives like the one suggested is what brought us
| enshitification.
|
| And the code is a free gift, unless the licence says otherwise.
| What's wrong with letting developers choose what to bill for?
| axel479343 wrote:
| You are absolutely right
| ndr wrote:
| Static rules will be gamed.
|
| It's easy to predict what sort of incentives this would produce,
| and how bad they would be. Fewer users and way more spammy
| projects to say the least.
|
| GH could easily end up having to spend more than it collected in
| fighting abuse.
| lm28469 wrote:
| >it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky and
| is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing it
| for their own enjoyments
|
| Goodbye 90% of open source software I guess then
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Schemes like this have a way of getting captured.
| olalonde wrote:
| > Those funds would then be distributed by usage - every mention
| in a package.json or requirements.txt gets you a piece of the
| pie.
|
| Usage is not a good proxy for value or ongoing effort. I have a
| npm package with tens of millions of weekly downloads. It's only
| a few lines long and it's basically done - no maintenance
| required.
|
| I'm skeptical that there exists an algorithmic way to distribute
| funds that's both efficient and resistant to gaming.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| <humour> sounds like socialism amirite?</humour>
|
| In principle it sounds like a grand idea, although there are a
| bunch of corner cases like how it works cross country borders,
| and de-anonymising maintainers.
|
| If it was opt in for opensource projects, and there are strong
| guards against people forking/hard takover-ing then yes, it seems
| like a good idea in principle.
|
| I will leave the AI enthusiasts to chime in about the future, and
| how we don't need OS anymore.
| preommr wrote:
| Instead of a dollar from github users, I think it should just be
| a hefty tax on big tech companies that have valuations of over a
| billion. The nature of software and tech means that there are
| massive monopolies where winner takes all. We should just accept
| that and leverage it.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >It is crazy, absolutely crazy to depend on open source to be
| free (as beer).
|
| Why? It's not crazy at all. It's the status quo with no sign of
| things changing. It is both possible right now and likely
| continue. Its not crazy.
|
| If it's not worth maintaining people will stop. If people need it
| they will develop it. The current incentive structure has
| produced lots of open source code that is being maintained.
|
| >It is not okay - it is not okay to consider that this labor fell
| from the sky and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are
| just doing it for their own enjoyments.
|
| It is if there is no cost. You can always charge for it. But you
| can't make it free then pretend its not.
| drdrey wrote:
| the problem with any approach like this based on usage metrics is
| that it will be abused to death
| wiether wrote:
| > Those funds would then be distributed by usage - every mention
| in a package.json or requirements.txt gets you a piece of the
| pie.
|
| Could have worked before LLMs.
|
| Also, funding by popularity would mean alternatives would have a
| harder time to emerge and get the funding they need to compete
| against the established popular projects.
|
| Being an Open Source project doesn't mean that it provides the
| best solution to the problem it's supposed to solve. Diversity is
| important.
| lars_francke wrote:
| This is a terrible idea in my opinion and it's been tried/is
| being tried by services like thanks.dev. Yes, we need something
| here but this is not it. The reality is more complex.
|
| It doesn't work well in practice. Because then people like
| https://github.com/sindresorhus?tab=repositories&type=source
| would get a shit ton of money because of the pure number of
| dependencies. And yes our stack also contains his code somewhere
| in a debug UI but our main product is entirely written in a
| different programming language with way fewer dependencies but if
| one of them goes away we'd be in trouble. In other words:
| Dependency count is not a good metric for this.
|
| GitHub actually offers something in that direction:
| https://github.com/sponsors/explore
|
| My "idea": Lots of companies will have to create SBOMs anyway.
| Take all of those but also scan your machines and take all the
| open source software running on there (your package.lock does not
| contain VLC etc.) and throw it in a big company wide BOM, then
| somehow prioritise those using algorithms, data and just manual
| voting and then upload that to some distributor who then
| distributes this to all the relevant organisations and people and
| then (crucially) sends me (as a company) an invoice.
|
| We've tried doing the right thing but sponsoring is hard - it
| works differently for every project/foundation and the
| administrative overhead is huge.
|
| The reality is that "we" as an open-source community suck at
| taking money and I believe this is partially on us.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| > The reality is that "we" as an open-source community suck at
| taking money and I believe this is partially on us.
