8 ms·

Fighting for Open Source Sustainability: Introducing Code Sponsor

69 points by cavneb 9y ago

dboreham 9y ago
After reading the article, I _think_ this is an advertising network for oss project owners. Not a bad idea except why aren’t existing ad networks meeting this need? And...if most of the pages displaying these ads are served by GitHub, isn’t this stealing money GitHub has deliberately left on the table, and won’t they be upset by that and hence take action? Perhaps the plan is to succeed so quickly that GitHub buys them?
- princekolt 9y ago
  > why aren’t existing ad networks meeting this need Because most ad networks are data-gathering scum, and developers know this, thus avoid them at all costs. This company is at least _promising_ not to track the ads, and only provide basic and relevant conversion data to advertisers. This is a big difference that would mean at least I would be willing to give them a try.
  - cavneb 9y ago
    Owner here. I agree 100%. From day one I have been promised to never do any tracking or remarketing. I don’t sell data. I have followed the Ethically advertising guidelines established by Read the Docs. If you are a developer on the platform, you know to the second what your payout is. If you are a sponsor, you know to the second how much you owe.
- cavneb 9y ago
  Owner here. Github is responsible for about 60% of the overall traffic. We support websites as well such as https://jsbin.com https://jsbin.com and https://codesandbox.io https://codesandbox.io. I don’t believe Github would ever want to buy Code Sponsor. The goal from the beginning was to provide scalable sources of funding. This has not existed prior. We do not consider ourselves an advertising network. Here's why: * We do not display sponsors based on a bid system. * We only present sponsors that the developers choose. * Sponsors can select which projects they want to support and which they do not.
jwildeboer 9y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but I couldn't find a source for their claim that "Two-thirds of the top OSS projects are maintained by one or two people". How many projects? How are they rated "top"? When you make such a bold claim, you should be able to back it up with verifiable sources IMHO. Also, being a Red Hatter that has welcomed thousands of people in our New Hire Orientations, I dare say that we actually do employ quite some developers that continue their good work in a lot of communities. Describing that as "the 1% approach" feels a bit wrong.
- cavneb 9y ago
  This data comes from a talk given by Nadia Engbhal entitled “Consider the Maintainer”. This data originally comes from here: https://github.com/aserg-ufmg/Truck-Factor/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/aserg-ufmg/Truck-Factor/blob/master/READM...
  - jwildeboer 9y ago
    Thanks. Found the slides. But they also don’t give any link to rating criteria or a list of projects. https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintainer https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintain...
- ghuntley 9y ago
  Nadia left her job in venture capital last May and started work on a thesis. What is not venture backable in tech right now, that tech absolutely cannot do without? Projects that had present, not future, value. Were actively used by Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix, even governments. Directly responsible for tech’s rapid rise, as Mark Suster once explained but they hadn’t captured the financial value they deserved. Capturing of financial value for these projects is extremely important yet isn't realised and can have devastating effects. Remember heartbleed? I encourage you to speak with a maintainer heart to heart of any moderately successful opensource project to tell it like it is. Here's a 4min clip from the PythonAU keynote delivered by Russell Keith Magee that does exactly that. https://youtu.be/0t85TyH-h04 https://youtu.be/0t85TyH-h04 It's a never ending stream of notifications that contain abuse and demands for unpaid work with occasional moments of the highest of highs (ie someone sending you a thankyou postcard via snail mail or asking how they can help you out) Open-source keeps burning out brilliant software engineers. For the longest time opensource has been talked about user freedoms but has been mums the word to "at what cost"? Production is still expensive and the cost is too high. 0) https://youtu.be/VS6IpvTWwkQ https://youtu.be/VS6IpvTWwkQ 1) https://www.fordfoundation.org/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/ https://www.fordfoundation.org/library/reports-and-studies/r... 2) https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet-s-biggest-blind-spot-b9aa23618c58 https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet... 3) http://nadiaeghbal.com/oss http://nadiaeghbal.com/oss
ef4 9y ago
The authors are mistaken about the impact of employer-paid open source. It is orders of magnitude bigger than anything else, and it has a decades-long history of success in projects like Linux. Companies aren’t doing it out of charity and don’t see it as such. They see (correctly) that it’s easier to get what they want by paying some people to work on an open source project than to start from scratch and pay for 100% of the cost. I’m all in favor of more models, but until you’re channeling many tens of millions of dollars per year, your impact is much smaller than employer sponsored open source.
- cavneb 9y ago
  This is great feedback. Thank you.
styfle 9y ago
