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GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

gitroyalty.com

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Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#41

Post by sdrzn »

rgbrgb wrote: post #31

> GitRoyalty looks at a repository's contributions history and determines each contributor's relative work on the project based on various factors. Even if a developer only made a contribution that we've deemed to be worth 0.001% of the total contributions, that user will get 0.001% of all subscription proceeds. Project maintainers cannot control who gets what share, so developers can rest assured knowing that they w…

We measure contributions using a project's git history (i.e. # of commits) every time a release is published. I realize this is terrible and it's my #1 priority to improve this after we get some engineers on board. I'm currently talking to the owner of SourceCred to see how we can use their protocol: https://sourcecred.io/

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#42

Post by sdrzn »

cjonas wrote: post #39
sdrzn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tough problem and something we're actively working on improving. I'm currently talking to the owner of SourceCred to see how we can use their protocol: https://sourcecred.io/

Just seems like the incentive structure is a little bit misaligned with the best interest of the project: 1. Rewards bigger, more verbose contributions 2. Punishes maintainers for accepting contributions Contributors will optimise for the largest impact and core maintainers will end up spending most their time trying to reduce that impact.

Very interesting thought–I'd love to see how this dynamic actually plays out. I personally would welcome more contributors v.s. doing their work myself.

I think if a project maintainer were to act maliciously in terms of earnings share, developers would call them out and less people would contribute as a result.

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#43

Post by latchkey »

sdrzn wrote: post #26
freedomben wrote: post #22

I very much sympathize with the goals here (I'm deeply concerned about open source sustainability), but this doesn't strike me as a good solution. Not a single company I have worked for would allow a dependency like this in their repo (and I wouldn't blame them). Not only is it legally gray, but somebody has to maintain that subscription. We do buy licenses but only for big/important stuff. Something like this could…

I think companies will hop on board if it means saving engineering hours. OSS has monetary value to these businesses, enough to make a small subscription to support the tremendous development efforts behind it. In most projects, OSS makes up the majority of the codebase, so it is "big/important" IMO. As for the legal aspect, permissive licensing like MIT/Apache 2.0 allows developers and consumers to distribute and us…

Have you ever dealt with the purchasing department at a large corporation? Hint: They really don't care about saving engineering hours.

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#44

Post by Gys »

sdrzn wrote: post #28
elcritch wrote: post #23

Not sure hiding/removing the project build or manifest is the best approach. Documentation seems like it’d be a better target. Use the software free full OSS but non-simple or extensive documentation for a subscription fee. It seems a number of OSS devs make money by writing books, and it could incentivize good documentation as well. There’s been many times I’d not want to pay for a license but would’ve begged for in…

Great idea and you can do this with GitRoyalty! You can hide any files you want behind the subscription–it doesn't have to be the manifest or build script. So in your case you can hide a docs.md file.

Accessing the documentation is more like a one time thing. I could always copy it somewhere else for later reference.

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#45

Post by rmc »

imposterr wrote: post #21
sdrzn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitRoyalty just hosts a git remote repository that you pay to get access to. NPM and almost all other package managers support installing from git URLs, and too many people rely on this functionality for it to ever be removed.

How do you stop someone from forking the project on GitHub, adding in a manifest, and then pushing to a package repository like npm? Is there a risk of popular projects that are distributed through GitRoyalty having unofficial versions with malicious code on the package repositories, similar to now typo-squatting works?

social pressure?

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#46

Post by rmc »

nine_k wrote: post #8

I had to check that today is not April 1st. If you badly want my money, sell me your product honestly, under a commercial license, and don't call it OSS. There are other "source available" licenses. If you want a donation from me, show your tipping jar / patreon / whatever else link. If you want your software be OSS, well, don't conceal the source. I suppose that a project of any significance that would use such a "p…

FLOSS doesn't require that you give your software away for free. It's totally fine to require payment.

(Now, the traditional 'sell copies of software' doesn't work so well for FLOSS, since every customer of yours can start selling it themselves, or give it away to anyone, which is why this approach is rare. But it's still FLOSS)

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#47

Post by ryukafalz »

From their ToS:

>In addition, Content found on or through this Service are the property of GitRoyalty, Inc. or used with permission. You may not distribute, modify, transmit, reuse, download, repost, copy, or use said Content, whether in whole or in part, for commercial purposes or for personal gain, without express advance written permission from us.

So anything obtained through this service is proprietary now. After reading this, it's clear why this doesn't work with the GPL.

If software obtained through GitRoyalty remained free software, I honestly might have been fine with it. But as is, no thanks.

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#48

Post by sdrzn »

ryukafalz wrote: post #47

From their ToS: >In addition, Content found on or through this Service are the property of GitRoyalty, Inc. or used with permission. You may not distribute, modify, transmit, reuse, download, repost, copy, or use said Content, whether in whole or in part, for commercial purposes or for personal gain, without express advance written permission from us. So anything obtained through this service is proprietary now. Afte…

You're absolutely right this should not be a clause in our ToS. I've just removed it and notified all repository owners of the change.

There was a misunderstanding of what 'Content' entailed on my part–it was meant to encompass anything without a license already attached in order to grant us rights to distribute unlicensed software. Our ToS should have been more specific, I apologize.

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#49

Post by rgbrgb »

sdrzn wrote: post #41
rgbrgb wrote: post #31

> GitRoyalty looks at a repository's contributions history and determines each contributor's relative work on the project based on various factors. Even if a developer only made a contribution that we've deemed to be worth 0.001% of the total contributions, that user will get 0.001% of all subscription proceeds. Project maintainers cannot control who gets what share, so developers can rest assured knowing that they w…

We measure contributions using a project's git history (i.e. # of commits) every time a release is published. I realize this is terrible and it's my #1 priority to improve this after we get some engineers on board. I'm currently talking to the owner of SourceCred to see how we can use their protocol: https://sourcecred.io/

ah . sourcecred looks cool, but the current solution sounds a bit like counting klocs.

congrats on the launch though, i'm really excited about incentivized cooperation without dedicated managers!

Re: GitRoyalty – First OSS Paywall

#50

Post by antpls »

Gys wrote: post #44
sdrzn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great idea and you can do this with GitRoyalty! You can hide any files you want behind the subscription–it doesn't have to be the manifest or build script. So in your case you can hide a docs.md file.

Accessing the documentation is more like a one time thing. I could always copy it somewhere else for later reference.

Like any file that you would hide with GitRoyalty, you could always share the full repo once you have access to it (probably illegally)

I believe documentation would become outdated sooner than build scripts with new releases, and would require effort to maintain (more than build scripts), which would better justify to pay.

Anyway, the idea of GitRoyalty seems not to make technically impossible to share the payed content, but rather to propose a way for honest people to remunerate honest developers and library maintainers.

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