|
| More broadly people suck at giving money for things they can
| get for free. That's just the reality of how most people out
| there behave.
|
| The only "solution" is to educate people but that is completely
| unfeasible.
| rglullis wrote:
| One thing I thought that got me interested about Brave was this
| part of their business modell. It had the potential to support
| this type of economy _almost_ without any attrition. It was not
| that different from flattr, with the difference that people would
| be able to contribute just by accepting the notification ads and
| passing along their earnings.
|
| Unfortunately, the crypto angle made sure that mostly degens and
| speculators got into it. Perhaps if stabletokens were more
| established by the time they started, it would be easier to
| market it.
|
| (I am not going to get into yet-another discussion about Brave as
| a company. I will flag any attempt at derailing the
| conversation.)
| primitivesuave wrote:
| If this actually happens, get ready for an avalanche of AI-
| generated garbage code that exists for the sole purpose of
| boosting a scammer's metrics, so they can maximize their slice of
| the pie with the minimum amount of effort. Spotify is dealing
| with this same issue around AI-generated music [1].
|
| 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lesliekatz/2024/09/08/man-
| charg...
| hamdingers wrote:
| Many open source projects are created by engineers being paid to
| solve a problem their employer has, and they just happen to
| release it freely.
|
| I don't think Google needs a dollar every time I write a script
| in golang or run a container in kubernetes, and I would put a lot
| less trust in Envoy if I thought Lyft was building it profit and
| not because they needed to.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| OSS works partially because a lot of stuff is free as in beer. I
| rely on probably many thousands of OSS projects directly or
| indirectly on a daily basis. So does everyone else.
|
| The problem for some people is that they want to get paid for
| their work and just aren't; or not enough. I won't judge that.
| Writing software is hard work. Whether you donate your time and
| how much of your time is a personal choice to make. But of course
| a lot of OSS gets paid for indirectly via companies paying people
| to work on them (most long lived projects have paid contributors
| like that) or in a few cases because the companies behind these
| projects have some business model that actually works. Some
| people donate money to things they like. And some projects are
| parked under foundations that accept donations. That's all fine.
| But there are also an enormous amount of projects out there and
| most of them will never receive a dollar for any of it. OSS
| wouldn't work without this long tail of unpaid contributors.
|
| I have a few OSS projects of my own. I don't accept donations for
| them. I don't get paid for them. I have my own reasons for
| creating these projects; but money isn't one of those. And people
| are welcome to use them. That's why these projects are open
| source.
|
| MS and Github make loads of money. There's a reason they give the
| freemium version away for free: it funnels enough people into the
| non free version that it is worth it to them. Charging money to
| everyone might actually break that for them. I happily use their
| freemium stuff. I did pay for it a long time ago when private
| projects weren't part of the freemium layer. Anyway their
| reasons/motivations are theirs. I'm sure it all makes sense for
| them and their share holders.
|
| If people feel guilty about not donating to each of the thousands
| of projects they rely on (or any, because why cherry pick?), you
| can pay back in a different way and try to contribute once in a
| while. Just pay it forward. Yes you somebody put a lot of work in
| the stuff that you use. And you put some work in stuff that
| others get to use. If enough people keep on doing that (and the
| success of OSS hints that they do), OSS will be here to stay.
| luqtas wrote:
| > OSS will be here to stay
|
| OSS literally runs the modern infrastructure...
| https://www.fordfoundation.org/learning/library/research-rep...
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| the payment isn't the problem so much as the payment processing.
| They wouldn't support crypto, even if they did, getting crypto
| without KYC hassle is a PITA, not worth it for paying one company
| $1. Not associating your real identity with a github repo is very
| important to most github users.
|
| Payment could solve lots of problems, but there is no real and
| meaningful cash-equivalent payment system or method. This isn't a
| tech problem either, governments allow cash payments, but if it
| is digital, they won't allow any means that preserves privacy.
| Money laundering is their concern. You can't solve this without
| laws changing. Even if I don't mind buying crypto with a credit
| card, I still have to go through proving my identity with my id
| card, as if my credit-card company didn't do that already.
|
| payment is a huge barrier to commerce these days, people think
| LLMs will change the world, but payment tech/laws will have a
| bigger effect in my opinion.
