5 ms·

Send them quotes back: "I'm glad you liked it, I have X hours to dedicate to project Y this month. If you'd like, I'm willing to work on that feature for you u

by inglor 9y ago

Send them quotes back: "I'm glad you liked it, I have X hours to dedicate to project Y this month. If you'd like, I'm willing to work on that feature for you under terms Z". People _pay_. You'd be surprised just how much of Chromium and other open ssource projects is written by consulting companies paid by third parties to solve a use case.

gcb0 9y ago
> chromium just like several dev over the years implemented privacy conscious options to restric the referer(sic) header just to have google employees silently remove them later on? well, I guess it can work if the feature you are paying for is not to improve privacy at the expense of google's Ad business.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Do you have a link? I'd figure Google would want to restrict the Referer link, as they were accused in the move to HTTPS (which did break it for a lot of sites linked from Search).
  - gcb0 9y ago
    you will have to search. its hidden in unrelated commits. but features that were removed at different points in time are: no referrer/only first party referrer in settings. no referrer in their about:config equivalent at the time (its a moving target). command line option to disable referrer. all added and vanished at random points in time.
betaby 9y ago
Some different perspective. Example Debian with plenty of poorly maintained packets which broke original behavior (say linked against another library which is not recommended by upstream) or disable some features or outdated (not in sense of stable/unstable). Sending DD messages 'please fix, thanks' looks like is very reasonable (although some of them do not think so). Either your maintainer or not - even say one can do it 'better', one can't preempt or overload - it's not just fork the whole distro at github.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Reporting the bug is reasonable. Bugging (no pun intended) them is not. even say one can do it 'better' Then offer to take up the maintainer role. Debian has institutions to deal with unresponsive maintainers.
  - Nuzzerino 9y ago
    Clearly this is evidence that those institutions are in need of improvement, no? Perhaps too few people know about them, for starters.
    - cstrahan 9y ago
      Or go with a distribution that makes it trivial to make drive-by contributions, like NixOS for example. Updating a package is a simple as bumping two lines and sending a pull request here: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs For reference, I’m the (co)maintainer of over 80 packages in Nixpkgs. IIRC, I submitted my first PR within roughly a month of using NixOS. Before NixOS, I had used Ubuntu for 4 years. How many packages did I maintain there? Zero. It’s just too difficult to track down the right project, figure out the arcane build/packaging setup, contact the maintainers, etc.
sheetjs 9y ago
> People _pay_. From our experience (http://sheetjs.com/ http://sheetjs.com/, our major open source library is https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx), even with multinational corporations, they move heaven and earth to find another free solution, or spend in-house time to hack together a solution and try to sucker you into helping them, but paying is by and large the last option.
- nulagrithom 9y ago
  From my experience in the medium business world (maybe 500 people total?), paying is the only option. Open source is evil. Maintaining things is evil. Writing your own code is evil. Just shell out $x,000 for support. If I could find a way to say "Yeah, we can get 'support' for this open source library for $xxx per month" my life would be much easier.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ghaff 9y ago
    You can in many cases.
  - jaymzcampbell 9y ago
    The Django Rest Framework library has taken this very approach [1] offering both corporate and individual monthly subscriptions which is then used to fund development. It appears to be quite successful in that it's allowed the lead developer to work on the project full time (at a salary of £50k [2]). [1] https://fund.django-rest-framework.org/topics/funding/ https://fund.django-rest-framework.org/topics/funding/ [2] http://www.encode.io/reports/february-2017 http://www.encode.io/reports/february-2017
  - singold 9y ago
    This. A lot. I work at a company with less than 500 people and for IT open source is evil. I've seen people been told by IT to find another software that does the same thing but paid, and we have a law that mandates us to prefer FLOSS when possible...
skybrian 9y ago
Interesting. What are some examples of things consulting companies have added?
deepaksurti 9y ago
I usually put up a milestone date and direct them to that date, quite a few times have to push that date to work on stuff that pays my bills. The best ones who pay are those who directly reach out with a paid offer; which shows that they definitely have explored the market (most likely than not) and you are the best option :). The better than the best and great to work with clients are those who just reach out to you directly, only very rarely would happen!!!
icelancer 9y ago
I run a small seven figure revenue business and I have paid more than one open source maintainer/contributor for work done. Definitely don't be afraid to ask; but I usually offer upfront. I'm an ex-developer so I usually offer the help I can with the keyboard, but know that it's limited compared to most of the really good developers out there maintaining a real project, so I offer time + money. The problem is getting single open source maintainers to commit - and followthrough - with support. They are often way too busy with their job to actually be professional with support and adhere to even a loose SLA.

