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Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#91

Post by Mz »

dasmoth wrote: post #90
Mz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask for donations (Babel, Webpack). Pro: this works for tools and libraries (not just apps) and you can keep your mission. Con: Companies feel these donations have ambiguous deliverables. There's a lot of mental overhead too (How many projects can one company fund per month?) I don't write software, but I have run various small websites for something like 15+ years. I have always gotten more donation money than ad mo…

Interesting idea... Original source could be the tweet embedded in https://supso.org/blog/funding-open-source-by-rethinking-the...

I don't follow his tweets, so that is unlikely in this case. It is vastly more likely to have been a comment somewhere on HN that I happened to read. (But that's a really great source you have linked to. Thank you.)

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#92

Post by dasmoth »

chubot wrote: post #65
jashmenn wrote: post #31

Because monetizing your open-source project means you take on a second job. Here are your choices: * Turn your OSS project into a company (Docker). The pro is that you can capture a lot of the value, the con is that you're splitting your project into CE/EE and also now you're a CEO * Give the software away for free and charge for the hosting (Gitlab). Pro here is that you get recurring revenue, but the con is that no…

Very good list. I would add that most open source projects have many people working on them. So suppose you actually manage get paid despite all that -- how do you distribute money fairly? This is a huge problem can could actually slow the project down by leading to hurt feelings. Ironically, it's almost better for the group if nobody gets paid. Corporations have evolved all sorts of imperfect systems to solve this p…

Very good list. I would add that most open source projects have many people working on them.

I'm almost positive this isn't true. If you restrict to the top few percent of projects, it'll be much more true, but even so I think you'll find a lot of projects with relatively small core groups, and sometimes a single hacker who wrote most of the core.

Weekend project: try to quantify this via GitHub APIs? Although suspect that might still give a somewhat skewed picture (not every major project is on GitHub...)

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#94

Post by chubot »

dasmoth wrote: post #92
chubot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good list. I would add that most open source projects have many people working on them. So suppose you actually manage get paid despite all that -- how do you distribute money fairly? This is a huge problem can could actually slow the project down by leading to hurt feelings. Ironically, it's almost better for the group if nobody gets paid. Corporations have evolved all sorts of imperfect systems to solve this p…

Very good list. I would add that most open source projects have many people working on them. I'm almost positive this isn't true. If you restrict to the top few percent of projects, it'll be much more true, but even so I think you'll find a lot of projects with relatively small core groups, and sometimes a single hacker who wrote most of the core. Weekend project: try to quantify this via GitHub APIs? Although suspec…

Yeah I'm sure that's true if you count by the number of projects. But if you count by utility to the world, I'm sure it's not true.

Think of every open source OS, browser, compiler, interpreter, etc.

There might be one person who initiated the project and did much of the design, like Guido van Rossum for Python, but it wouldn't be fair if he got 100% of the compensation and everybody else on python-dev got 0%.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#95

Post by kakwa_ »

Monetizing, or at least trying to monetize can be kind of counter productive for many projects, specially smaller ones.

Personally, I have a few projects on Github that seems to be somewhat useful to other people... but not a lot people (my most "successful" project has 61 stars, not bad for a side project but ridiculous if you compare it with big projects in the thousands of stars).

Trying to monetize it doesn't worth the burden, maybe I could get a few bucks with Patreon or gratipay, but I would need between 100 to a 1000 times what I could reasonably expect to be given to make a living out of it.

Monetizing them also means I would have some moral obligation to maintain them properly. This really depends on your view on the question, but for me it's kind of import. Right now, I try to respond to bugs and PR as fast as I can, but if I'm feeling lazy or if the issue is to complex to be fix, I can leave it opened for months. Maintenance is purely best effort.

I've started these projects for various reasons, but one common denominator is that they enabled me to learn some stuff and/or maintain my competences (setup proper unit tests, documentation in rst, more advanced knowledge of Python, de-rusting my C, cmake, OpenSSL programming, Puppet types and resources...). One other side effect is that these projects give proof and credibility of what is written on my CV, so, in fact, it's not completely un-monetized...

Also, another driver for publishing these projects is: "why should I keep that to myself? it might be useful to other people" and even if it's not, GitHub is a convenient place to store code ^^.

I'm speaking for my personal projects, but I think I'm far from being an exception, big OSS projects that can be monetized are the exception, they are often core components (a kernel, a big library or framework, a big piece of infrastructure...), but many more smaller projects live (and die) around them serving their small purpose (if any).

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#96

Post by fundamental »

Echoing the sentiment of other posters, monetization doesn't make much sense for many projects (beyond accepting tips) as it's more work to do without much $ in return. For success you'd need to invest time into marketing, revamping the website(s), changing how you present deliverables to (paying) users, setup payment processing, come up with a set of plans for various funding levels, etc.