I've been using Code Sponsor for a month or two now. The best way to describe it is something between a generic Google Ads network and a invite-only Carbon Ads network. And it's really meant to go in your README.md file. So this results in a few things: 1. Broker. Sponsors can select which repos/languages/tech/etc they want to advertise to and developers can select which sponsors are relevant to them. 2. Transparent. Developers can see which ads a sponsor will display and how much they pay per click (usually $0.40). The ads are usually just text with a couple emoji that fit well into the README.md design and are loaded as an svg. 3. Limited. Sponsors pay a fixed amount so if a repo is really popular and displaying ads, it may stop displaying after the money is paid out to the developers. This means you may just get a generic ad that recommends using Code Sponsor near the end of the month, like this repo: https://github.com/styfle/geoslack https://github.com/styfle/geoslack Caveats: it seems the Code Sponsor is not open source :(
kentcdodds 9y ago
I totally love code sponsor ️
- cavneb 9y ago
  Thank you, Kent! Your OSS efforts deserve to be funded!
jlgaddis 9y ago
> "... while part goes to maintaining Code Sponsor itself." If their intentions are "pure" and their primary purpose really is to help open-source developers, they should either be a non-profit and/or completely open and honest and publish the sizes of each "part". Preferably, that would look (at minimum) something like: October 2017 Income from sponsors: $ x Paid to developers: $ y ----- Kept by CodeSponsor: $ z Where z == x - y, of course.
- cavneb 9y ago
  October 2017 Income from sponsors: $ 7,437.20 Paid to developers: $ 3,413.20 ----- Kept by CodeSponsor: $ 4,024.00 This does not take into account the $6,000 we spent to become a sponsor for Github Universe.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    Thank you for the transparency! Apologies if this is already posted somewhere and I just didn't see it.
    - cavneb 9y ago
      Oh.. it wasn't. I posted it in response to your query :-D Like I said, I'm an open book. I just want to help sustain OSS.
  - Deimorz 9y ago
    With those numbers, you kept about 54% of October's income. So how is that split determined? That is, is it a fairly flat overhead so if the income had been $100,000, you still would have kept ~$4000? Or are you taking a percentage and it would have been ~$54,000?
    - cavneb 9y ago
      For example, the sponsor pays $1,000 for 1 month of sponsorship. The developers gets 40% of that ($400). The remainder ($600) goes into building Code Sponsor. Understand that this has been a side project since day one. I have not taken any distributions at all. The split used to be 50/50, however I could not sustain myself with that split and still keep the CPA low for our sponsors. We are now setting a minimum CPC for all new sponsors to $1.50+. This means that the developer will get $0.60/click. Finally, part of the 60% goes into the server costs and fraud prevention. We run every click through vigorous fraud detection prior to marking it as “payable”. By doing so, we provide much higher quality clicks to the sponsors. This makes them scale their funds. Remember, we are working with marketing funds, not sponsorship funds.
Siilwyn 9y ago
Does anybody know what the click / view ratio is like on small projects? I know it depends on a lot of things but I really have no idea at all... Would it be below one percent or more around five, or something different?
- cavneb 9y ago
  Depending on the project, we have seen between 0.4 - 1.2% click rate on average.
  - Siilwyn 9y ago
    Thank you both for your replies!
- styfle 9y ago
  I have one project[1] with 0% CTR. I have another project[2] with 3% CTR. [1]: https://github.com/styfle/copee https://github.com/styfle/copee [2]: https://github.com/styfle/magnemite https://github.com/styfle/magnemite Both have less than 200 impressions total.
themlsmith 9y ago
Full disclosure: I'm a long time sponsor (https://rollbar.com/ https://rollbar.com/) and supporter of Code Sponsor. It's a fantastic resource for the Open Source community, notably the smaller, independent projects. Supporting OS sustainability while generating awareness for Rollbar was a total no-brainer decision. The transparency in the system between sponsor and project owner is exceptional. They've built an interesting, novel solution to help ease any burden felt, maintaining and growing a project. Bravo!
justdotJS 9y ago
Another upvote for Code Sponsor! Been using it for almost a month or so, and it's pretty awesome. Styfle already describes it very well, so I'm just gonna add that although I'm seeing a very shaky impression/click rate, and my clicks are below what I expected to receive, the payout is quite big for an ad/sponsor network like this. Also, it's much better than ad networks - no detailed tracking and more (listed below by cavneb)!
thenickperson 9y ago
Unfortunately, it's limited to projects with 100+ stars. Cool idea though.
- justdotJS 9y ago
  It didn't used to be limited, but I believe it's because of frauds and scams. Maybe if you contact cavneb he can work something out?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
daviddiasfront 9y ago
I'm a big fan of Code Sponsor! Eric who created Code Sponsor is passionate about his project and surely at your disposal for any query. If you have a project with more than 100 stars, try it, you'll really appreciate the transparency and the personalization of the ads you can have. Long life to Code Sponsor!