|
| Let's say HN mods go a little crazy one day and want to let us
| tip each other for good posts and comments, imagine if all they
| had to do is add an html tag in the right place and that's it.
| All we had to do is click a button and it just works, and there
| is no exposure of private information by any involved party, and
| you could fund that payment by buying something (a card?) at a
| convenience store in person, just as easily as you could with a
| crypto payment, moneygram or wire transfer.
|
| I __want__ to pay so many news sites, blogs,etc... I don't mind
| tipping a few bucks to some guy who wrote a good blog, or who put
| together a decent project on github that saved me lots of time
| and work.
|
| It isn't merely the change in economics or people getting a buck
| here and there, but the explosion in economic activity you have
| to look at. The generation of wealth, not the mere zero-sum
| transferring of currency. This is the type of stuff that changes
| society drastically, like freeways being invented, women being
| able to ride bicycles, airplanes allowing fast transport,
| telegrams allowing instant messaging,etc..
|
| Everyone being able to easily pay anyone at all, including
| funding private as well as commercial projects would be more
| disruptive than democracy itself, if I could dare make that
| claim. There is freedom of movement, there is freedom of
| communication and last there is freedom of trade. these are the
| ultimate barriers to human progress. Imagine if everyone from
| texas to beijing could fund research and projects, trade stocks
| in companies (all companies in the world). You won't need
| governments to fund climate change work, I think eventually
| taxation itself will have to suffer, because people would be able
| to direct exactly where their funds went. Not just what
| department in the government gets a budget, but exactly what
| projects they spend it on. being able to not just talk or meet
| each other instantly (and even those have a long way to go) but
| to also collectively or as individuals found each other,
| governments and companies, that'd be the biggest thing that could
| happen this century.
|
| This could be done, but again, we don't need better tech as much
| as we need a change in attitude. For people to actually believe
| this would result in a better world for them.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| > payment is a huge barrier to commerce these days, people
| think LLMs will change the world, but payment tech/laws will
| have a bigger effect in my opinion.
|
| Having a native way to send micropayments on the web without
| having to pay a huge % of that transaction to Visa/Mastercard
| and Stripe and Co would be such massive game changer when it
| comes to this stuff.
|
| As a silly example, every time I collect 1$ for my 1$/month
| club I actually get ~70c which is wild.
|
| I agree with you, if there was a better way to directly send
| small amounts to people running interesting sites or projects
| the whole landscape could change.
|
| And I also agree that a change in attitude is needed. I
| appreciated your comment.
| bArray wrote:
| $1 USD is ~90 Indian Rupees, 1450 Argentinian Peso or over 1
| million Iranian Rial [1]. In some places, $1 USD could be a
| week's work. On the collection side, you could be seriously over-
| charging people. On the distribution side, you could be seriously
| overpaying people for their work - and encourage scams, etc.
|
| > GitHub should charge every org $1 more per user per month and
| direct it into an Open Source fund, held in escrow.
|
| Sure. It'll be some charity, then somebody gets paid $200k+ per
| year to distribute what remains after they've taken the majority,
| all whilst avoiding most taxes. To receive the money the person
| has to ID themselves, financial background checks need to be
| done, a minimum amount needs to be reached before a payment is
| made, and then after passing through multiple wanting hands, they
| end up with a fraction.
|
| > Those funds would then be distributed by usage - every mention
| in a package.json or requirements.txt gets you a piece of the
| pie.
|
| What even is "usage"? How many times it appears in a number of
| repos? How many users there are of the project? Is the usefulness
| and value of a project limited to the number of people that
| directly use it?
|
| > Or don't! Let's not do anything! People's code and efforts -
| fueling incredibly critical bits of infrastructure all around the
| world - should just be up for grabs. Haha! Suckers!
|
| > Anyway, you all smarter than me people can figure it out. I
| just cannot accept that what we have is "GOOD". xx
|
| It's entirely possible you can make things worse by avoiding
| doing nothing. Sometimes in life you have to pick the lesser of
| evils.
|
| [1] https://www.x-rates.com/table/?from=USD&amount=1
| smcleod wrote:
| Tax large companies properly then you don't have to tax the
| public for things like this.
| init0 wrote:
| npm funds is that to a certain extent ->
| https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v11/commands/npm-fund
| blindstitch wrote:
| If you make every single person go through Github's miserable
| auth process just to do git pull, they are going to leave
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| You mean Microsoft?
