Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)

Post by whit537 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

Gormisdomai wrote: post #5

> At Gratipay, we believe that companies want to pay for open source, and will pay for open source if it’s easy enough—bureaucratically, technically, and socially. I think this is the right insight, but clicking around the links on their website I don't think they were executing on that insight particularly well. This looks more like it was a platform for individuals to make recurring donations than for companies to…

Post by whit537 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #3

Sure, but WHO are you supposed to pay those $2k to?

Post by dnautics » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

whit537 wrote: post #60

uncomputation wrote: post #8

I think this is good will for sure, and 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software, but the real problem with (most) FOSS is the lack of clear structure or organization in terms of payment. Not only who gets paid, but also how much to pay, how to quantity roles and work, spending if necessary, etc. That’s the real problem/opportunity for someone like Gratipay.

> 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software 2k per engineer ... that's more than a rounding error. It'd be interesting to compare to per-seat licensing for commercial software. Anyone have examples?

Post by whit537 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #65

whit537 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software 2k per engineer ... that's more than a rounding error. It'd be interesting to compare to per-seat licensing for commercial software. Anyone have examples?

It's not far off for a developer in the US. You figure they make somewhere from 80-150k in the median, X2 all-in cost as a rule of thumb for employment in the US, so 2k/dev is ~1% or "rounding error"

Post by whit537 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

mattbk1 wrote: post #66

Gormisdomai wrote: post #5

> At Gratipay, we believe that companies want to pay for open source, and will pay for open source if it’s easy enough—bureaucratically, technically, and socially. I think this is the right insight, but clicking around the links on their website I don't think they were executing on that insight particularly well. This looks more like it was a platform for individuals to make recurring donations than for companies to…

There was a lot of pivoting going on near the end, unfortunately. The "companies pay" version of the site wasn't around for very long.