11–20 of 139 posts
Won't this just encourage maintainers to sit on issues... just waiting for the bounty to increase? They might even purposefully introduce painful but simple bugs just to push consumers to pay to have them fixed.
This may sound crazy, but I think the right model for open source funding is charging for updates. Red Hat has actually shown us the way. Developed world Ubuntu/Red Hat/SUSE users should pay $~20/year for access to all releases, $5 of which goes to the distro, $5 which goes to the base system/core utilities, and the rest should fund your particular OSS apps/frameworks/supporting apps running above the base layer. Yes…
I have 0 doubt in my mind that it could cost 1 dollar and most people wouldn't pay.
"People won't pay" is absolutely fine for users who simply need a barebones systems and never need a priority ticket re a Postgres issue, or a priority update.
I actually think its fine to create two classes of users -- those that pay a modest amount, and those that pay nothing. Perhaps the lesson is those that pay a modest amount get modestly more service, and those that pay nothing should have no expectations. Perhaps those persons who contribute to OSS or develop karma within OSS would receive a gratis memberships?
This may sound crazy, but I think the right model for open source funding is charging for updates. Red Hat has actually shown us the way. Developed world Ubuntu/Red Hat/SUSE users should pay $~20/year for access to all releases, $5 of which goes to the distro, $5 which goes to the base system/core utilities, and the rest should fund your particular OSS apps/frameworks/supporting apps running above the base layer. Yes…
https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/architecture-decision...
(I'm on the fence about the value of Polar for this kind of issue... see what you think)
Won't this just encourage maintainers to sit on issues... just waiting for the bounty to increase? They might even purposefully introduce painful but simple bugs just to push consumers to pay to have them fixed.
I'm your target and I don't exactly understand what you're writing. For example, I want to donate $100 toward Rust Rocket version 1.0.0. Can Polar help with this goal? If so, what's my next step?
You can pledge behind any open source issue that's on GitHub today. Just simply need to replace github.com in the URL with polar.sh or goto polar.new and drop the link.
We'll then reach out to the maintainers if they're not on the platform. Will soon ship so that an automatic comment is made (once). We don't want to create spam in the issues.
I have had situations where i wanted to use an open source tool that was somewhat obscure and i would have paid $300-400 an hour for consulting from the maintainers/creators and could not get in contact with anyone. So if you create open source software i recommend posting a link to a consulting business with some minimum price that you are satisfied with, even if its something like $1k an hour.
- registering a business entity costs money and (especially in dysfunctional bureaucratic hellholes) time
- you can be held completely liable for whatever you offer if you don't take excruciating care with the legalese fineprint
- it's a complete nightmare on tax filings (e.g. in Germany you can't have your taxes handled by Lohnsteuervereine if you have a side business, i.e. income from sources other than regular employment)
- you often lose anonymity because PayPal discloses your real name to everyone knowing your email address, or SEPA payments requiring your name
- people can and will fuck with you just because they can or because they hate you for whatever reason. Anything from mass reporting you to Paypal over death threats to outright SWATting you.
Edit: to expand -- these initiatives seem to always be cooked up by people who do not write software, don't fix bugs, don't hire software developers. They never work because adding a feature to a product or fixing a bug isn't a commodity item that you can just buy with a click and spread cost between many parties.
The result is that most of the prospective purchasers end up having an easier path to get what they want, which is to fork and fix themselves (usually via in-house devs already on staff).
If anyone wants to see Polar in action on a GitHub issue, I'm experimenting with Polar on my Architecture Decision Record repo: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/architecture-decision... (I'm on the fence about the value of Polar for this kind of issue... see what you think)
Won't this just encourage maintainers to sit on issues... just waiting for the bounty to increase? They might even purposefully introduce painful but simple bugs just to push consumers to pay to have them fixed.