| Lramseyer wrote:
| > every mention in a package.json or requirements.txt
|
| OK, what about those of us who aren't writing libraries?
|
| As a personal anecdote, the amount of opportunities that have
| been opened up to me as a result of my open source project are
| worth way more than any $1 per mention or user.
| dbbk wrote:
| This... exists? Did they even search for it?
| https://github.com/open-source/sponsors
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Yes, it's a step in the right direction.
|
| However it is opt-in aka "Launch a page in minutes and showcase
| Sponsors buttons on your GitHub profile and repositories".
| That's effort & friction and only simplifies the "begging"
| aspect that I am (strongly) reacting to.
|
| https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v11/commands/npm-fund will also
| "list all dependencies that are looking for funding in a tree
| structure"
|
| I want the step (or 5 steps) after that. Charge first, then
| distribute.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| BRB donating to Forgejo.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The transitive nature of dependencies makes fund allocation
| extremely wonky. Say you have Next.js as a dependency in your
| package.json file? How many dependencies does Next.js itself
| have? What portion of your funds go to Next.js versus all the
| transitive dependencies of Next.js?
| zzzeek wrote:
| $5 a month per dependency, OK let's go! Hold up I've just
| reorganized my packages into sqlalchemy-base, sqlalchemy-core-
| sql, sqlalchemy-orm, sqlalchemy-oh-you-want-deletes-also,
| sqlalchemy-fewer-bugs, and about eight more
| axel479343 wrote:
| let everything be gratis and if you need something fixed, and
| engineer you hired to work for you in your org can fork or send
| in a patch. there, I solved it
| asah wrote:
| love this idea on so many levels. Of course, then the fight moves
| to how allocation happens, and how to avoid people further gaming
| things like repo stars, forks, PRs, voting, dependencies, etc.
|
| in particular, there's repos with extremely high activity where
| funding doesn't help anyone and repos with low activity where
| funding ensures continuity for key components we all depend on
| but which are under-funded for various reasons.
|
| obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/
| Unfunkyufo wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the solution to the open
| source funding problem is to force people to pay for it. I think
| that goes against the spirit of open source. If there is forced
| payment, or even the expectation of payment, then we're not
| really doing the whole original open source thing, we're just
| doing bad source available commercial-ish software.
|
| I think the solution is for people to understand that open source
| goes both ways. Unlike what this post says, users don't owe
| maintainers anything, but maintainers also don't owe the users
| anything. If I build something cool and share it freely, why
| should users expect anything from me? Why should you expect me to
| maintain it or add the features you want? I think we need a
| mentality change where less is expected from maintainers, unless
| funding is arranged.
|
| After all, it's free and open source. No one is forcing you to
| use it. Don't like that I'm not actively developing it? Submit a
| PR or fork it. Isn't that what the original spirit of open source
| was? I think that open source has been so succesful and good that
| we've come to expect it to be almost like commercial software.
| That's not what it is.
| nottorp wrote:
| There's also the problem of who decides who gets paid?
|
| If they pay by popularity most of my $1 would go to javascript.
| I'd rather it went to libraries I actually use.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Even though I like JS/TS, I agree... not to mention that at
| even 10x the suggested amount for paid accounts, or even $1
| per private repo per month, it still wouldn't be significant
| to any individual developer... More along the lines of thanks
| for the cup of coffee money as opposed to income money.
|
| As suggested, I do think there should be room for grant
| funding, especially in the case of govts switching to open-
| source (LibreOffice, Linux, whatever) and open-source
| individuals and orgs can apply and granted each year
| dependent on actual use. Though, even then, govts should
| probably do more for funding, but I don't want a situation
| where the org just spends more money than they actually
| distribute for dev (looking at you Mozilla).
| nottorp wrote:
| Not sure if github publishes their subscriber numbers but
| there may be quite a few, at least corporate?
|
| Personally I used to pay 7/month for personal use, then
| when MS bought it it went down to 4, and one day when my
| card expired I noticed I'm not using any of the paid
| features and private repos are now free... so now I'm
| paying 0.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky
| and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing
| it for their own enjoyments.
