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FOSS donations which reach the roots

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Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#11

Post by rndhouse »

WJW wrote: post #3

Machine readable definitions are nice, but I think the real problem is not that people/companies can't figure how to send money to the developer(s) of some piece of FOSS software. Rather, the problem seems to be that 1. many people and companies would prefer not to pay at all and 2. the maintainers are surely not the only ones contributing; how to pay all the rest? I wonder how we could actually "reach" the roots of…

> 2. the maintainers are surely not the only ones contributing; how to pay all the rest?

This is certainly a problem that I would like to address. It's important to reward/fund contributors as much as maintainers.

Donation schemes defined in code are as modifiable as any other code in the software. I would like to build a bot which will open a pull request on behalf of contributors and propose a share of donations.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#12

Post by sokoloff »

mfer wrote: post #4

One of the issues with this is the dynamic of donations. People keep talking about how public corps don't give out donations to developers for projects they use. I'm beginning to think it's not something they can do and I've been poking at tax and legal code on it. There's likely a reason they don't do it. I would suggest people try to get funded through methods that functionally work through the big corps/public com…

What makes you think that corporations can’t pay developers of open source code? You may not be able to characterize it as a “donation” but I don’t think you have to in order to get the money to flow.

Corporations make all kinds of “ordinary and necessary” business expenditures. (See IRS publication 535.)

Note that “necessary” in that phrase is more like “helpful” than “absolutely required and unavoidable” in definition.

If the dev wants the money and the company wants to pay it, I’m sure they can make it happen.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#13

Post by diogenesjunior »

rndhouse wrote: post #11
WJW wrote: post #3

Machine readable definitions are nice, but I think the real problem is not that people/companies can't figure how to send money to the developer(s) of some piece of FOSS software. Rather, the problem seems to be that 1. many people and companies would prefer not to pay at all and 2. the maintainers are surely not the only ones contributing; how to pay all the rest? I wonder how we could actually "reach" the roots of…

> 2. the maintainers are surely not the only ones contributing; how to pay all the rest? This is certainly a problem that I would like to address. It's important to reward/fund contributors as much as maintainers. Donation schemes defined in code are as modifiable as any other code in the software. I would like to build a bot which will open a pull request on behalf of contributors and propose a share of donations.

it is much harder though.

i contribute weekly to one project, but i am not a maintainer. i could reason that my contributions to this project are worth money. being paid every month would be reasonable.

in another project, i only contribute when i run into a bug or need something added. this happens maybe 3-4 times a year. i could reason that these bug fixes and feature additions are worth money, but i would be out of line to say that a monthly amount of money is reasonable. do one time donations or 1-2x a year donations make sense?

i also have various projects where i've contributed 1-10 lines of code once and never come back. i don't deserve to be paid for those, in my opinion.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#14

Post by buro9 »

A possible advantage of a machine readable definition of who should be paid within a repo is to then integrate it with how to spread payment across multiple repos.

Most large companies run a licence check across all dependencies, i.e. things like Veracode SCA License reports already list all third party dependencies and lookup licence information... if such tools were adapted (or a new tool created) that allowed you to use that as a billing mechanism it would make sense that just as you can programmatically lookup licences you could lookup who to pay.

Going further... it could encourage dual-licensing by default with the OSS licence being viral unless paid for... so on the report that says you're at risk because it's GPL it could detect that payment can be made to obtain the code under some other terms.

The basics of the proposal aren't bad... it proposes that there is a machine readable definition of how payments should be shared and made... however there's still a lot that needs to be done to make that useful, the upside is that some of that becomes more obvious.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#15

Post by rndhouse »

mfer wrote: post #10
rndhouse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenFare does open the door to an alternative non-FOSS strategy for funding for small software libraries. Commercial payment plans defined in code can be managed programmatically. Which means that small payment obligations can be managed at scale. Consequently, trivial software dependencies could raise meaningful capital from micropayments. See: https://github.com/openfare/openfare#micropriced-commercial-... However,…

> However, software for a fee is not FOSS. Now this is moving into differences between Free and open source software. You can have open source software which has some form of support and specialized feature development for a fee. Many many many do this through companies today. They do it as a company rather than an individual due to the way you need to work to get paid by public companies. One issue I keep seeing is…

Yes, I agree. There are two different audiences: public software developers and public companies. And they both need different interfaces. I love it.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#16

Post by mcherm »

This seems to be solving the wrong problem.

