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Can someone explain to me why open source projects don't take on more 'sponsors'? For example, one of my employers used to use the open source software Chronos

Can someone explain to me why open source projects don't take on more 'sponsors'? For example, one of my employers used to use the open source software Chronos. There is a lot of lacking GPU support in chronos, we opened up an issue and nobody wanted to tackle it, and in all honesty, if they had an easy way of getting the core contributors to be paid to add support they would have considered this. Fast forward, they had a dedicated internal developer build out a very specific replacement for our needs.

jononor 9y ago
Many* open source projects are ran by volunteers on their spare time. They do it for the fun of it, and often have a full time job already (possibly writing software, or not). Doing sponsored development involves many activities besides coding, that volunteer contributors might not be particularly skilled at or even interested in learning/doing: - Attracting sponsors, cutting deals - Extracting customer requirements, estimating work, project planning - Developing things that themselves dont need/want - Documenting and reporting on the work done Some employeers may frown upon someone taking a serious obligation that sponsored work is, but be supportive of a hobby level project. It might also complicate your tax situation, and there can be liability considerations. Many contributors are also not professional software developers, and may not feel comfortable promising to deliver specific outcomes. * these days there are also many open source projects ran by companies, or engineers on company time.
- jononor 9y ago
  Bear in mind that open-source software was much more niche just 5-10 years ago. It was considerably less common for companies to make use of FOSS, understand it and be willing to invest in it. Even the idea that it was possible to get paid for developing software that is given away to everyone for free was rather unorthodox. Best practices in financially sustaining open-source projects are still developing, and I think we will see much more of it in the future.
  - danieldk 9y ago
    It was considerably less common for companies to make use of FOSS, understand it and be willing to invest in it. Even the idea that it was possible to get paid for developing software that is given away to everyone for free was rather unorthodox. To me it seems to be quite the opposite, from 1994 to 2004 or so it was very normal for people to drop 30-70 Euro on a Linux distribution (which were available in local book stores). I bought a lot of Slackware, Red Hat, SUSE, and FreeBSD boxes. Some of these distributors hired prominent members of various communities (X.org, kernel, KDE, etc.) to sponsor relevant projects. After ~2004 this changed very rapidly. Probably because of: the availability of broadband Internet, Canonical giving away Ubuntu CDs for free, and the beginnings of the 'everything should be free'-culture boostrapped by Google Mail and other services.
- ianai 9y ago
  Makes me think the best way to do it is to have an associated non profit. Very few projects would have the draw for that though.
  - jononor 9y ago
    The Software Freedom Concervancy actually does this as a service for projects, https://sfconservancy.org https://sfconservancy.org But expect they still want the project to have a certain size
zelphirkalt 9y ago
The post is not about open source software.

jononor 9y ago

Many* open source projects are ran by volunteers on their spare time. They do it for the fun of it, and often have a full time job already (possibly writing software, or not). Doing sponsored development involves many activities besides coding, that volunteer contributors might not be particularly skilled at or even interested in learning/doing: - Attracting sponsors, cutting deals - Extracting customer requirements, estimating work, project planning - Developing things that themselves dont need/want - Documenting and reporting on the work done Some employeers may frown upon someone taking a serious obligation that sponsored work is, but be supportive of a hobby level project. It might also complicate your tax situation, and there can be liability considerations. Many contributors are also not professional software developers, and may not feel comfortable promising to deliver specific outcomes. * these days there are also many open source projects ran by companies, or engineers on company time.

jononor 9y ago
Bear in mind that open-source software was much more niche just 5-10 years ago. It was considerably less common for companies to make use of FOSS, understand it and be willing to invest in it. Even the idea that it was possible to get paid for developing software that is given away to everyone for free was rather unorthodox. Best practices in financially sustaining open-source projects are still developing, and I think we will see much more of it in the future.
- danieldk 9y ago
  It was considerably less common for companies to make use of FOSS, understand it and be willing to invest in it. Even the idea that it was possible to get paid for developing software that is given away to everyone for free was rather unorthodox. To me it seems to be quite the opposite, from 1994 to 2004 or so it was very normal for people to drop 30-70 Euro on a Linux distribution (which were available in local book stores). I bought a lot of Slackware, Red Hat, SUSE, and FreeBSD boxes. Some of these distributors hired prominent members of various communities (X.org, kernel, KDE, etc.) to sponsor relevant projects. After ~2004 this changed very rapidly. Probably because of: the availability of broadband Internet, Canonical giving away Ubuntu CDs for free, and the beginnings of the 'everything should be free'-culture boostrapped by Google Mail and other services.
ianai 9y ago
Makes me think the best way to do it is to have an associated non profit. Very few projects would have the draw for that though.
- jononor 9y ago
  The Software Freedom Concervancy actually does this as a service for projects, https://sfconservancy.org https://sfconservancy.org But expect they still want the project to have a certain size

zelphirkalt 9y ago

The post is not about open source software.