by inglor 9y ago

gcb0 9y ago

> chromium just like several dev over the years implemented privacy conscious options to restric the referer(sic) header just to have google employees silently remove them later on? well, I guess it can work if the feature you are paying for is not to improve privacy at the expense of google's Ad business.

icebraining 9y ago
Do you have a link? I'd figure Google would want to restrict the Referer link, as they were accused in the move to HTTPS (which did break it for a lot of sites linked from Search).
- gcb0 9y ago
  you will have to search. its hidden in unrelated commits. but features that were removed at different points in time are: no referrer/only first party referrer in settings. no referrer in their about:config equivalent at the time (its a moving target). command line option to disable referrer. all added and vanished at random points in time.

betaby 9y ago

Some different perspective. Example Debian with plenty of poorly maintained packets which broke original behavior (say linked against another library which is not recommended by upstream) or disable some features or outdated (not in sense of stable/unstable). Sending DD messages 'please fix, thanks' looks like is very reasonable (although some of them do not think so). Either your maintainer or not - even say one can do it 'better', one can't preempt or overload - it's not just fork the whole distro at github.

icebraining 9y ago
Reporting the bug is reasonable. Bugging (no pun intended) them is not. even say one can do it 'better' Then offer to take up the maintainer role. Debian has institutions to deal with unresponsive maintainers.
- Nuzzerino 9y ago
  Clearly this is evidence that those institutions are in need of improvement, no? Perhaps too few people know about them, for starters.
  - cstrahan 9y ago
    Or go with a distribution that makes it trivial to make drive-by contributions, like NixOS for example. Updating a package is a simple as bumping two lines and sending a pull request here: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs For reference, I’m the (co)maintainer of over 80 packages in Nixpkgs. IIRC, I submitted my first PR within roughly a month of using NixOS. Before NixOS, I had used Ubuntu for 4 years. How many packages did I maintain there? Zero. It’s just too difficult to track down the right project, figure out the arcane build/packaging setup, contact the maintainers, etc.

sheetjs 9y ago

> People _pay_. From our experience (http://sheetjs.com/ http://sheetjs.com/, our major open source library is https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx), even with multinational corporations, they move heaven and earth to find another free solution, or spend in-house time to hack together a solution and try to sucker you into helping them, but paying is by and large the last option.

nulagrithom 9y ago
From my experience in the medium business world (maybe 500 people total?), paying is the only option. Open source is evil. Maintaining things is evil. Writing your own code is evil. Just shell out $x,000 for support. If I could find a way to say "Yeah, we can get 'support' for this open source library for $xxx per month" my life would be much easier.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 9y ago
  You can in many cases.
- jaymzcampbell 9y ago
  The Django Rest Framework library has taken this very approach [1] offering both corporate and individual monthly subscriptions which is then used to fund development. It appears to be quite successful in that it's allowed the lead developer to work on the project full time (at a salary of £50k [2]). [1] https://fund.django-rest-framework.org/topics/funding/ https://fund.django-rest-framework.org/topics/funding/ [2] http://www.encode.io/reports/february-2017 http://www.encode.io/reports/february-2017
- singold 9y ago
  This. A lot. I work at a company with less than 500 people and for IT open source is evil. I've seen people been told by IT to find another software that does the same thing but paid, and we have a law that mandates us to prefer FLOSS when possible...

skybrian 9y ago

Interesting. What are some examples of things consulting companies have added?

deepaksurti 9y ago

I usually put up a milestone date and direct them to that date, quite a few times have to push that date to work on stuff that pays my bills. The best ones who pay are those who directly reach out with a paid offer; which shows that they definitely have explored the market (most likely than not) and you are the best option :). The better than the best and great to work with clients are those who just reach out to you directly, only very rarely would happen!!!

icelancer 9y ago

I run a small seven figure revenue business and I have paid more than one open source maintainer/contributor for work done. Definitely don't be afraid to ask; but I usually offer upfront. I'm an ex-developer so I usually offer the help I can with the keyboard, but know that it's limited compared to most of the really good developers out there maintaining a real project, so I offer time + money. The problem is getting single open source maintainers to commit - and followthrough - with support. They are often way too busy with their job to actually be professional with support and adhere to even a loose SLA.