69 points by cavneb 9y ago

After reading the article, I _think_ this is an advertising network for oss project owners. Not a bad idea except why aren’t existing ad networks meeting this need? And...if most of the pages displaying these ads are served by GitHub, isn’t this stealing money GitHub has deliberately left on the table, and won’t they be upset by that and hence take action? Perhaps the plan is to succeed so quickly that GitHub buys them?

princekolt 9y ago
> why aren’t existing ad networks meeting this need Because most ad networks are data-gathering scum, and developers know this, thus avoid them at all costs. This company is at least _promising_ not to track the ads, and only provide basic and relevant conversion data to advertisers. This is a big difference that would mean at least I would be willing to give them a try.
- cavneb 9y ago
  Owner here. I agree 100%. From day one I have been promised to never do any tracking or remarketing. I don’t sell data. I have followed the Ethically advertising guidelines established by Read the Docs. If you are a developer on the platform, you know to the second what your payout is. If you are a sponsor, you know to the second how much you owe.
cavneb 9y ago
Owner here. Github is responsible for about 60% of the overall traffic. We support websites as well such as https://jsbin.com https://jsbin.com and https://codesandbox.io https://codesandbox.io. I don’t believe Github would ever want to buy Code Sponsor. The goal from the beginning was to provide scalable sources of funding. This has not existed prior. We do not consider ourselves an advertising network. Here's why: * We do not display sponsors based on a bid system. * We only present sponsors that the developers choose. * Sponsors can select which projects they want to support and which they do not.

jwildeboer 9y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but I couldn't find a source for their claim that "Two-thirds of the top OSS projects are maintained by one or two people". How many projects? How are they rated "top"? When you make such a bold claim, you should be able to back it up with verifiable sources IMHO. Also, being a Red Hatter that has welcomed thousands of people in our New Hire Orientations, I dare say that we actually do employ quite some developers that continue their good work in a lot of communities. Describing that as "the 1% approach" feels a bit wrong.

cavneb 9y ago
This data comes from a talk given by Nadia Engbhal entitled “Consider the Maintainer”. This data originally comes from here: https://github.com/aserg-ufmg/Truck-Factor/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/aserg-ufmg/Truck-Factor/blob/master/READM...
- jwildeboer 9y ago
  Thanks. Found the slides. But they also don’t give any link to rating criteria or a list of projects. https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintainer https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintain...
ghuntley 9y ago
Nadia left her job in venture capital last May and started work on a thesis. What is not venture backable in tech right now, that tech absolutely cannot do without? Projects that had present, not future, value. Were actively used by Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix, even governments. Directly responsible for tech’s rapid rise, as Mark Suster once explained but they hadn’t captured the financial value they deserved. Capturing of financial value for these projects is extremely important yet isn't realised and can have devastating effects. Remember heartbleed? I encourage you to speak with a maintainer heart to heart of any moderately successful opensource project to tell it like it is. Here's a 4min clip from the PythonAU keynote delivered by Russell Keith Magee that does exactly that. https://youtu.be/0t85TyH-h04 https://youtu.be/0t85TyH-h04 It's a never ending stream of notifications that contain abuse and demands for unpaid work with occasional moments of the highest of highs (ie someone sending you a thankyou postcard via snail mail or asking how they can help you out) Open-source keeps burning out brilliant software engineers. For the longest time opensource has been talked about user freedoms but has been mums the word to "at what cost"? Production is still expensive and the cost is too high. 0) https://youtu.be/VS6IpvTWwkQ https://youtu.be/VS6IpvTWwkQ 1) https://www.fordfoundation.org/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/ https://www.fordfoundation.org/library/reports-and-studies/r... 2) https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet-s-biggest-blind-spot-b9aa23618c58 https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet... 3) http://nadiaeghbal.com/oss http://nadiaeghbal.com/oss

ef4 9y ago

The authors are mistaken about the impact of employer-paid open source. It is orders of magnitude bigger than anything else, and it has a decades-long history of success in projects like Linux. Companies aren’t doing it out of charity and don’t see it as such. They see (correctly) that it’s easier to get what they want by paying some people to work on an open source project than to start from scratch and pay for 100% of the cost. I’m all in favor of more models, but until you’re channeling many tens of millions of dollars per year, your impact is much smaller than employer sponsored open source.

cavneb 9y ago
This is great feedback. Thank you.

