3 ms·

What are the incentives on the user side to pay the fees to Tidelift? How would Tidelift prevent free riding?

JoshTriplett 8y ago
Tidelift tracks down all the individual developers and gives those "subscribing" a single point to pay. That's their primary added value.
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  but what is the value in subscribing? What is the gain for a company in doing that?
  - hasahmed 8y ago
    Supposedly it's a promise that the code will be maintained
  - aequitas 8y ago
    For me it would be the convenience of not having to choose which project I do and do not donate to (as each project has a baseline donation amount (even $1) to make it cost-effective (ie: paypal fees), so I have to make a choice to divide the amount I'm willing to donate each month. I can thus dispose some money each month and feel that I'm donating (even if it's just a few cent) to every project I use. If more people find this easy, a lot of small donations will make a big one.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - usrusr 8y ago
    Correction: I appear to have misread some of sales copy to potential subscribers, there is no promise of individual support involved, just continued maintenance. -- Tidelift is promising them the stars about services while not being involved at all in their fulfilment (no: see chevron above), except for maybe threatening to kick out their "lifted" projects if they don't deliver. (or maybe even sue whoever pressed "lift your package"?) The more benign interpretation, as in a peer comment, is "allow me to donate without figuring out the distribution myself". That sounds perfectly reasonable, but it would be much more convincing if they had less promises in their pitch to subscribers and a "pay as you like" option (here's n $, please figure out the appropriate distribution for me while taking your cut"). Also, with the well established "failure or unbounded financial success" model of VC funding, how could one ever expect tidelift to not eventually abuse their position by taking seen ever higher cut? Maybe if it was a bootstrapped business, one could reasonably hope for a promise of only taking what is needed to be held up, but anything with actual investors needs a more formal arrangement. Maybe a charity/coop/nonprofit/foundation with clearly defined and enforceable bylaws that transparently buys implementation, operation and services from an associated for-profit might do, but "trust us, we have cute toddlers and pets" just isn't enough.
- hmm_really 8y ago
  Developers that contribute to an open source code, or to the single maintainer of a open source project? How is the payment distributed proportionally to each contributor? Or is it the case that the lead maintainer can decide to receive funds from tide lift without paying the contributors.
xienze 8y ago
It sounds like the developers make some sort of “promise” to maintain the software. Not really sure how that’s enforced or what even constitutes regular maintenance. I doubt anyone is committing to an SLA for fixes for the relatively paltry sums mentioned in the article (at least $10K over two years). It’s an interesting idea but it sounds like it lacks anything that really binds the developer to a level of service. Plus the pay isn’t “quit your day job”-good so ya know, that day job is gonna take priority. My gut reaction is that it sounds like an easy way for companies to pay a sum that lets them feel less guilty about freeloading off someone else’s work, and if the developer is more responsive to their requests, hey, bonus.
- usrusr 8y ago
  Correction: I appear to have misread some of sales copy to potential subscribers, there is no promise of individual support involved, just continued maintenance. -- Even that "far from quitting your dayjob" amount of money could in theory impact a lot of "do I keep maintaining that lib a younger version of myself once built?" decisions. If that was the only thing tidelift promised paying companies, protects that get donations are less likely to get abandoned, it would kind of make sense. But in their sales copy, they are actually selling services (no: see correction above) provided by "lifted" maintainers, and that's where it stops being funny, for all sides involved (except tidelift). I wonder if the terminolocal proximity to "shoplift" ever occurred in their investor talks... If they ever make it to the point of regular payouts, there will likely be some hidden scene of opportunists rushing to get recognised as the maintainer of as many abandoned - or just stabilized to the point of nondevelopment - packages as possible. Kind of like the alleged scooter-charging fights (no idea wether those are real or just news-fiction), perhaps something good could come out of that nonetheless? (maintainership-hoarders actually ending up doing some maintenance)
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  I think the idea is the more companies that sign up the more money can be given to a particular project and over time allow those people to go full time on their project. But since it’s new with little to no customers they are relying on capital to pay some developers guaranteed 10k over 2 years. Over this 2 years this could catch on and pay a lot more than 10k.

