7 ms·

Show HN: I founded a company and a platform to fund open source developers

100 points by Aearnus 7y ago

jdorfman 7y ago
Looks awesome. If CodeFund could be of any help ping me Justin at codefund.io
- Aearnus 7y ago
  Never seen CodeFund before, but I love what y'all are offering. I'll be in contact.
glacials 7y ago
I believe in your mission. The world needs a better way to fund open source development. At first glance, your product feels unrelated to this. It seems like a Stack Overflow replacement that's worse for posterity (read: googlers) because chats are private. It also feels like a side-gig for open source developers, asking them to basically freelance to fund their open source projects, which I don't think is how that should work. I think you'd have more luck as a platform for paid support licenses for open source software. Bootstrapping a support license program is a Big Deal for independent open source developers who don't want more administrative work. But this feels like a miss on that front. Happy to confer more. > Minus server costs and wages, all of the money processed through Immutable Coffee will go directly back to the developers and experts answering questions for the community. You might want to look into forming a nonprofit, as this is almost exactly what it is (minus ownership stakes). If you're a nonprofit people don't have to trust sentences like this, as it's baked into your existence.
- Aearnus 7y ago
  Might not be a bad idea to form a nonprofit -- thanks for this!! This is my first business venture so I was doing things very much "by the books" in the way of establishing everything. As far as Immutable Coffee being a Stack Overflow replacement, I don't think that's accurate. Stack Overflow is already saturated enough that I don't think that there's any need for another website to exist for posterity's sake. Being able to google questions and answers doesn't feel like a very important goal, especially considering how quickly answers get invalidated with how fast programming moves anyway. As far as it being a side-gig for open source developers, I think that's an accurate assessment -- unfortunately. I did try very hard to do something that sets this site apart from traditional freelancing, and that's in the quick pace which a developer can answer questions. It doesn't take much time at all to log onto IC and really quickly claim a few questions and start helping people, in contrast with how long it takes to set up traditional freelance gigs. Thanks for believing in the mission! I have a few other ideas that are in the works with regards to this as well, that I'm just as excited to show HN.
  - mch82 7y ago
    A nonprofit may be a great model for you and I love nonprofits. It’s been traditionally difficult for open source software organizations to get recognized as a 503c nonprofit (which allows people to make tax deductible donations). Things may have changed, but the IRS has struggled to decide if FOSS is truly volunteer work or is more of a tax shelter. A nonprofit can also be more overhead in terms of structure (you need a board), record keeping & accounting than an LLC (but not much more than a C-Corp). Unless you’re operating model depends on donations, it might be worth staying an LLC for a while. Check with a lawyer, accountant, or Stripe Atlas for real guidance. It’s been a while since I looked at firming a company.
  - thunderrabbit 7y ago
    Stack Overflow needs a replacement because the community has become hostile to new users. I wonder if immutable.coffee could allow the asker (or by default) publish the answer transcript as an immutable record. Then the public can upvote it, which becomes a rating system for answers and the experts who gave the answers. The idea above might tend to only reward the experts who got there first, so that's something to think about. I want to allow the answers and experts to be rated because eventually someone will try to exploit the honesty of the system and say "yeah just download this .exe and it will fix your problem.."
  - breck 7y ago
    I love the mission too. I'm always on the lookout for new ways to fund open source. GitHub Sponsors is an interesting thing to watch, as well as Patreon. Btw, there are a number of big companies that do the "talk to an expert" thing, such as GLG. Might be worth checking them out. Good luck!
xrd 7y ago
I'm excited to check it out. I wish there was an easy login with GitHub or Google instead of creating yet another password.
- mikro2nd 7y ago
  Interesting point-of-view. I never use Github/Google/whatever to sign up with another website in an effort to minimise their cross-site tracking. In fact if a site only offers FB/Goog/Github sign-in and lacks their own sign-in identity management, I simply refuse to use it at all and go elsewhere. (And there's always an 'elsewhere'!)
- Aearnus 7y ago
  Sorry about that! Wasn't the first time I've heard this suggestion -- I'll definitely look into supporting this.
  - mch82 7y ago
    Your site says it’s written in Ruby. Check out the OmniAuth gem for adding login providers. It’s probably worth a quick look at similar gems before choosing this one. https://github.com/omniauth/omniauth https://github.com/omniauth/omniauth
kfk 7y ago
I am also taking a look at this problem from an analytics point of view (python, pandas, jupyter, dask, etc). My thinking so far is that it would make a lot of sense to offer 1:1 support but also services around a reference architecture made of those components. Then I would pay a cut like 10-20% to Numfocus which seems to be backing a lot of this ecosystem.
- Aearnus 7y ago