|
| Is that not what most of open source is? Things people make for
| themselves because they either found it fun or solved their own
| problem, then published it for others to use for free. Most
| projects are not worth the bureaucratic tax related headaches the
| income from them would bring (maybe that's just my EU showing).
|
| What's not okay is demanding new features or to fix something
| urgently. That's paid territory.
|
| Honestly this post is such a shit take it's borderline
| intentional ragebait.
| keithnz wrote:
| No. I would get rid of "should" to "could" but it actually would
| warp the open source world once money is involved. People would
| start optimizing what they do to try and get a slice of the pie.
| ummonk wrote:
| If you willingly choose to make source code publicly available
| under an open source license you can't then act all shocked that
| people don't have to pay you for using that code. If you wanted
| to be guaranteed an income whenever your code gets used, you
| should have chosen a different license.
| tonymet wrote:
| perfectly articulated. Moreover, the license is whatever the
| copyright holder wants to put into it. They can easily dual
| license , copy-left variants -- there are tons of licenses that
| provide compensation for commercial use.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Not a great take.
|
| Corporations who use and benefit from software should be made to
| pay for their use of that software, but they don't want to, which
| is why they'll happily spend money promoting the use of
| corporate-friendly and maximally exploitable open source
| licensing among the passionate individuals who maintain the lions
| share of their dependency tree.
|
| https://lgug2z.com/articles/on-evils-in-software-licensing/
| spullara wrote:
| If you don't want to give your software away for free, don't
| give your software away for free. When they decide it is in
| their best interest to pay for it they will, i.e. support, bug
| fixes, changes. If you make open source software that just
| works they are unlikely to start writing checks nor should
| there be any expectation that they do that.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| > If you don't want to give your software away for free,
| don't give your software away for free.
|
| I don't, and I spend a lot of my time and efforts encouraging
| others not to, and doing the work to prove out alternative
| models :)
|
| https://lgug2z.com/articles/normalize-identifying-
| corporate-...
|
| https://lgug2z.com/articles/komorebi-financial-breakdown-
| for...
| zemo wrote:
| > When they decide it is in their best interest to pay for it
| they will, i.e. support, bug fixes, changes.
|
| Maybe, but also maybe they just fork internally and fix the
| bug internally and don't publish the bugfix. And maybe it's
| never in their best interest to pay for it, maybe it's in
| their best interest to just freeload forever.
|
| > If you make open source software that just works they are
| unlikely to start writing checks nor should there be any
| expectation that they do that.
|
| I think it's good when we expect corporations to write checks
| to the people that write the open-source stuff they rely on.
| "A rising tide lifts all boats" is not automatically true in
| software, we have to choose to make it true. I think a world
| in which we make that choice is a better world. I'm not
| convinced we currently live in that world.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| That is not how people and society function. The status quo
| and culture is that open source is good for society and all.
| You are not told about why big corporations can use all this
| code for free. You're actually told you're doing a good deed
| by making code open source.
|
| Then you jump on to a place like Reddit or HN and you have
| people mostly supporting the status quo. Of course people are
| going to do open source more than they should. And then if
| they complain later on, you will say they chose to make it
| open source. Reinforcing the status quo by blaming the
| individual.
| rmah wrote:
| Giving something away for free and then whining that people use
| it for free confuses me. I mean, what did you think would
| happen?
| bsnnkv wrote:
| > Giving something away for free and then whining that people
| use it for free confuses me. I mean, what did you think would
| happen?
|
| Such a weird thing to reply to someone who very publicly
| disavows the use of open source licensing for individuals
| worik wrote:
| This is suggesting Microsoft should take more power to itself,
| and disguise it as "community support"
| bahmboo wrote:
| The sense of entitlement is strong in these comments. If you
| haven't built or maintained OSS I'm wondering why your opinion
| matters [edit: that's harshly worded I could have been more
| nuanced, hopefully the point is taken and it is a question].
| There's also the take that "this is fine" vs considering that the
| state of OSS things could be a LOT better with higher quality and
| more choices if we fed the beast properly.
| mjr00 wrote:
| I don't see any entitlement at all, in fact it's the opposite.
|
| The article: "I expect open source maintainers to maintain
| their codebases and add new features. I have unilaterally
| decided that $1/package is a suitable amount, universally
| applicable to all packages and maintainers." <--- _this_ is
| entitlement
|
| The comments here: "Open source maintainers don't owe you
| shit."