Tidelift tracks down all the individual developers and gives those "subscribing" a single point to pay. That's their primary added value.

thecatspaw 8y ago
but what is the value in subscribing? What is the gain for a company in doing that?
- hasahmed 8y ago
  Supposedly it's a promise that the code will be maintained
- aequitas 8y ago
  For me it would be the convenience of not having to choose which project I do and do not donate to (as each project has a baseline donation amount (even $1) to make it cost-effective (ie: paypal fees), so I have to make a choice to divide the amount I'm willing to donate each month. I can thus dispose some money each month and feel that I'm donating (even if it's just a few cent) to every project I use. If more people find this easy, a lot of small donations will make a big one.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- usrusr 8y ago
  Correction: I appear to have misread some of sales copy to potential subscribers, there is no promise of individual support involved, just continued maintenance. -- Tidelift is promising them the stars about services while not being involved at all in their fulfilment (no: see chevron above), except for maybe threatening to kick out their "lifted" projects if they don't deliver. (or maybe even sue whoever pressed "lift your package"?) The more benign interpretation, as in a peer comment, is "allow me to donate without figuring out the distribution myself". That sounds perfectly reasonable, but it would be much more convincing if they had less promises in their pitch to subscribers and a "pay as you like" option (here's n $, please figure out the appropriate distribution for me while taking your cut"). Also, with the well established "failure or unbounded financial success" model of VC funding, how could one ever expect tidelift to not eventually abuse their position by taking seen ever higher cut? Maybe if it was a bootstrapped business, one could reasonably hope for a promise of only taking what is needed to be held up, but anything with actual investors needs a more formal arrangement. Maybe a charity/coop/nonprofit/foundation with clearly defined and enforceable bylaws that transparently buys implementation, operation and services from an associated for-profit might do, but "trust us, we have cute toddlers and pets" just isn't enough.
hmm_really 8y ago
Developers that contribute to an open source code, or to the single maintainer of a open source project? How is the payment distributed proportionally to each contributor? Or is it the case that the lead maintainer can decide to receive funds from tide lift without paying the contributors.

xienze 8y ago

It sounds like the developers make some sort of “promise” to maintain the software. Not really sure how that’s enforced or what even constitutes regular maintenance. I doubt anyone is committing to an SLA for fixes for the relatively paltry sums mentioned in the article (at least $10K over two years). It’s an interesting idea but it sounds like it lacks anything that really binds the developer to a level of service. Plus the pay isn’t “quit your day job”-good so ya know, that day job is gonna take priority. My gut reaction is that it sounds like an easy way for companies to pay a sum that lets them feel less guilty about freeloading off someone else’s work, and if the developer is more responsive to their requests, hey, bonus.

usrusr 8y ago
Correction: I appear to have misread some of sales copy to potential subscribers, there is no promise of individual support involved, just continued maintenance. -- Even that "far from quitting your dayjob" amount of money could in theory impact a lot of "do I keep maintaining that lib a younger version of myself once built?" decisions. If that was the only thing tidelift promised paying companies, protects that get donations are less likely to get abandoned, it would kind of make sense. But in their sales copy, they are actually selling services (no: see correction above) provided by "lifted" maintainers, and that's where it stops being funny, for all sides involved (except tidelift). I wonder if the terminolocal proximity to "shoplift" ever occurred in their investor talks... If they ever make it to the point of regular payouts, there will likely be some hidden scene of opportunists rushing to get recognised as the maintainer of as many abandoned - or just stabilized to the point of nondevelopment - packages as possible. Kind of like the alleged scooter-charging fights (no idea wether those are real or just news-fiction), perhaps something good could come out of that nonetheless? (maintainership-hoarders actually ending up doing some maintenance)
philliphaydon 8y ago
I think the idea is the more companies that sign up the more money can be given to a particular project and over time allow those people to go full time on their project. But since it’s new with little to no customers they are relying on capital to pay some developers guaranteed 10k over 2 years. Over this 2 years this could catch on and pay a lot more than 10k.