41–50 of 54 posts
Just my two cents here. When Eric is describing having to wake up at 5 am and work weekends to make Code Sponsor work even with the proceeds of 60% of all OS projects his ad network funded, it should be pretty clear the other 40% divided among many OS coders couldn’t be enough for their project’s development to feel sustainable. As much as I commend Eric on trying to find a solution to OS maintainability, I think he…
Just my two cents here. When Eric is describing having to wake up at 5 am and work weekends to make Code Sponsor work even with the proceeds of 60% of all OS projects his ad network funded, it should be pretty clear the other 40% divided among many OS coders couldn’t be enough for their project’s development to feel sustainable. As much as I commend Eric on trying to find a solution to OS maintainability, I think he…
What Code Sponsor is is a mashup of Carbon Ads, Open Collective and Read the Docs (with a hint of grassroots marketing demonstrated by Wesbos). The 40% was enough for developers. I paid one developer last month over $600. Two others earned over $400.
Finally, Code Sponsor was available to every open source project. The popularity of the project is what self-governed the amount of money they would receive.
Carbon Ads also does not provide any visibility into what is going on. I have taken extreme effort to give sponsors and developers full visibility into their traffic patterns. Daily statistics and charts. This allows sponsors to immediately know how their campaigns are doing and shift if necessary.
Carbon Ads is great, but they are a black box and sponsors want more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why not get Github out of the equation? I know it might seem a lot to ask but there are alternatives, Github has their right to ban you but it don't need to be the end. Or am I missing something?
Author responded in another thread earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15774729 > 60% of all traffic through Code Sponsor came from Github. 15% came from ad blocked traffic (I have no idea the referer). About 15% came from websites and then the remainder came from different repository websites (dockerhub, npm, etc). From the monetizable repo views, 86% of all views were from Github. Barring a massive cultur…
TAForObjReasons is exactly right. Github has to be a part of the equation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't directed at the commenter, but the concept above: Can we all come to an agreement that a person running an endeavor be permitted to feed, cloth, and accomodate themselves reasonably? Specifically, this crab mentality of dashing hopes of someone ending up right side up on a side project or even a nonprofit. Why pick on the little guys who are just trying to get by, especially if they have a noble intention…
> reasonably If the split happened to be 80%/20% or 90%/10%, then no one would complain even if the author was pocketing $1M/mo. In fact, I and many other people would likely be ecstatic. However, knowing the actual split, and knowing that the majority of funding didn't actually go to developers, it's a lot more difficult to make the social argument at this time. It necessarily falls back on the practical question of…
> Most of the previous sponsors were drawn into the social cause but not necessarily the practical effectiveness of the ads themselves
This is true for a few of the sponsors, but not the majority. The majority were drawn into Code Sponsor because it can be as effective as Google Ads, while 40% of the marketing funds go back into developers pockets.
Code Sponsor was never presented to sponsors as a charitable organization, nor did we try to present ourselves as such to the community.
Here is the gist that I shared with sponsors to explain how Code Sponsor worked:
https://gist.github.com/cavneb/a86a668063328de2f063ba9c7d078...
What about placing the sponsor ads in the projects websites instead of in the READMEs? couldn't that be a viable option?
A lot of people are saying that Github is shutting down Code Sponsor. This is not the case. Github is not forcing Code Sponsor to shut down. They are only forcing us to remove all banners from their README’s. The decision to shut down is because the impact Code Sponsor could have on sustaining open source is minimal without Github’s blessing.
That seems to an extremely fine distinction, bordering on one without any difference at all.
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What other solutions do we have to provide scalable funding to open source projects? This comment really frustrates me. Do we put more buttons on our repos asking for money from other developers? Do we try to find corporate sponsorship and hope that they don’t try to influence the project? And if we did want to go that route, how do we do it? Why is this not the right way to go about it? The “ads” were relevant, unob…
I understand your frustration: in an ideal world, we should be able to easily reward people who contribute to the greater good, and open source developers are certainly in that category. However, this reward may not always be money: community recognition and extended network, better chances of hiring, or attribution from projects that depend on you should also be considered. Yeah, it is valid to say that funding need…
This has been the case since day 1. It is a great motivation for people to get into open source, but there gets to be a point where this is no longer a motivation. As their projects become more and more popular, they are having to work nights and weekends to keep the project alive and maintained.
> May be open source development is just fine with corporate sponsorship + people doing it in their free time
Again, this is how it’s always been. Most open source projects do not look for corporate sponsorship because they don’t know where to start. Working in free time is great until it isn’t.
> Maybe developers are repelled by ads...
This is true. Some are repelled. But ask yourselves if the Code Sponsor banner looks like an ad? It was crafted in a way to look enough like the documentation to not distract developers from the README, but different enough to not be considered deceiving.
> Maybe charity and donations work better
Ask Kent C. Dodds this question. He had the charity buttons on every one of his repos and he received $0 in donations. Scalable funding cannot come from charity, it has to come from marketing funds.
For someone who didn't know about this, what did the links look like?
Here's an example of what it looks like:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't directed at the commenter, but the concept above: Can we all come to an agreement that a person running an endeavor be permitted to feed, cloth, and accomodate themselves reasonably? Specifically, this crab mentality of dashing hopes of someone ending up right side up on a side project or even a nonprofit. Why pick on the little guys who are just trying to get by, especially if they have a noble intention…
> reasonably If the split happened to be 80%/20% or 90%/10%, then no one would complain even if the author was pocketing $1M/mo. In fact, I and many other people would likely be ecstatic. However, knowing the actual split, and knowing that the majority of funding didn't actually go to developers, it's a lot more difficult to make the social argument at this time. It necessarily falls back on the practical question of…
> Even though it's not a charitable cause, they are trying to make the same appeals. And if a charitable organization was eating away more than 50% of the donations in administrative costs, you would likely be very wary.
The funding is low, less than a fast food worker. The person running the operation couldn't even pay his own rent to run it out of an apartment.
Before we start slicing up the pie, we need to have the funds reach a point where they can sustain themselves. For instance, basic living expenses in midwestern US. Funds after administrative costs should be the pie.
We have to stop shaking down people who want to help open source when they ask for funding. It's as if whenever someone tries to fund an open source project or create a way to fix this problem funding in open source, they're hounded and dogpiled.
I've seen this sort of entitled, stingy attitude on the part of open source users, that despite using open source software to their benefit, those doing the work behind the scenes are shamed for trying to sustain themselves.
It's this strange double bind: first you want your software working, new features, and that bug fixed, but the one's facilitating that very thing for you can't have the material means to do it without being shook down.
When I see 10k in funding, less than poverty wage in USA, and people talking about it as if it was a prize pool instead of operating expenses, that's the mentality I'd like to see done more thoughtfully.