| bahmboo wrote:
| Interesting. I do not agree with your summary of his post, in
| fact he goes so far as to say "an idea, really. Incredibly
| half-baked. Poke all the holes you want. It's very unwrought
| and muy unripe."
|
| So yes, we can laugh at the proposed mechanism but I feel the
| world would be a better place if we could funnel more
| resources to OSS creators rather than just take because
| that's an easier path.
| kunley wrote:
| Considering that Github already has indirectly done a biggest
| theft in the tech history, I'd say: no way.
| perlgeek wrote:
| IMHO Open Source Software is a public good, and should be mostly
| funded like other public goods: through government grants.
|
| GitHub charging its users, who themselves are mostly OSS
| developers (and not end users) doesn't seem like a sensible
| solution.
| cenobyte wrote:
| no.
| kjgkjhfkjf wrote:
| Proposals like these seem to assume that FOSS is mostly produced
| by unpaid volunteers. But a lot of the open-source stuff that I
| personally use is produced by massively profitable companies.
|
| For example, I am currently working with React, which was
| produced by Meta. I write the code using TypeScript, which was
| produced by Microsoft (and other corporate behemoths such as
| Google). I am writing this comment in Chrome (produced by
| Google). Etc.
| arjie wrote:
| This transformation of open-source into rent-seeking behaviour is
| quite distasteful to me. If you don't want to share your stuff
| without taxing everyone, then don't share it. Other licenses
| exist. You don't have to use MIT or the GPL.
|
| Meta has even demonstrated an alternative with the Llama 4
| License which has exclusion criteria:
|
| > _2. Additional Commercial Terms. If, on the Llama 4 version
| release date, the monthly active users of the products or
| services made available by or for Licensee, or Licensee's
| affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in
| the preceding calendar month, you must request a license from
| Meta, which Meta may grant to you in its sole discretion, and you
| are not authorized to exercise any of the rights under this
| Agreement unless or until Meta otherwise expressly grants you
| such rights._
|
| Go put such terms in your licenses.
|
| This is particularly rampant in the Rust community and if I'm
| being honest this forced tithing church nonsense from people who
| want to be priests makes participating in that community less
| desirable. I don't even want to donate to the RSF as a result.
|
| All the other projects I've donated to in the past have been much
| more reasonable. This kind of pushy nonsense is unacceptable.
| Davidbrcz wrote:
| Taxes, that's called taxes.
| tracker1 wrote:
| So you sprinkle a few tens of thousands of dollars across a few
| hundreds of thousands of developers every month? Thanks for the
| $0.48 Github.
|
| s/thousands/millions/ the point stands that there are way more
| devs than commercial accounts, and even then, even if it's 1:1,
| you get $1?
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| Have a glass of water on us, friend!
| stravant wrote:
| This would not fund the people you want it to fund.
|
| Bad or borderline actors would be so much better at creating
| whatever metrics you're basing things off of that the actual
| value creators wouldn't stand a chance.
| wang_li wrote:
| How much was left-pad worth? Lots of people used it because it's
| free, not because it's valuable.
| kekqqq wrote:
| If you pay for it to gain the access, then it is not open source.
| In open source, everyone can access it and contribute (in
| theory).
| jamietanna wrote:
| I've spent a bit of time thinking about this[0] - as a maintainer
| (oapi-codegen, Renovate, previously Jenkins Job DSL Plugin and
| Wiremock), as someone who used to work on "how can we better fund
| our company's dependencies", and building projects and products
| to better understand dependency usage
|
| As others have noted, there are a few areas to watch out for,
| and:
|
| - some ecosystems have more dependencies over fewer, and so we
| need to consider how to apply a careful weighting in line with
| that - how do we handle forks? Does a % of the money go to the
| original maintainers who did 80% of the work? - how can companies
| be clever to not need to pay this? - some maintainers don't want
| financial support, and that's OK - some project creators /
| maintainers don't get into the work for the money (... because
| there is often very little) - there's a risk of funding
| requirements leading to "I'm not merging your PR without you
| paying me" which is /not problematic/ but may not be how some
| people (in particular companies) would like to operate
|
| [0]: https://www.jvt.me/posts/2025/02/20/funding-oss-product/
| morshu9001 wrote:
| How about GitHub stops using GPL'd code to train models? The
| authors weren't asking for payment, they were just asking not to
| reuse their code without GPL.
