Support open source that you use by paying the maintainers to talk to your team • Hacker News Board

Re: Support open source that you use by paying the maintainers to talk to your team

#61

Post by acemarke » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 2:35 AM UTC

dwohnitmok wrote: post #50

JacobThreeThree wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Oddly, I've found some other FOSS projects that I wanted to get some help with -- and led with "I'll pay you to pair-program with me for like four hours and answer my dumb questions" -- I was surprised to be turned down: "we don't want to make this commercial, just file a bug" -- do you want a new bug or do you want $800? I've had multiple experience trying to pay FOSS developers where they wouldn't even accept a do…

> The rationale seems to be that they don't want the increased responsibility that comes with offering a paid service. This is a really big deal. There's a step change in responsibility that happens from "offering free project you do whatever" to "you're paying me for a service." Even if that service is just consulting, it's still a big difference in responsibility. When it's free you can always walk away whenever yo…

Yep, I can vouch for this. I work on the Redux JS libraries, entirely volunteer. I spend a _lot_ of time maintaining them, but I'm mostly able to do that because I can _choose_ to do that work when I feel like it, with no outside pressure. Adding financial obligations would likely cause a lot of additional mental overhead I don't want to deal with.

Besides, in my case at least, I spend so much time working on Redux stuff as it is that money really couldn't even make me do more than I already do anyway :) The only thing I can think of that would qualify would be getting paid a full salary to do maintenance full-time, and I don't want that either. I like building other stuff for the day job, and Redux stuff in my free time.

Re: Support open source that you use by paying the maintainers to talk to your team

#62

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 4:33 AM UTC

openthc wrote: post #54

pm215 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On your last point -- whether a FOSS project is set up to be able to do anything useful with $800 varies a lot, I think. If it's something put out by a consulting company or by a one-man-band independent or even by a student, sure. But a lot of FOSS projects are either worked on mostly by people on a big-company payroll (in which case their time is spoken for already and the bigco doesn't care about your $800), or el…

The $800 was just an example number. In some cases I've asked "how much to get you to just pair-program with me using your library for four hours" then our business is concluded. It's a deal that I felt would be very low hassle -- however, I guess the supply-side didn't think so. (for reference I've been coding and consulting around open-source stack for like 20+ years). I've been on both sides of these cut-and-dry t…

> It's a deal that I felt would be very low hassle -- however, I guess the supply-side didn't think so.

Were they administratively prepared to accept payments? For instance, did they have business bank accounts, invoicing, tax numbers, record keeping - if not, then it would be a hassle to do all that in order to receive a once-off payment for a days work, even if the rate is generous. Indeed, they'd need to "go commercial" to make the hassle worthwhile. So it may not be as cut-and-dry as you thought.

Re: Support open source that you use by paying the maintainers to talk to your team

#63

Post by alexcohn » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 10:54 AM UTC

Jiejeing wrote: post #48

openthc wrote: post #17

We work like this and it's OK, not perfect but OK For folks in our industry that are not using our software (they are using of the closed-source competitors) we are able to show alternatives and still have conversations with operations folks about methods, ideas and other non-technical methods for businesss-process-automation. We've also got a segment of customers, they are paying us maintainers to basically do the i…

On the last case: I have received requests for consulting on my FOSS library, which I turned down because while I would love to live from it, I am currently employed in an exclusive contract and I don’t want to figure out how to declare this income to the tax office. It is a bit of a pickle, either go full consulting on your FOSS product (which might not be realistic), or work in something unrelated for someone else,…

"Exclusive contract" is often not merely a problem with income declaration, it may legally require that you can only get payed for your work if the exclusive employer explicitly permits this specific incident.

Re: Support open source that you use by paying the maintainers to talk to your team

#64

Post by sudo_navendu » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

This is a solid way to support open source maintainers. Another way I have seen companies support open source is by hiring these maintainers as employees or paying an employee to work on the open source project.

Of course, right now this is happening at popular open source projects like Kubernetes and is only followed by big tech companies.

But, giving some time for internal developers to contribute back to the open source project directly can have a huge positive impact as well.

This is not an alternate solution to actually sponsoring money but something that could complement it.

Re: Support open source that you use by paying the maintainers to talk to your team

#65

Post by mathnmusic » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

indrora wrote: post #28

There's a company, Tidelift, that has been working on solving this issue as well. Their solution is to be a VAR on top of the open source and give updates on new versions, advice on remediation and workarounds for CVEs, and help prioritize issues for open source maintainers. The other side is that they pay the maintainers to do what they do best: maintain the software.

At polyglot.network, we have been taking a much more direct approach: Hire us, and we work like a typical agency on open issues that you care about. It's in our best interest to work with upstream maintainers, but if for whatever reason, that's not practical, we work with either remote freelancers or in-house developers to get the job done. In the end, we solve the actual problems you have, in a sustainable way.