What happens when an open source-project gets funding? How is the money distributed inside the project, among different contributors?
The same way it currently does, if they opt into GitHub sponsorship or another sponsorship system.
A new funding model for open source software
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Re: A new funding model for open source software
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like that idea too. Though it definitely may lead to some troubling scenarios where bad actors try to get their modules listed as dependencies of popular projects to piggyback on their downloads. You could alleviate this by not funding dependencies of dependencies but there are some low-level tools (say, CSS autoprefixers) that are rarely used in their "raw form". It's tricky.
I see this being a major issue in the NPM ecosystem, lol. One thing is you could make transitive dependencies strictly opt-in, or have a decay function.
Or each package's maintainer can set a proportion for each of its dependencies, so that every time a donation is received, a certain amount of that donation is automatically transferred to those dependencies according to the proportion set by the maintainer. The donation sent to those dependencies is then propagated to their dependencies automatically according to ratios set by the maintainers of those dependencies.
Re: A new funding model for open source software
#63I think that this essay is fundamentally brilliant, but doesn't come out and yell the self-evident truth: the ONLY way this ever takes off is if Github does it.
And man, do I ever hope that they do.
There's no other entity in the ecosystem that even approaches the role Github plays, with all due respect to Gitlab and the rest of the also-rans. It'd be wonderful if they did the same thing, but in the end, they are going to be the contrarian 2%.
It's important to remember that GH sponsors isn't even out of beta, yet - you still have to apply and make sure that all of your tax docs are in order.
One small proposal I'd make is that I suggest Sponsors and Pool could exist happily in parallel. I believe that there's a meaningful difference between being the patron of a developer and feeling like you're backing a creator with feelings and a story and a family... and wanting to be a good citizen that has an approved list of projects that I benefit from and want to support.
I can sponsor Matz, get his updates and feel good about knowing I am counted as a supporter AND set aside $$$ per month to contribute to all of the tools I use in my projects simply because it's the right thing to do and I want those projects to exist for the long term. They are completely different initiatives. Patreon vs Humble Bundle, if you will.
Perhaps most critically, Github could keep absorbing the cost of processing payments to sponsored developers but also announce that they plan to hold back 3% of your monthly pool amount to cover CC processing fees. I think most people would be more than fine with this.
But if Github isn't on board, this is all just speculative fiction. Please, if you work at Github, make this happen.
Re: A new funding model for open source software
#64[deleted]
Re: A new funding model for open source software
#65Everyone thinks they deserve a dollar and can never imagine that the relative value of their code is effectively zero no matter how much it solves a particular problem. >Big projects — operating systems, frameworks, CMSs, or fully self-hostable applications — are in a privileged position to extract more value from their users, especially corporate ones Big projects aren't privileged to extract more value. They're pri…
You seem to be reacting against the term "privileged" in a way I didn't intend. I don't mean to say that they have some unfair advantage. They just have a more foundational role in the tech stack of the products built on top of them, so companies have a bigger incentive to keep the wheels turning.
I'd love to learn more specific details about your leveraging strategy. Keep in mind even someone like Torvalds only serves at the pleasure of big corporations. Let's keep gift economies in alignment with public interest folks. It's difficult to imagine a competent developer needing to squeeze people, for cash money to pay rent, considering how much coders get paid.
Re: A new funding model for open source software
#66An odd side effect of trying to monetise an open source project is another repo popping up just outright copying it with no attribution. Amazingly, some people expect that if you make an open source project on GitHub therefore every single feature related to that project should also be open sourced. It's very disheartening.
Re: A new funding model for open source software
#67I am glad people are thinking more about Open Source software and how to fund them. I think among other problems, Open Source have 2 main root issues when it comes to funding.
1. Silver bullet is a myth. The OSS users are forced to use one medium for funding the software. Maybe Patreon, Github Sponsors, Paypal, Librepay and more not than one or all of them in most cases. Using more funding method have their own challenges, but it depending on the prject should definitely be more than one.
I take the inspiration from POSSE concept from Indieweb (https://indieweb.org/POSSE). It talks about publishing your content (blogs etc) once and distributing through various channels like FB, Twitter, HN etc instead of forcing people to your website which is just one medium. We should give the same level or freedom and choices to people who want to donate to your OSS project so that they will use a method which they are already using. Reducing the friction. And Flattr or the new proposed will only be one of the ways or should be one of the ways.
2. A lot of people don't know the difference between FOSS/FLOSS and OSS. Especially people after the Millennials (i think). To them, it is a FREE material. It is not! We should make awareness about what free software movement was.
Before you jump the gun here, please read the GNU page about selling free software - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.
Open Source forever have been about "free as in freedom" not about "free as in beer". The whole reason for it to start was because the software was not allowed to be redistributed and modified among other things. There definitely was freeware and other software models which were FREE even before Open Source was coined. Stop using FOSS/FLOSS everywhere if you don't mean it and make awareness about the differences about FOSS/FLOSS and OSS.
The effort and time of the maintainer should be rewarded with whatever he/she/they want, either recognition or money. We should make it a new normal. Making money from OSS should be OK. Being rich (if you can that is :D )from OSS should be OK.
Hope funding in OSS gets more momentum!
Re: A new funding model for open source software
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be reacting against the term "privileged" in a way I didn't intend. I don't mean to say that they have some unfair advantage. They just have a more foundational role in the tech stack of the products built on top of them, so companies have a bigger incentive to keep the wheels turning.
I'd love to learn more specific details about your leveraging strategy. Keep in mind even someone like Torvalds only serves at the pleasure of big corporations. Let's keep gift economies in alignment with public interest folks. It's difficult to imagine a competent developer needing to squeeze people, for cash money to pay rent, considering how much coders get paid.
Two-thirds of projects on GitHub have 1-2 maintainers, as of 2015.[1][2] I’m sure many of those people are in other areas or occupations, or in other countries, where these high-paying jobs may not exist. Some people simply don’t wish to work at a company, and those folks still may produce value to those other than themselves.
Let’s not appeal to productivity too hard; learners and those of lesser coding capability also create value in the form of skills and knowledge.
It’s hard to identify and quantify those whose contributions helped most, but I feel all contributions are worthwhile. Not all code may be tip-worthy, but I don’t feel chagrin toward those collecting, however they do so.
> Only three projects—less than 3 percent of the study’s sample—had more than 50 contributors.[1]
[1] https://increment.com/open-source/the-rise-of-few-maintainer...
Re: A new funding model for open source software
#69FYI I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to put a recurring amount of money into open source software. It isn't that it's hard. I just don't want to do it.
Re: A new funding model for open source software
#70I like the idea but instead of pools going arbitrarily every which way or to the discretion of the donator, it should be automatically applied across that open source project's dependencies as well. If I am open source software A, and I make ample use of open source software B within my project, your pool donation should automatically apply some to B, relative to it's usage in the project.