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A new funding model for open source software

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Re: A new funding model for open source software

#71

Post by colinmcd »

peteforde wrote: post #63

I 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 goi…

Author here - 100% agree on all fronts! I was dancing around this conclusion but it really does need to be GitHub.

And I agree people would be fine paying their own fees if it came to that. Also, in that case, if someone is donating a non-trivial amount, they're incentivized to fund their wallet with a cheaper payment method like an ACH transfer.

Re: A new funding model for open source software

#72

Post by matsemann »

dnautics wrote: post #39

What would be fantastic is if this service scaled contributions across projects whose code you are actually using in your repos. Minor nitpick: I don't think a badge is really considered virtue signaling because you've already put your wallet where your mouth is.

It has to be scaled correctly somehow. For instance some big project uses isEven, which depends on isOdd, which depends on isNumber. All different npm modules. There are some people notoriously making these really small functions, and then creating a huge web by depending on other modules by the same author. Then just hoping one of them will get traction.

Re: A new funding model for open source software

#73

Post by colinmcd »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #70

I 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.

Agreed this would be nice, though this layer of complexity introduces a bigger attack surface for bad actors. They could try to get their modules listed as dependencies of popular projects to piggyback on their downloads. On the flip side there are some low-level tools (say, the `stylis` CSS autoprefixer) that are almost never used in their "raw form" but are the backbone of several massively popular projects. It's a tricky balance.

Re: A new funding model for open source software

#74

Post by colinmcd »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #60

What happens when an open source-project gets funding? How is the money distributed inside the project, among different contributors?

I added a footnote to address this. I admit I hadn't thought this bit out fully.

Basically there needs to be a mechanism by which the set of maintainers divvy up the money.

A pattern I expect will arise (actually it probably already exists): there can be different "contribution tiers", a fixed percentage of the proceeds go to each tier, for each tier the allocated percentage is be distributed evenly.

Re: A new funding model for open source software

#75

Post by merlinsbrain »

wolco wrote: post #24
colinmcd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the projects I had in mind when writing this post is the "color" module on npm. It's a fantastic utility for reading in colors in different formats (hex, decimal, CMYK), applying transformations, and getting a modified color back (in your format of choice). For all intents and purposes this module is "done". It's extremely mature and has already implemented everything it set out to do. It has 3.3k stars and 8M…

But if there is no active development why would these projects need additional funding? Is it just a thank you gift?

At that point it’s just a license to use.

MIT isn’t going to fly anymore if the intention is to make money off of that.

Re: A new funding model for open source software

#76

Post by inputmice »

Two issues here:

Models like these existed. Flattr and Liberapay. The latter had to switch away from the pooling model because turns out when you do the pooling you essentially become a bank and that’s difficult to do legally.

Those models only work if users actually visit your website or your Github. I’m developing an app targeted at end users and I bet 90% of them have never been on Github or even know what that is.

Re: A new funding model for open source software

#80

Post by iamleppert »

If the kind of open source you mention were actually valuable, there would be a market for it. You make a common mistake many people make when trying to calculate value: it has nothing to do with how much something is used, it has to do with the incentives for those creating it.

People do not casually write open source to make money (unless sponsored by a company). They do it for the recognition and for vanity, and I’d argue that popular open source software is not scarce as evidenced by how much there is of it. People will in fact rush to fill the void of open source such that the popular open source is more of a fluke than anything: if it wasn’t the react-router it would be something other nearly identical, where there are plenty of people waiting in line behind that.

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