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Paying for Open Source Contributions

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Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#31

Post by spunker540 »

sktrdie wrote: post #19
jsbaby608 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. But, the biggest projects we all use (apache, linux, php, etc) all have many paid maintainers through large companies. If these people weren't paid, I don't think we would have any of the quality software we see today.

Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation -- (basically a charity). It does not "make money" per se, it just has to cover its costs. Not sure about the rest but I believe most have the same model. Sure there are few nitpicks, but my overall point was that open-source doesn't need money to work.

One thing to consider though is that all the big companies like Google and Facebook and many others have dedicated employees on their payroll whose primary responsibility is contributing to open source projects and the more critical a piece of open source software is, the more likely it is that there are contributors being paid by very large corporations to push the project in the right direction for them.

Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#32

Post by jevakallio »

chronogram wrote: post #24
jevakallio wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author of the post here. Realistically, we can't pay people full engineering salaries to do random OSS. Our team can already contribute to OSS on their work time when it relates to their work, or our own projects, but for the personal interest/passion projects without direct benefit for us as a company, it doesn't scale. Doubly so when we have a pretty strict "no overtime" policy of working no more than 40 hours a we…

> Doubly so when we have a pretty strict "no overtime" policy of working no more than 40 hours a week. Is HR ready for this increase in applications from this post and the comments?

I guess they'll have to work overtime to process all the applications ;)

Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#33

Post by habnds »

nickjj wrote: post #27

I like the idea, but I'm concerned about the $20 / hour. Since this is done on the employees' own time (after hours), isn't this basically saying, "hey, go help make our app's dependencies better in an overtime scenario but we're going to pay you $20 / hour instead of 1x to 2x your usual salary"? I know at the bottom it clears that up but I dunno, it just feels weird to me. It seems like a concealed way to mainly ben…

agreed, additionally, there's an interesting behavioral phenomenon where people are perfectly willing to help strangers on the street when asked for free, but the willingness rate drops dramatically when someone offers them a small amount of money because it reframes the conversation. Once people see open source as a way to make money, it becomes a very different thought process.

Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#35

Post by jb3689 »

nickjj wrote: post #27

I like the idea, but I'm concerned about the $20 / hour. Since this is done on the employees' own time (after hours), isn't this basically saying, "hey, go help make our app's dependencies better in an overtime scenario but we're going to pay you $20 / hour instead of 1x to 2x your usual salary"? I know at the bottom it clears that up but I dunno, it just feels weird to me. It seems like a concealed way to mainly ben…

They do say they pay for personal hack projects too, so I read it more as "hey, go do whatever OS projects you feel like/do some skill building and we'll pay you $20/hr". That makes sense to me - the company benefits if you bring more skills and knowledge to the workplace

Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#36

Post by rdelval »

sktrdie wrote: post #19
jsbaby608 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. But, the biggest projects we all use (apache, linux, php, etc) all have many paid maintainers through large companies. If these people weren't paid, I don't think we would have any of the quality software we see today.

Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation -- (basically a charity). It does not "make money" per se, it just has to cover its costs. Not sure about the rest but I believe most have the same model. Sure there are few nitpicks, but my overall point was that open-source doesn't need money to work.

I'm a maintainer for an Apache project. My company pays me to maintain the project because we use it internally. If they did not pay me to maintain it, I would not be doing it. I imagine I'm in a similar spot as many other open source maintainers.

Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#37

Post by swalsh »

Out of curiousity, is there a site where people can put up some money for an open request on development? Like as opposed to hiring a contractor, and specifically developing the requirements, it would be more similar to a feature request with a bonus.

Like specifically, my company has been yearning for a more complete solution to indexes on ORC files (there exists something, but the solution falls short for our specific siutation).

Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#38

Post by antt »

jevakallio wrote: post #26
antt wrote: post #20

>We pay our employees $20/hr for contributions to OSS and tech communities, whether it’s a third-party library we use in our work like React, Next.js While I applaud the sentiment $20 per hour is too little to make me care and enough to make me start thinking about money. A much better way to deal with this would be pushing laws to allow for tax offsets for contributing time to charities (open source ones). Seeing $1…

This is a great idea. I don't know if it's even a starter, tax code wise, but would be amazing if it could be done. For the time being, we are happy with $20 for the reasons outlined in the post itself. It's not an incentive, it's a reward, and a purely optional one. Many people in the company (I'm the author) do work on Open Source and don't make use of the benefit, because they don't care about the money. This, for…

I don't care about it now as a full time employed adult. As a university student I could have well become a full time maintainer of some of the scientific libraries that have been neglected since the 80s.

Now as a gainfully employed productive member of society I like the idea of going on a legal tax strike when the government does something I absolutely detest.

>Oh by the by, since you are trying so hard to destroy civil society again this year, here's my bill for keeping it running. You're welcome.

Which is precisely why it would never happen. But you should definitely spend some ~money~ speech on politicians and lobbyists to start some of them thinking about it.

Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#39

Post by sktrdie »

sktrdie wrote: post #19
jsbaby608 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. But, the biggest projects we all use (apache, linux, php, etc) all have many paid maintainers through large companies. If these people weren't paid, I don't think we would have any of the quality software we see today.

Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation -- (basically a charity). It does not "make money" per se, it just has to cover its costs. Not sure about the rest but I believe most have the same model. Sure there are few nitpicks, but my overall point was that open-source doesn't need money to work.

@rdelval cool, but that's totally different form Apache (the foundation) paying you. I think that's a really nice thing to do and have nothing against it.

My main point was simply that the history of open-source, as you can tell by all the amazing open-source released over the last decades by Apache itself, point to the fact that people created something of extreme high-quality without any direct economical reward.

Re: Paying for Open Source Contributions

#40

Post by bhousel »

As a professional full-time open source maintainer and developer, initiatives like this bother me a lot.

The work we do is worth much more than $20/hr.

Ideally I'd like to see open source developers in stable, tenured positions that pay fair salaries with benefits. Anything that normalizes the idea that open source should be funded on tips, patreons, or spare time goodwill is embarrassing to all of us. We can do better.

If you value open source, hire people to do it and pay them fairly.

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