| juancn wrote:
| GitHub cannot see enterprise repos. Those are purposely kept on-
| prem.
| cush wrote:
| ...With absolutely nothing expected in return. This is for work
| completed, not for leverage on future work
| jstummbillig wrote:
| That would be fun. Could over time round roughly to charging
| everyone to fund the use of GitHub Copilot to work on open
| source.
| enricotr wrote:
| GitHub should be gradually substituted by some other providers,
| decentralized.
| JacoboJacobi wrote:
| I've seen plenty of cases of making something a target where
| quality won't be measurable and immediately cut off the reward or
| apply penalties. I don't really want Microsoft to run a large
| fund that encourages people to try to take over roles and request
| cash, etc.
|
| Literally anyone could create a support and maintenance
| organization that takes MIT license projects into an AWS like
| split and only get paid if the support they provide remains
| valuable to people who pay for the value of the support and
| maintenance.
| overfeed wrote:
| Tech guy reinvents half-assed taxes. More at 11.
|
| Government grants can be used to cover infrastructural open
| source. Not every open source _wants_ money, so this scheme has
| ro be opt-in. Further, entitled "paying" users[1] will make
| things much worse for small projects. "I paid for this package,
| so you need to fix this show-stopper bug before we ship on
| Friday"
|
| Having a passion project is great, having it gain traction is
| even better, but that is not sufficient to make it a job /
| company. The utility of open source projects range from "I could
| implement the bits I use in under an hour" to "It would take
| 100-person team years".
| paul_h wrote:
| How bold to start with "Listen to me" then jump into something
| that doesn't make much economic sense and has not been properly
| considered
| keybored wrote:
| Every day, millions go to work because they have to eat. Every
| day, thousands (?) go to their computers in their free time and
| make OSS software. Not because they have to eat but because [?].
| Then they or others complain that people take their work that
| they do for free under no duress for free.
|
| Maybe economists could do what is ostensibly their job and try to
| prevent the "tetris game of software depending on the OSS
| maintained by one guy in Nebraska..." situation. In the meanwhile
| people who do things under no duress for free could stop doing
| it.
|
| (Not that OSS is all hobby activities. There are many who are
| paid to do it. But these appeals only talk about the former.)
| woodruffw wrote:
| Being on both sides of the open source value relationship, I feel
| somewhat skeptical of mechanisms that use dependency
| cardinality/"popularity" to allocate funding: at its best it's a
| proxy for core functionality (which is sometimes, but not always,
| the actually hard/maintenance-intensive stuff) and at its worst
| it incentivizes dependency proliferation (since _two_ small core
| packages would be equally as popular as one medium-sized one).
| tonymet wrote:
| Or the copyright holders can start dual licensing their software
| for commercial use
|
| license A is GPL or MIT for academic and free applications
|
| License B is for commercial use, with a fee
|
| The license is literally whatever you want to put into it.
|
| IMO the issue is with the open source community gatekeeping these
| policies. Shaming developers for proposing commercial licensing,
| then shaming corporations for properly using the IP according to
| the free license (e.g. MIT)
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| If this ever happened I imagine private equity would begin taking
| control of open source projects.
| tobadzistsini wrote:
| Github should charge everyone $1 more to disable Copilot on
| accounts.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > It is crazy, absolutely crazy to depend on open source to be
| free (as beer).
|
| It is also kind of crazy to want Microsoft to manage FOSS
| taxation and funding.
| bitbasher wrote:
| I have a better idea-- why doesn't GitHub (that closed source
| platform) donate 20% of all revenue to opensource projects that
| enable the company to exist?
| alex_young wrote:
| An Open Letter to Hobbyists has a similar ring to it:
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/su...
| maxdo wrote:
| I think we sometimes treat "open" as automatically good without
| examining the tradeoffs.
|
| You can easily sponsor Iran or Russia killing real people by
| doing such things.
|
| Powerful tools, once released, can be used by anyone, including
| those with harmful intentions. And let's be honest: much of open
| source functions as a way for large companies to cut costs on
| essential but non-differentiating infrastructure. That's fine,
| but it complicates the idealistic narrative.
