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Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

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Re: Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

#11

Post by jlarocco »

Do you have an idea about the size of your target market?

What are the project requirements or qualifications necessary to sign up?

What's the expected input from the developer/maintainer?

How much money are maintainers expected to make?

Also, what exactly does DevFlight do? What tactics do you use? How do you decide who to "target", and how (and how often) do you contact them? I'm assuming the developer sees (and has veto power) over all the communications before they're made?

Part of the site and part of the intro here makes this sound like it's just a job search?

Re: Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

#12

Post by chrisseaton »

atomashpolskiy wrote: post #8

One nice thing about free OSS is that it's not paid for. Hence, less influence by external forces, fewer obligations, no strict deadlines, etc. More often than not, this leads to better quality of such software (given that maintainers are experienced and smart). I'm not sure how establishing a direct relationship between money and work (as opposed to donations and grants) would affect the rather high standards of goo…

I would imagine that the vast majority of free/OSS is done as paid employment.

Re: Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

#14

Post by thecatspaw »

craigsmansion wrote: post #13

"We’re Victor and Tony, maintainers/developers of $PKG1 and $PKG2 , and now founders of DevFlight." might have made for a better introduction.

That requires 2 other projects though

edit: I didnt mean this as a snark. I personally do not have 2 public projects where I'd feel comfortable to say "I'm developer/maintainer of X"

Re: Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

#16

Post by zapita »

atomashpolskiy wrote: post #8

One nice thing about free OSS is that it's not paid for. Hence, less influence by external forces, fewer obligations, no strict deadlines, etc. More often than not, this leads to better quality of such software (given that maintainers are experienced and smart). I'm not sure how establishing a direct relationship between money and work (as opposed to donations and grants) would affect the rather high standards of goo…

That is a naive thing to say. Open-source work doesn’t become purer when underpaid. Making open-source pay better for everyone, not just a privileged few, will allow more people to join the open-source movement, raising the standard of software quality for everyone.

Helping open-source maintainers get paid is better for open-source. I think what the Devflight people are trying to do is admirable. I hope they succeed.

Re: Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

#17

Post by detaro »

dotdi wrote: post #10
tmastro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-founder here. Absolutely! We’re working with the wonderful maintainers of projects like Caddy Server ( https://github.com/mholt/caddy ) and OctoberCMS ( https://github.com/octobercms/october ). We’ll be able to share more of the maintainers we’re partnering with soon.

Funny to see caddy here, since they are already offering commercial licenses. EDIT: In fact, commercial use is only available via the commercial license, even if a company decides to build their own binaries.

> even if a company decides to build their own binaries.

Huh? It's Apache 2, how are you prevented from using your own binaries?

Re: Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

#18

Post by samblr »

samblr wrote: post #15

Good initiative, how does sales work - what part of it is automated and what is run by sales team ?

Seeing this has been answered in one of the below threads. Got it.

>> Thanks for that feedback. We start by collecting publicly available GitHub information related to the maintainer’s repo. This includes looking at who has engaged with projects by doing things like submitting issues, pull requests, and stars. We also use Twitter and any community channels the maintainer has created (Slack, Gitter, Discourse, etc.). Then we act as the maintainer’s sales team by reaching out to these leads with customized messages. We find the right people within an organization to discuss how the maintainer can add value to the company, and we negotiate contracts based on the custom plan we’ve developed with the maintainer.

Re: Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

#19

Post by vbordo »

atomashpolskiy wrote: post #8

One nice thing about free OSS is that it's not paid for. Hence, less influence by external forces, fewer obligations, no strict deadlines, etc. More often than not, this leads to better quality of such software (given that maintainers are experienced and smart). I'm not sure how establishing a direct relationship between money and work (as opposed to donations and grants) would affect the rather high standards of goo…

This is a fascinating point. I absolutely agree that injecting money into software can have unintended consequences. After speaking with a lot of maintainers, one common theme is that the widespread commercial use of open-source software has already created this direct link between money and work. Maintainers experience pressure to continue developing their project to keep up with users, issues and feature requests. The more popular the project, the more value is being created on top of their software, and the higher the pressure. Because maintainers are often required to work on their projects in their spare time, working around a full-time job, it’s easy to burn out and stop working on the project altogether. We’re using this contract route as a way to make open-source sustainable for maintainers and establish clear expectations for both maintainers and companies. Setting those expectations is key to giving maintainers their ideal work scenario where they won’t have to sacrifice quality for speed.

Re: Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money

#20

Post by tmastro »

atomashpolskiy wrote: post #8

One nice thing about free OSS is that it's not paid for. Hence, less influence by external forces, fewer obligations, no strict deadlines, etc. More often than not, this leads to better quality of such software (given that maintainers are experienced and smart). I'm not sure how establishing a direct relationship between money and work (as opposed to donations and grants) would affect the rather high standards of goo…

Your point about donations and grants is a good one. Working with us does not mean maintainers have to exclusively use contracts to make money. Making open-source more sustainable will definitely require an aggregation of resources. We’ve learned from maintainers that donations can also have unintended consequences and create certain levels of expectations from the individuals and companies that make them. However, for some projects the donation model can work well, so we definitely encourage maintainers to also accept donations in these situations. Vue.js is a perfect example (https://vuejs.org/).
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