As far as I can tell, the problem is not that we lack good mechanisms for making payments to open source developers and deciding how to allocate such funds. The problem is that cash donations are rare and small. A small handful of developers are supported very richly by being paid full-time tech employee salaries to work on open source; a handful of groups like the Python Software Foundation occasionally get together enough donations to fund a developer or small team part time; and aside from that there just isn't much money contributed.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#17

Post by WJW »

diogenesjunior wrote: post #13
rndhouse wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. the maintainers are surely not the only ones contributing; how to pay all the rest? This is certainly a problem that I would like to address. It's important to reward/fund contributors as much as maintainers. Donation schemes defined in code are as modifiable as any other code in the software. I would like to build a bot which will open a pull request on behalf of contributors and propose a share of donations.

it is much harder though. i contribute weekly to one project, but i am not a maintainer. i could reason that my contributions to this project are worth money. being paid every month would be reasonable. in another project, i only contribute when i run into a bug or need something added. this happens maybe 3-4 times a year. i could reason that these bug fixes and feature additions are worth money, but i would be out o…

Should you continue to be paid for software as long as it provides value, even if you no longer work on it? That is a question that will spark ideological debates for centuries.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#18

Post by mfer »

hinkley wrote: post #9
mfer wrote: post #4

One of the issues with this is the dynamic of donations. People keep talking about how public corps don't give out donations to developers for projects they use. I'm beginning to think it's not something they can do and I've been poking at tax and legal code on it. There's likely a reason they don't do it. I would suggest people try to get funded through methods that functionally work through the big corps/public com…

A lot of big companies do donation matching, and as near as I can glean this is a political thing. If I as a C suite decide to donate to the NRA, I may discover an angry mob outside my office who inform me that the majority of the company is anti-NRA, or planned parenthood, or Susan G Koman or or or. If I earmark a half a million for matching, then my employees 'vote' on where that money goes, and it's not my 'fault'…

There is a difference in donation to a legally registered non-profit and an individual. I was reading some us legal code for public companies and it covers stuff like this. Each of the examples here is for a legally registered non-profit.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#19

Post by rndhouse »

diogenesjunior wrote: post #13
rndhouse wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. the maintainers are surely not the only ones contributing; how to pay all the rest? This is certainly a problem that I would like to address. It's important to reward/fund contributors as much as maintainers. Donation schemes defined in code are as modifiable as any other code in the software. I would like to build a bot which will open a pull request on behalf of contributors and propose a share of donations.

it is much harder though. i contribute weekly to one project, but i am not a maintainer. i could reason that my contributions to this project are worth money. being paid every month would be reasonable. in another project, i only contribute when i run into a bug or need something added. this happens maybe 3-4 times a year. i could reason that these bug fixes and feature additions are worth money, but i would be out o…

There is so much variety in how people contribute and what they hope to get out of it in a perfect world!

My goal is to put the mechanisms in place. And give people another means of self expression.

Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots

#20

Post by rndhouse »

mcherm wrote: post #16

This seems to be solving the wrong problem. As far as I can tell, the problem is not that we lack good mechanisms for making payments to open source developers and deciding how to allocate such funds. The problem is that cash donations are rare and small. A small handful of developers are supported very richly by being paid full-time tech employee salaries to work on open source; a handful of groups like the Python S…

I don't believe enough public software developers ask for or expect to receive donations.

The macro goal of OpenFare is to put in place a mechanism that developers can use to receive funds for developing public software. If there is a demand for donations, it needs to be brought to the surface. I don't think we're adequately over that hurdle.

Many content creators (youtubers, gamers, ...) get paid a lot. I think that there is room for public software engineers to ask for their share.

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