|
| With generative AI, these questions matter more. Maybe it's time
| to revisit what open source should mean in this context.
| hartjer wrote:
| Yeah ask Microsoft to charge everyone $1/m more, what could go
| wrong. They didn't coin the phrase "embrace, extend, extinguish"
| or anything
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Even better.
|
| Have Microsoft charge people $ for their repos, and then take
| their code to train their LLM for more $. And they can fund
| open source projects to produce more code to train their LLM
| for even more $.
|
| Everyone wins, right?
|
| Thankfully we still have Codeberg.
| heliumtera wrote:
| ok greg i made my repository public where is my stinky money?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Been living off grants and donations for a few years now. My 2c
| is you probably don't need to invent a new platform to fund open
| source development. There are tons of platforms and systems in
| place already. That's not's what's missing. You need to get open
| source developers that want to get paid for their work to spell
| that fact out to their users and supporters.
|
| Yes this is uncomfortable, but the simple fact is that if you
| don't tell anyone you want to get paid, you probably won't be
| given any money. Standard seem to be maybe there's a donation
| link _somewhere_ on the site, buried 4 clicks deep in the FAQ,
| more often than not something like a paypal.
|
| The reality is that if you do ask for money, surprisingly often
| people will straight up just give you money if they like what
| you're doing. Like people get paid real money for screaming at
| video games on Twitch, meanwhile you're building something people
| find useful. Of course you can make money off it. But you gotta
| ask for it, the game screamers on twitch sure do. That's the
| secret. Sure there's a scale from asking for donations and doing
| a Jimmy Wales and putting a your face on a banner begging for
| donations; and while going full jimbo is arguably taking it too
| far, it's also probably closer to the optimum than you'd imagine.
|
| If you have corporate users, word on the street is you can also
| just reach out to them and ask for sponsorship. They're not
| guaranteed to say yes, but they're extremely unlike to sponsor
| you spontaneously.
| philippz wrote:
| I honestly believe this is a great idea and of course you can
| make it opt-in and opt-out but it should be a default or
| enforcable by repo-owners.
| corvad wrote:
| Open source work is not a product, it is a gift to the community
| with no strings attached, and that goes both ways. You don't ask
| people who give you a gift to then unbox it, set it up, and
| maintain it for you.
| UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote:
| No idea why this has got the traction it has. Absurd and poorly
| thought through. It sounds like you don't like building open
| source software, so stop doing it. Don't write a blog post
| whining about the cage you have shut yourself in. Absolute martyr
| complex.
| timcobb wrote:
| This is the classic "if everyone gave 5 cents" thing. But If
| GitHub charged $1 more per month, how would they raise prices
| later then?
| 7ynk3r wrote:
| free market. go and charge.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I'm not a fan of Github, I prefer to promote the competition, and
| I'm definitely not a fan of Microsoft, but Github is already
| sponsoring open source with unlimited repos.
|
| So this is a weird statement to me, like you always want more.
| conartist6 wrote:
| There's Drips that kinda works like this I think
| hmokiguess wrote:
| Oh, I know! Let's redistribute royalty payments from AI
| subscriptions in Spotify-fashion from OpenAI and friends to
| developers, kind of like how Spotify pays artists for streams we
| get a cut of the token. Oh wait... no one's profitable yet.
| Right.
| Halan wrote:
| GitHub already charges organisations to fund open source
| features. Otherwise it wouldn't lack so many enterprise level
| features, it wouldn't have half baked solution that do not take
| into consideration enterprise requirements. GH Actions for
| example is still not there yet after years
| rvprasad wrote:
| While delegating fund collection and disbursement to one
| organization reduces overhead for each project, the centralized
| nature of the setup can be asking for trouble.
|
| Instead, why not a simpler alternative of accepting the reality
| that 1) projects may charge for their offerings and 2) users may
| have to pay for such offerings?
|
| Without such delegation, projects will have to do the heavy
| lifting in terms of collection of funds; features such as
| sponsorship in GH or setting up e-payments via Stripe or Paypay
| may help reduce this brunt.
|
| At the end of the day, as a user, if a project's offering to be
| useful to me, then I should be willing to pay for it. As a
| creator, if I want to get paid for my offering, then I should be
| willing to ask for it. Basic trade. An upside of such a change is
| that we will start being more focused and prudent about what we
| use and create.
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