I will on occasion email an OSS maintainer offering to pay for some improvement or consulting. But I don't do this often because of the friction. In other I can't even find their email, but then it feels awkward to publicly post this in a GH issue.
Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
21–30 of 139 posts
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#22I was very confused, I thought this was about the polars, data science/data analytics toolkit. I know names are hard, but maybe pick something more distinct.
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#23So a VC-funded company expected to produce unicorn returns is going to accomplish this when non-profits haven't? It doesn't seem logical but I hope someone can pull it off! I would like to learn more about the background of the founders - what they've already done in any way related to this. Why does Polar have a chance?
Luckily you do not need credentials to solve problems with software.
Good luck to the founders, it’s a worthy problem.
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#24Won'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.
Another kind of problem would be when someone pledges a big sum for an obscure feature, a first-time contributor writes a (technically perfect) PR for it. Maintainer does not want to merge it, because the feature does not align with maintainer's project goals. But not merging will now look like a dick move, as it denies the PR author the compensation.
Then the payment can go to a fork. If the maintainer really wants to keep his vision for the project and others are literally voting with their wallets for something else, why would that be a problem?
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#25Won'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.
If they were simple to fix other people would just fix them an make a PR.
If a project became notorious for pulling stuff like that, and rejecting pull requests, people would most likely just make a fork.
I guess that also raises the issue of who gets paid if a third party pull request fixes an issue.
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#26So a VC-funded company expected to produce unicorn returns is going to accomplish this when non-profits haven't? It doesn't seem logical but I hope someone can pull it off! I would like to learn more about the background of the founders - what they've already done in any way related to this. Why does Polar have a chance?
> So a VC-funded company expected to produce unicorn returns is going to accomplish this when non-profits haven't?
Business accomplishes something non-profits haven't isn't exactly a stop the presses event?
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#27Interesting idea, A small but impactful change I would make would be to change dollar amounts into tokens. e.g. 1 token = $50.
A company might want to buy 1000 tokens and allocate tokens individually to specific issues, but they also might want to put tokens in a pot the maintainer can access to "spend" on issues they want to prioritise for the project or allow them to "spend" tokens at a specific rate, etc.
It also means that money is committed upfront by the companies, i.e. the money is real and exists, has been set aside for this thing and in case of a dispute polar can make decisions, etc
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#28>Premium access. Educational material
Arguably, putting a restrictive licence on manuals makes something not free software https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#29I'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?
Sorry about that, but happy to clarify anything. 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 really wish that had been, say, within the first 3000 words of the homepage. In fact, I think they would make a perfect lead. I literally had to go to the comments, page here to understand what was going on.
Re: Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding
#30I'm sorry, but I would never give money to an open-source project through a VC-backed company that takes a 10% commission. I could maybe live with it if it was 0.5%, but heck I'll just find the maintainer and wire them the money somehow. Github Sponsorship takes 0% from private accounts.
I could very much be wrong about this, but the whole thing feels like it's coming from the perspective of someone thinking "I've heard about OSS, let's see how I can monetize it", rather than "I've participated in the OSS world for a long time, and I have an idea that can improve it".