styfle 9y ago

I've been using Code Sponsor for a month or two now. The best way to describe it is something between a generic Google Ads network and a invite-only Carbon Ads network. And it's really meant to go in your README.md file. So this results in a few things: 1. Broker. Sponsors can select which repos/languages/tech/etc they want to advertise to and developers can select which sponsors are relevant to them. 2. Transparent. Developers can see which ads a sponsor will display and how much they pay per click (usually $0.40). The ads are usually just text with a couple emoji that fit well into the README.md design and are loaded as an svg. 3. Limited. Sponsors pay a fixed amount so if a repo is really popular and displaying ads, it may stop displaying after the money is paid out to the developers. This means you may just get a generic ad that recommends using Code Sponsor near the end of the month, like this repo: https://github.com/styfle/geoslack https://github.com/styfle/geoslack Caveats: it seems the Code Sponsor is not open source :(

kentcdodds 9y ago

I totally love code sponsor ️

cavneb 9y ago
Thank you, Kent! Your OSS efforts deserve to be funded!

jlgaddis 9y ago

> "... while part goes to maintaining Code Sponsor itself." If their intentions are "pure" and their primary purpose really is to help open-source developers, they should either be a non-profit and/or completely open and honest and publish the sizes of each "part". Preferably, that would look (at minimum) something like: October 2017 Income from sponsors: $ x Paid to developers: $ y ----- Kept by CodeSponsor: $ z Where z == x - y, of course.

cavneb 9y ago
October 2017 Income from sponsors: $ 7,437.20 Paid to developers: $ 3,413.20 ----- Kept by CodeSponsor: $ 4,024.00 This does not take into account the $6,000 we spent to become a sponsor for Github Universe.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Thank you for the transparency! Apologies if this is already posted somewhere and I just didn't see it.
  - cavneb 9y ago
    Oh.. it wasn't. I posted it in response to your query :-D Like I said, I'm an open book. I just want to help sustain OSS.
- Deimorz 9y ago
  With those numbers, you kept about 54% of October's income. So how is that split determined? That is, is it a fairly flat overhead so if the income had been $100,000, you still would have kept ~$4000? Or are you taking a percentage and it would have been ~$54,000?
  - cavneb 9y ago
    For example, the sponsor pays $1,000 for 1 month of sponsorship. The developers gets 40% of that ($400). The remainder ($600) goes into building Code Sponsor. Understand that this has been a side project since day one. I have not taken any distributions at all. The split used to be 50/50, however I could not sustain myself with that split and still keep the CPA low for our sponsors. We are now setting a minimum CPC for all new sponsors to $1.50+. This means that the developer will get $0.60/click. Finally, part of the 60% goes into the server costs and fraud prevention. We run every click through vigorous fraud detection prior to marking it as “payable”. By doing so, we provide much higher quality clicks to the sponsors. This makes them scale their funds. Remember, we are working with marketing funds, not sponsorship funds.

Siilwyn 9y ago

Does anybody know what the click / view ratio is like on small projects? I know it depends on a lot of things but I really have no idea at all... Would it be below one percent or more around five, or something different?

cavneb 9y ago
Depending on the project, we have seen between 0.4 - 1.2% click rate on average.
- Siilwyn 9y ago
  Thank you both for your replies!
styfle 9y ago
I have one project[1] with 0% CTR. I have another project[2] with 3% CTR. [1]: https://github.com/styfle/copee https://github.com/styfle/copee [2]: https://github.com/styfle/magnemite https://github.com/styfle/magnemite Both have less than 200 impressions total.

themlsmith 9y ago

Full disclosure: I'm a long time sponsor (https://rollbar.com/ https://rollbar.com/) and supporter of Code Sponsor. It's a fantastic resource for the Open Source community, notably the smaller, independent projects. Supporting OS sustainability while generating awareness for Rollbar was a total no-brainer decision. The transparency in the system between sponsor and project owner is exceptional. They've built an interesting, novel solution to help ease any burden felt, maintaining and growing a project. Bravo!

justdotJS 9y ago

Another upvote for Code Sponsor! Been using it for almost a month or so, and it's pretty awesome. Styfle already describes it very well, so I'm just gonna add that although I'm seeing a very shaky impression/click rate, and my clicks are below what I expected to receive, the payout is quite big for an ad/sponsor network like this. Also, it's much better than ad networks - no detailed tracking and more (listed below by cavneb)!

thenickperson 9y ago

Unfortunately, it's limited to projects with 100+ stars. Cool idea though.

justdotJS 9y ago
It didn't used to be limited, but I believe it's because of frauds and scams. Maybe if you contact cavneb he can work something out?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

daviddiasfront 9y ago

I'm a big fan of Code Sponsor! Eric who created Code Sponsor is passionate about his project and surely at your disposal for any query. If you have a project with more than 100 stars, try it, you'll really appreciate the transparency and the personalization of the ads you can have. Long life to Code Sponsor!