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GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

kitze.io

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Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#11

Post by Emigre_ »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #6

When talking about GitHub stars and money, it's important to understand the other side of the equation. A useful free and open source project garners GitHub stars and general recognition because it is useful, but also because it is free. The stars are the social compensation in this case. The free nature of the software is essential to that relationship.

The ‘free’ part in ‘free and open source software’ refers to the freedom given to the user of the software to read, modify and distribute the software that is provided to them [1]. It refers to that freedom and is independently of the price that obtaining the software has. Free doesn’t mean it has no price, creators can profit from it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#13

Post by therealdrag0 »

paulpauper wrote: post #8

And then on the other extreme you have something like substack in, which writing political rants easily earns $50-100k/year in recurring donations even if you are not that famous. It's hard to get people to donate open source projects.

Easily? That’d be a eeally high ranking substack.

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#15

Post by ajgrover »

Emigre_ wrote: post #11
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #6

When talking about GitHub stars and money, it's important to understand the other side of the equation. A useful free and open source project garners GitHub stars and general recognition because it is useful, but also because it is free. The stars are the social compensation in this case. The free nature of the software is essential to that relationship.

The ‘free’ part in ‘free and open source software’ refers to the freedom given to the user of the software to read, modify and distribute the software that is provided to them [1]. It refers to that freedom and is independently of the price that obtaining the software has. Free doesn’t mean it has no price, creators can profit from it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

In the philosophical sense, sure. But given the context of this conversation, the fact that you don’t have to pay to use GitHub projects is absolutely relevant to their success.

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#18

Post by nnoitra »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #6

When talking about GitHub stars and money, it's important to understand the other side of the equation. A useful free and open source project garners GitHub stars and general recognition because it is useful, but also because it is free. The stars are the social compensation in this case. The free nature of the software is essential to that relationship.

No post body was provided.

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#20

Post by pie_flavor »

I continue to think that the best model is the one adopted by Fody.NET[0]. It's open-source, on GitHub, under the MIT license, developed in the open, and with a voluntary OpenCollective. And if you open an issue or pull request and you're not on the OpenCollective, it's usually immediately closed, by policy. The result is a system that is paid enough to be excellent, excellent enough for most users not to need support, and non-bogged enough for paying users to get excellent support.

The best part is when corporations get involved. A company will absolutely get something for free if it can, but if it has to pay, it'll pay a lot more than the absolute minimum, for PR reasons.

[0]: https://github.com/Fody/Home/blob/master/pages/licensing-pat...

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