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GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

blog.greg.technology

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Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#151

Post by kiba »

dgacmu wrote: post #46
grayhatter wrote: post #11

> it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing it for their own enjoyments. I am. I enjoy making things, and it's even better when others enjoy them. Just because you have expectations that you should be compensated for everything line of code you write; doesn't make it ubiquitous, nor should your expectations be considered the default. I…

I agree with you, but I do think we have a bit of a problem in which an open source creator makes something and then suddenly finds themselves accidentally having created a load-bearing component that is not only used by a lot of people and companies, but where people are demanding that bugs be fixed, etc., and we lack great models for helping transition it from "I do this for fun, might fix the bug if I ever feel li…

Public funding from governments would make sense. Open source software are effectively public good.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#152

Post by maxdo »

I think we sometimes treat "open" as automatically good without examining the tradeoffs.

You can easily sponsor Iran or Russia killing real people by doing such things.

Powerful tools, once released, can be used by anyone, including those with harmful intentions. And let's be honest: much of open source functions as a way for large companies to cut costs on essential but non-differentiating infrastructure. That's fine, but it complicates the idealistic narrative.

With generative AI, these questions matter more. Maybe it's time to revisit what open source should mean in this context.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#155

Post by marginalia_nu »

Been living off grants and donations for a few years now. My 2c is you probably don't need to invent a new platform to fund open source development. There are tons of platforms and systems in place already. That's not's what's missing. You need to get open source developers that want to get paid for their work to spell that fact out to their users and supporters.

Yes this is uncomfortable, but the simple fact is that if you don't tell anyone you want to get paid, you probably won't be given any money. Standard seem to be maybe there's a donation link somewhere on the site, buried 4 clicks deep in the FAQ, more often than not something like a paypal.

The reality is that if you do ask for money, surprisingly often people will straight up just give you money if they like what you're doing. Like people get paid real money for screaming at video games on Twitch, meanwhile you're building something people find useful. Of course you can make money off it. But you gotta ask for it, the game screamers on twitch sure do. That's the secret. Sure there's a scale from asking for donations and doing a Jimmy Wales and putting a your face on a banner begging for donations; and while going full jimbo is arguably taking it too far, it's also probably closer to the optimum than you'd imagine.

If you have corporate users, word on the street is you can also just reach out to them and ask for sponsorship. They're not guaranteed to say yes, but they're extremely unlike to sponsor you spontaneously.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#156

Post by _ache_ »

ericmay wrote: post #130
gregsadetsky wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My apologies - you’re correct. I didn’t mean that as “you should never expect anyone to have contributed code for free/the pleasure/for the puzzle solving aspect”. I do it all of the time. I meant - it’s unfair to consider that because this labor “fell from the sky”, you should just accept it - and as others have said, in the case of projects that become popular, that the burden should just automatically fall on the…

Instead of forcing Github to force users to pay a fee to support OSS, why don't OSS maintainers just charge for their work? Then that requires 0 coercion and those who feel undervalued for their work/projects can be compensated as the market dictates the value of their projects. There are a lot of dumb and even disagreeable open source projects. Why should someone be de facto forced to fund those projects? It's like…

You just read the title don't you?

> GitHub should charge every org $1 more per user per month

It's about org, not about every single person using Github.

The idea is basic and should have been written in the article. When a contributor release FOSS, it's fair to compensate if you business rely on it.

A contributor wouldn't like a free for personal use either. The ideal license is the Unreal one free for « Individuals and small businesses (with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue) »

> you're kind of dumb for giving it away and that's your fault.

It happens so many times and no just about software (but then it's not a million dollar company). It's not that you are dump, you done the right thing and some companies with money/power/opportunity to capitalize on it, did it and didn't compensate you fairly.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#157

Post by GorbachevyChase »

tracker1 wrote: post #105

So you sprinkle a few tens of thousands of dollars across a few hundreds of thousands of developers every month? Thanks for the $0.48 Github. s/thousands/millions/ the point stands that there are way more devs than commercial accounts, and even then, even if it's 1:1, you get $1?

Have a glass of water on us, friend!

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#158

Post by bsnnkv »

rmah wrote: post #150
bsnnkv wrote: post #82

Not a great take. Corporations who use and benefit from software should be made to pay for their use of that software, but they don't want to, which is why they'll happily spend money promoting the use of corporate-friendly and maximally exploitable open source licensing among the passionate individuals who maintain the lions share of their dependency tree. https://lgug2z.com/articles/on-evils-in-software-licensing/

Giving something away for free and then whining that people use it for free confuses me. I mean, what did you think would happen?

> Giving something away for free and then whining that people use it for free confuses me. I mean, what did you think would happen?

Such a weird thing to reply to someone who very publicly disavows the use of open source licensing for individuals

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