The examples shouldn't use real email addresses.
john@gmail.com and steve@gmail.com are surely in use.
"example.com", "example.net", and "example.org" are reserved domain names for a reason.
FOSS donations which reach the roots
21–30 of 50 posts
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#22Machine 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…
Another issue is that many popular FOSS libraries are pretty simple, and the only reason they're popular is because the creator was the first person to come up with a (decent) implementation.
For instance colors.js basically adds ANSI escape codes to strings which is someting you can do in 1LOC. How much compensation should the person who made colors.js get?
Some projects are bigger and actually require a decent amount of effort, but still are something most programmers could put together in less than a month. For instance core-js, a JavaScript standard library. Should the creator of core-js deserve more compensation? When do you draw the line on how much payment you get for being a dependency?
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#23I was thinking about FOSS funding earlier, and it's actually quite a complex problem. Depending on the application and the users, it may have a different audience with more or less money, more or less users, and different types of users and use cases.
And regardless of all that, what is the money going towards in each case? Does the developer (or developers) need a full-time salary, or part time, or just coffee money? Does the money get split between all contributors, or just ones making changes recently, or just the 'leaders'? Is it being saved up for infrastructure, dedicated staff, travel to conferences?
It seems we need a ton of different funding models, or a model that takes a ton of different variables into account.
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#24Micropayments just repeat the same old mistake of applying individualistic solutions to problems that can only be addressed collectively.
We need a trade organization like the RIAA that collects and distributes royalties from profitable business for developers.
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#25Micropayments just repeat the same old mistake of applying individualistic solutions to problems that can only be addressed collectively. We need a trade organization like the RIAA that collects and distributes royalties from profitable business for developers.
the two seem orthogonal issues.
a foss collective could act as the enforcer of the openfare license, sure.
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#26Machine 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…
Another issue is that many popular FOSS libraries are pretty simple, and the only reason they're popular is because the creator was the first person to come up with a (decent) implementation. For instance colors.js basically adds ANSI escape codes to strings which is someting you can do in 1LOC. How much compensation should the person who made colors.js get? Some projects are bigger and actually require a decent amou…
It's a tough problem.
But I think mechanisms for rating software packages already exist (GitHub stars for instance). And we have reasonable metrics for whether a software package is under active development/maintenance. If we combine those two factors in deciding which dependencies to fund we might be in a reasonable place.
Any metric can be gamed of course.
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#27Micropayments just repeat the same old mistake of applying individualistic solutions to problems that can only be addressed collectively. We need a trade organization like the RIAA that collects and distributes royalties from profitable business for developers.
That would turn open source into trick and bait fraud.
What about ... slapping license you are actually ok with. It is 100% fine to sell software for money, closed source, open source, free software and completely restricted.
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#28The examples shouldn't use real email addresses. john@gmail.com and steve@gmail.com are surely in use. "example.com", "example.net", and "example.org" are reserved domain names for a reason.
Will update, thanks.
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#29Micropayments just repeat the same old mistake of applying individualistic solutions to problems that can only be addressed collectively. We need a trade organization like the RIAA that collects and distributes royalties from profitable business for developers.
That would turn open source into trick and bait fraud. What about ... slapping license you are actually ok with. It is 100% fine to sell software for money, closed source, open source, free software and completely restricted.
> That would turn open source into trick and bait fraud.
That's not possible. It would all have to be clearly stated in the license.
> What about ... slapping license you are actually ok with.
You would have to slap on a licence saying the trade org represents you, etc.
Re: FOSS donations which reach the roots
#30Micropayments just repeat the same old mistake of applying individualistic solutions to problems that can only be addressed collectively. We need a trade organization like the RIAA that collects and distributes royalties from profitable business for developers.
the two seem orthogonal issues. a foss collective could act as the enforcer of the openfare license, sure.
I see the issue as 'how do we get resources to OSS contributors'. Micropayments will never be more than a pittance as long as it has to compete with "free"