Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

floss.fund

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 112 posts

Re: FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

#21

Post by youssefabdelm »

* Fine print: For successful projects only, and up to $100K per year per project

——

From their FAQ:

> Currently, our focus is on supporting existing, widely used, and impactful projects to specifically contribute to their sustainability. Very new projects or projects with minimal usage are not considered for the time being.

> A project can apply for funding of up to $100,000 in one year. To keep the logistics and operational overhead of the fund reasonable, we accept requests in denominations of a minimum of $10,000 and multiples of $25,000 thereafter.

https://floss.fund/faq/

A better title: Floss/fund: Up to $100K/year for popular open source projects

Still admirable though...

Re: FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

#23

Post by traceroute66 »

patcon wrote: post #20
traceroute66 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's already 10x more simpler than the 20 page document some of these other orgs have you fill. Looking at you I guess somebody has to point out the obvious .... First, the process is probably simpler because the donation amounts are going to be smaller. If there's only $1M per year in the bank, I somehow don't see them giving out the sorts of large sums the others you mentioned do, e.g. OpenTechFund says it will…

From the post: > Put money where the mouth is—a minimum of $10,000 and up to $100,000 for a single recipient, totaling $1 million per year, which we will increase once we understand the dynamics of running the fund.

> once we understand the dynamics of running the fund

I suspect that phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting and would not be surprised if the length of the required paperwork increases in good time.

It is also worth reading the FAQ, it very much sounds like it remains the case that you are not going to escape 20 pages of paperwork, just that they are kicking the can down the road:

"If your application is accepted, our team will reach out to you for the necessary paperwork (such as tax residency documents required by Indian laws) before processing the funds. This generally involves back-and-forth communication over email and can take up to 4 weeks"

Re: FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

#24

Post by pritambarhate »

theragra wrote: post #2

Interesting that these kind of things are done by less known companies, not the big names. At least that's my (uninformed) impression.

Actually many big name companies do contribute a lot to open source. Few Examples:

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members https://openjsf.org/members https://www.python.org/psf/sponsors/

Re: FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

#25

Post by jph »

Great idea! I'm trying it now by adding the file `funding.json` to two of my FOSS projects. Feedback welcome. Donations welcome. :-)

1. Assertables is a Rust crate that provides assert macros for smarter testing: https://github.com/SixArm/assertables-rust-crate/blob/main/f...

2. BoldContacts is a mobile app that helps people who have disabilities: https://github.com/BoldContacts/boldcontacts-mobile-app-for-...

Results so far:

1. The JSON spec validation seems to be problematic. For example, I get an error message and there's no obvious way to handle it: "entity.webpageUrl.url and manifest URL host and paths do not match. Expected entity.webpageUrl.wellKnown for provenance check at https://linktr.ee/joelparkerhenderson/*/.well-known/funding-..."

2. An opportunity for improvement is for the JSON spec to favor each project having all it's own information in the JSON file i.e. orient the file toward the project, rather than toward a specific developer, and definitely not toward the naming convention of "/.well-known" subdirectory (which doesn't exist in many projects and has a history of glitches because it's a hidden dot directory).

IMHO success looks like making the file spec simpler, even it means skipping some of the manifest capabilities.

Re: FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

#27

Post by skeeter2020 »

Kovah wrote: post #8

I wonder what projects will end up receiving money from this fund. It's nice that more funds are available, but my best guess would be that these will go to projects which probably don't really need them anyway. From my experience, open source projects are either big and massively funded, able to pay their own developers a salary, or the projects end up in a void filled with burned-out maintainers whose only apprecia…

Doesn't this target exactly your second case? Successful projects in terms of usage and impact that can't be maintained by volunteers alone?

Re: FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

#28

Post by Semaphor »

traceroute66 wrote: post #23
patcon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the post: > Put money where the mouth is—a minimum of $10,000 and up to $100,000 for a single recipient, totaling $1 million per year, which we will increase once we understand the dynamics of running the fund.

> once we understand the dynamics of running the fund I suspect that phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting and would not be surprised if the length of the required paperwork increases in good time. It is also worth reading the FAQ, it very much sounds like it remains the case that you are not going to escape 20 pages of paperwork, just that they are kicking the can down the road: "If your application is accepted, ou…

> just that they are kicking the can down the road:

"Just" does a lot of heavy lifting here, considering that you only need all that paperwork if you are accepted ;)

Re: FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

#29

Post by amadeuspagel »

> Has the project received any funding in the past? Is it in dire need of support, or is it doing reasonably well?

I think it would be better if funding for open source was more based on what it's worth to you then what the project needs, just like paying for a commercial product. That would more strongly encourage valuable open source projects, risks, creativity, efficiency.

Re: FLOSS/fund for free and open source projects

#30

Post by traceroute66 »

Semaphor wrote: post #28
traceroute66 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once we understand the dynamics of running the fund I suspect that phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting and would not be surprised if the length of the required paperwork increases in good time. It is also worth reading the FAQ, it very much sounds like it remains the case that you are not going to escape 20 pages of paperwork, just that they are kicking the can down the road: "If your application is accepted, ou…

> just that they are kicking the can down the road: "Just" does a lot of heavy lifting here, considering that you only need all that paperwork if you are accepted ;)

> "Just" does a lot of heavy lifting here

No, it does not.

Might I invite you to consider the context of what I am saying ?

The OP here was boasting about "all you need" is a funding.json and none of the 20 pages of forms of the other organisations the OP chose to name and shame.

What I am saying is you're not going to escape those 20 pages. Do it now or do it later, you're still going to have to put in more effort than "just" a funding.json.

That is why I took issue with the OP naming and shaming the other organisations. It is both misleading and unfair on the other funders.

Post reply on HN