4 ms·

> After having an article written about him, one guy got the better part of one year's salary in charity. In exchange for 18 years of work maintaining a piece o

> After having an article written about him, one guy got the better part of one year's salary in charity. In exchange for 18 years of work maintaining a piece of software that kinda everybody uses. $60,000 from Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative (one-time) $137,000 in donations (one-time) $50,000 a year from Facebook (recurring) $50,000 a year from Stripe (recurring) I think he got more than one year's salary in one-time funding alone, plus he's got a "salary" of $100,000/yr from Facebook and Stripe together.

mjevans 9y ago
The most idealistic funding model that I can think of for this kind of work would be colleges (banned from 'tech transfer' and other money grabs) actually being used to advance academic research and 'core intellectual infrastructure'. Basic, public funded, 'research' and common components support.
- cat199 9y ago
  Unfortunately, in the US at least and probably elsewhere, the shift has been away from this, since it creates 'competition' with corporations, who also are major funders of both universities and the politicians which create legislation and funding applying to them...
another-dave 9y ago
Yeah but he has 6 developers working on it now (including himself).
- sdrothrock 9y ago
  I had no clue! That's useful information.
  - gilrain 9y ago
    It's also useful to learn not to spout off when you "have no clue".
    - Whollycow 9y ago
      Yes but until one doesn't know one hasn't a clue then what does one do? Apart from 'spout off'?
      - gilrain 9y ago
        Listen to those who have a clue. One can assume one doesn't have a clue about things one isn't a specialist in, so it isn't a big mystery. Unless one assumes one is smarter than everyone around them, even on topics they haven't bothered to study. /sort of fed up with tech today, sorry
    - dang 9y ago
      More important still is not to be rude or uncivil on HN. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  Why does the project need 6 developers?
  - mikegerwitz 9y ago
    https://www.gnupg.org/donate/index.html https://www.gnupg.org/donate/index.html
jacobush 9y ago
Great to hear that he gets about $100k in "salary". (I guess taxes work differently when you get donations like that.) At least he won't be starving now. But it would not be a bad thing if someone threw some more money at it, or someone assembled a small team to help out, or something. Edit: saw in comment below there is a team on it. Good stuff.
throw2016 9y ago
Kudos to Facebook and Stripe for stepping up. Either these individuals are funded or some company comes along and acquires them and they lose their independence. We need to urgently find a sustainable way for individuals to support open source developers or accountability and relationship with end users will continue to diminish. There must also be ways to gently encourage successful startups to contribute as now it seems they use a whole bunch of open source software and simply forget about it once successful, which is not a sutainable model.

mjevans 9y ago

The most idealistic funding model that I can think of for this kind of work would be colleges (banned from 'tech transfer' and other money grabs) actually being used to advance academic research and 'core intellectual infrastructure'. Basic, public funded, 'research' and common components support.

cat199 9y ago
Unfortunately, in the US at least and probably elsewhere, the shift has been away from this, since it creates 'competition' with corporations, who also are major funders of both universities and the politicians which create legislation and funding applying to them...

another-dave 9y ago

Yeah but he has 6 developers working on it now (including himself).

sdrothrock 9y ago
I had no clue! That's useful information.
- gilrain 9y ago
  It's also useful to learn not to spout off when you "have no clue".
  - Whollycow 9y ago
    Yes but until one doesn't know one hasn't a clue then what does one do? Apart from 'spout off'?
    - gilrain 9y ago
      Listen to those who have a clue. One can assume one doesn't have a clue about things one isn't a specialist in, so it isn't a big mystery. Unless one assumes one is smarter than everyone around them, even on topics they haven't bothered to study. /sort of fed up with tech today, sorry
  - dang 9y ago
    More important still is not to be rude or uncivil on HN. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
0xffff2 9y ago
Why does the project need 6 developers?
- mikegerwitz 9y ago
  https://www.gnupg.org/donate/index.html https://www.gnupg.org/donate/index.html

jacobush 9y ago

Great to hear that he gets about $100k in "salary". (I guess taxes work differently when you get donations like that.) At least he won't be starving now. But it would not be a bad thing if someone threw some more money at it, or someone assembled a small team to help out, or something. Edit: saw in comment below there is a team on it. Good stuff.

throw2016 9y ago

Kudos to Facebook and Stripe for stepping up. Either these individuals are funded or some company comes along and acquires them and they lose their independence. We need to urgently find a sustainable way for individuals to support open source developers or accountability and relationship with end users will continue to diminish. There must also be ways to gently encourage successful startups to contribute as now it seems they use a whole bunch of open source software and simply forget about it once successful, which is not a sutainable model.