4 ms·

I wrote about this in the past how all these open source donation systems like OpenCollective and GitHub Sponsors are exploiting maintainers via gig economy dyn

I wrote about this in the past how all these open source donation systems like OpenCollective and GitHub Sponsors are exploiting maintainers via gig economy dynamics: https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-source-gig-economy-and-sustainability-tip-jar/ https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-... The solution is simple, having companies hire open source maintainers to work on their projects in some fashion or we need to make it easier for maintainers to start companies and build an actual business.

RussianCow 7y ago
That doesn't sound simple at all. How do you incentivize companies to do this? And what does it mean to "make it easier for maintainers to start companies"?
- caniszczyk 7y ago
  For companies, I've been encouraging companies for the last several years to start formal open source programs to build a proper open source strategy: https://todogroup.org/guides/create-program/ https://todogroup.org/guides/create-program/ From that, comes hiring maintainers and contributing to open source projects, fiscally or hiring maintainers. Second, there are plenty of accelerators like YC itself that can help maintainers start a company around their project.