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GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

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

#31

Post by Emigre_ »

ajgrover wrote: post #15
Emigre_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with you on that, sure. I think being gratis overlaps with being free… I think?… Having free access to the software means being able to use it and distribute it. I guess profit comes most of the times from support or distribution of the software, or the binaries. I have read this post [1] on the topic referenced in the Wikipedia article I mentioned, I thought it was interesting.

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2016-...

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

#33

Post by pie_flavor »

nequo wrote: post #24
pie_flavor wrote: post #20

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 suppor…

> if you open an issue or pull request and you're not on the OpenCollective, it's usually immediately closed, by policy. Maybe I’m misunderstanding but does this mean that you cannot submit a bug report unless you donate to them?

In practice, excepting for major issues. In principle you are supposed to donate in order to use it at all, and the issue tracker is simply where they check to make sure.

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

#34

Post by nequo »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #23

Classic mistake. FOSS is not about making money. In fact, it's antithetical to making money. Value extraction is the province of closed source/user hostile software, by nature.

A lot of people and companies are making money from Linux, including Linus Torvalds and many kernel hackers. Linux is GPL’d. I think it is hard to make the claim that making money is antithetical to FOSS.

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

#35

Post by jcparkyn »

pie_flavor wrote: post #20

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 suppor…

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Sure, the maintainers have no obligation to review and merge other people's PRs. But when this also applies to genuine high-quality community contributions, I feel like there must be some negative side effects.

I'm sure this model works well for an established project like Fody that's already quite highly polished, but I'd be pretty sad if all (or even a significant subset) of open source adopted this model.

I'd definitely be interested to hear any counter-arguments to this though. Are there any avenues for individuals to contribute for free, if they aren't using it for profit?

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

#36

Post by brightball »

jcparkyn wrote: post #35
pie_flavor wrote: post #20

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 suppor…

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Sure, the maintainers have no obligation to review and merge other people's PRs. But when this also applies to genuine high-quality community contributions, I feel like there must be some negative side effects. I'm sure this model works well for an established project like Fody that's already quite highly polished, but I'd be pretty sad if all (or even a significant subset) of…

I like it personally. Free to use, pay for support.

The distribution of something already made is free. Supporting, understanding your issue, developing a fix and releasing it…all of that takes a real person’s time.

As a contractor, you learn very quickly that people will ask for anything if it doesn’t cost them anything. There are a lot of people happy to take advantage of you if you let them.

I like seeing a good model to get OSS devs paid.

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

#37

Post by robocat »

jcparkyn wrote: post #35
pie_flavor wrote: post #20

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 suppor…

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Sure, the maintainers have no obligation to review and merge other people's PRs. But when this also applies to genuine high-quality community contributions, I feel like there must be some negative side effects. I'm sure this model works well for an established project like Fody that's already quite highly polished, but I'd be pretty sad if all (or even a significant subset) of…

From the link:

  But it is MIT, can't I use it for free?

  Yes all projects are under MIT so the community backing honesty system can be ignored and Fody used for free.

  Do I need to be a Patron to contribute a Pull Request?

  Yes. Users must be a Patron to be a user of Fody. Contributing Pull Requests does not cancel this out. It may seem unfair to expect people both contribute PRs and also financially back this project. However it is important to remember the effort in reviewing and merging a PR is often similar to that of creating the PR. Also the project maintainers are committing to support that added code (feature or bug fix) for the life of the project. Pull Requests from non-Patrons, that are of significant value to the larger Fody user base, may justify the effort in reviewing and merging.

  Do I need to be a Patron to raise an issue?

  Yes. Users must be a Patron to be a user of Fody. As such when raising an issue (question, bug or feature request) and not a Patron, the issue may not be actively triaged, and eventually closed as stale. Issues from non-Patrons, that are bugs and are highly likely to affect the larger Fody user base, may justify the effort and be handled.
Also, the minimum amount is $3/Month: which surely isn’t near enough to pay for their time! Many developers can afford $36 a year, and if not, a developer can still use it for free (BSD licence) and maintain their own branch. https://opencollective.com/fody/contribute/patron-3059/check...

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

#38

Post by xwdv »

asicsp wrote: post #29

I put up a donation link (before GitHub sponsors was introduced) on a repo that had 5k+ stars. Got just one recurring donation (about $1 a month). This wasn't a s/w tool though (tutorials for CLI text processing). Later, I switched to creating books out of such tutorials. I gave them away for free during launch weeks (but readers could still pay if they wish) and this model worked so well that selling programming ebo…

Is the income more than what you would get in a normal software engineering job?

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

#39

Post by slavik81 »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #30
nequo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you open an issue or pull request and you're not on the OpenCollective, it's usually immediately closed, by policy. Maybe I’m misunderstanding but does this mean that you cannot submit a bug report unless you donate to them?

My reading of it on their page was that they are free to ignore your bug report unless you donate to them. You didn't pay? Well, that's just, like, your bug report, man... Essentially it boils down to: you cared enough to submit a bug report? Then you should also care enough to donate.

> they are free to ignore your bug report

That is true of any open source project.

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

#40

Post by xwdv »

Imagine for a moment though, if GitHub stars could pay your rent.

Imagine a corporation spends money on an experiment where they purchase some luxury units of a fancy apartment building, and then rent was decided based on GitHub stars. You must collect a certain number of GitHub stars each month to satisfy rent or you get evicted. I wonder what kind of projects would come out of this.

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