This may rarely work out, otherwise it's a lot of work for below minimum wage. I tried to see if there was enough out there for one project I've been working on for years ( http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net ) and my attempt (like several others in related communities) was a flop. It was interesting from an experience side of things, but in the end the project was too niche to support itself (like I'd imagine most open-source work is).

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#97

Post by stgnet »

jashmenn wrote: post #31

Because monetizing your open-source project means you take on a second job. Here are your choices: * Turn your OSS project into a company (Docker). The pro is that you can capture a lot of the value, the con is that you're splitting your project into CE/EE and also now you're a CEO * Give the software away for free and charge for the hosting (Gitlab). Pro here is that you get recurring revenue, but the con is that no…

Another option:

* Sell commercial versions of your software, appliances to run it, hardware interface cards, phones, and cloud services (Digium). Pro: you can fund the OSS project from the sales and continue to innovate. Cons: you have to engineer and support the hardware, and you're running a datacenter and doing DevOps.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#98

Post by thinkmassive »

jashmenn wrote: post #31

Because monetizing your open-source project means you take on a second job. Here are your choices: * Turn your OSS project into a company (Docker). The pro is that you can capture a lot of the value, the con is that you're splitting your project into CE/EE and also now you're a CEO * Give the software away for free and charge for the hosting (Gitlab). Pro here is that you get recurring revenue, but the con is that no…

This is a great concise list, however I would add one more item:

* Create bounties for individual features/bugfixes using a platform like Bountysource

I've contributed small amounts to FOSS projects I use personally, because I'd really like to see certain features added (or bugs fixed) but don't always have the means or time to contribute my own pull request.

Pros: customers only pay when the feature/bug is implemented, no pager duty or support hours, easy to gauge demand so time is only spent on work that's most desired by paying customers

Cons: one-time revenue, payments might be low relative to the work required

If I had an open source project with an active userbase (one day...), I would probably combine bounties with Patreon and/or support contracts.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#99

Post by sheetjs »

Mz wrote: post #83
jashmenn wrote: post #31

Because monetizing your open-source project means you take on a second job. Here are your choices: * Turn your OSS project into a company (Docker). The pro is that you can capture a lot of the value, the con is that you're splitting your project into CE/EE and also now you're a CEO * Give the software away for free and charge for the hosting (Gitlab). Pro here is that you get recurring revenue, but the con is that no…

Ask for donations (Babel, Webpack). Pro: this works for tools and libraries (not just apps) and you can keep your mission. Con: Companies feel these donations have ambiguous deliverables. There's a lot of mental overhead too (How many projects can one company fund per month?) I don't write software, but I have run various small websites for something like 15+ years. I have always gotten more donation money than ad mo…

> I don't readily have a source at my fingertips, but I bet someone on HN can come up with a link.

That was us :) @patio11 was blown away by our in-browser Excel file preview: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/552765535239159808 (one of the replies suggested that he consider paying, and that led to our first contact) http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/01/28/design-and-implementatio...

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more open-source projects monetize?

#100

Post by Theodores »

Mz wrote: post #85
chubot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good list. I would add that most open source projects have many people working on them. So suppose you actually manage get paid despite all that -- how do you distribute money fairly? This is a huge problem can could actually slow the project down by leading to hurt feelings. Ironically, it's almost better for the group if nobody gets paid. Corporations have evolved all sorts of imperfect systems to solve this p…

it's almost better for the group if nobody gets paid. Relatedly: Studies show that paying people zero money and giving them respect gets better results than paying some pittance well below market rate. The study conclusion was to the effect of "Pay enough (market rates) or pay nothing. Don't pay some pittance because it is all your project can afford."

Let's take a musical analogy - a 'group' group. With a four piece popular beat combo the royalties go four ways, it is all viable as a business. With a larger collective or an orchestra the money gets a bit tight - it goes forty rather than four ways.

But, this is something my internal dialogue says whenever I hear a musician talking about money (and where there share is...) - 'But you are in it for the music, right?'

This musicians seem to forget, they become businessmen and think the value is in the magic of their work and they should be paid for it. I wish they kept music as a fun thing rather than something they 'only do if paid' and for them to see hiring venues and doing tours and selling merchandise as what they need to do for money.

So, analogy is different to reality, however, we must remember why we do stuff for Open Source. Instead of looking for T-shirts and venue tickets to sell, we need to have real world needs for the Open Source code, to work on those problems and get paid for them using and contributing as required to the FOSS projects. As for expectation for pay from the FOSS project (rather than the day job) it should be 'you're in it for the love of music, right?'

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