  Not sure I understand what you're saying -- are you suggesting that Immutable Coffee should expand the topics that it's currently offering? Ideally, I'd like to, but we currently just don't have the manpower to do that.
  - kfk 7y ago
    Thanks for your reply. Open source is great but most of the time you need to put together a solution which requires the orchestration of multiple open source libraries and solutions. For instance, with analytics you need Python, Pandas, Dask, SQLAlchemy, Jupyter etc.. So packaging a solution (i.e. a docker image) and then selling certification, support and training should be valuable and a % of the money could go to no profit organizations that maintain those libraries. This is only my personal experience and I am open to discuss it more via email if it helps. I could definitely see the value of a service like yours to get to know companies that need consulting in the analytics space, but I think for now you are not focusing into any specific open source industry.
    - mch82 7y ago
      One way to test whether people will buy consulting in analytics might be to sign up as an “analytics expert” on Instant Coffee and get leads from the OP. Then Instant Coffee is covering a chunk of the payment & client acquisition overhead you’d otherwise need to duplicate.
      - Aearnus 7y ago
        Definitely wouldn't mind adding analytics as a topic on the website.
gremlinsinc 7y ago
Sounds to me like a scrappy clone of Codementor. I think the real way to equalize OSS software is to make it partially OSS ... maybe any company w/ < 10 mill profits it's FOSS, any company over that has to pay in man-hours (contributions) or $$ to use the product. Amazon/FB/Microsoft and other Faang's could easily reproduce any oss software to meet their needs using their own staff... Maybe even just have a github like site to host software and each organization pays based on their value, w/ startups/small companies under 10 million annual revenues essentially having free access. Larger companies would pay a per employee fee, that fee would be divided up among all FOSS software that company uses. They could get some refunds for any contributions accepted to FOSS. It'd basically be like patreon for software in a semi-walled garden. Small members could also 'opt-in' to pay $x per month that would also be divided up among other OSS projects. Either random, or they could pick by grouped projects or just pick their favorites to receive a % of their monthly donation.
- Aearnus 7y ago
  Never seen Codementor before -- but thanks for pointing it out to me. I guess that in functionality the sites are similar, but hopefully the overarching goals of the project will bring them in different directions.
- quantummkv 7y ago
  > I think the real way to equalize OSS software is to make it partially OSS ... maybe any company w/ < 10 mill profits it's FOSS, any company over that has to pay in man-hours (contributions) or $$ to use the product. A friendly reminder that it is Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer. Doing what you suggest is a good approach for Free Beer, not Freedom. Qt has the perfect business model for OSS. Respect the LGPL license for Qt and get it for free without any extra restrictions. Or go straight for a commercial license. Plus they sell add-ons and other software and support around Qt. And considering all the places where Qt is used, I would say they are very successful at it.
  - Aearnus 7y ago
    I definitely like the model that's used by the Python foundation and the like -- respecting Freedom, but making profit through consultancy. That was what kind of inspired me to make Immutable Coffee.
jwildeboer 7y ago
„open source developers work for pennies on the dollar. It is near impossible to make a living contributing to open source“ Literally thousands of developers at Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, working full time, fully paid on upstream projects, would slightly disagree. I’m not saying that every F/OSS developer makes a lot of money, but I oppose the notion that it is “near impossible” to do so. [disclaimer: I work at Red Hat since 14 years as EMEA Evangelist]
- Aearnus 7y ago
  Getting into a position like that requires an incredible amount of luck. It's very much a "right time, right place, right project" sort of ordeal. It just isn't reality for the majority of developers.
- zaarn 7y ago
  Alright, so how do I get hired part-time or full-time to work on my own pet FOSS projects?
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    Find a company that uses it and wants to see it continuing to be developed in a way that works for them, and ask for them to employ you.
    - Crinus 7y ago
      So they get all the benefits of the project while i get a regular flat salary? Why not just work as a regular programmer regardless of what i work on is FOSS instead and keep my own projects under my control for myself?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - vertex-four 7y ago
        Sure, you can do that! I was answering the person's question, in which they wanted to get paid for developing their FOSS.
ganzuul 7y ago
Bountysource is another interesting platform in this vein.
- Aearnus 7y ago
  +1 to that -- that seems like a really cool project!
  - klaustopher 7y ago
    From what you are posting here it sounds like you have not done much market research on the field you are entering.
pnako 7y ago
How do you plan to vet experts?
- Aearnus 7y ago
  I've been doing it manually: looking at resumes, code samples, and asking sample questions to judge for myself. Not sure there's any automated way to do that that will work any better.
  - mch82 7y ago
    You’ll also have the option to use customer feedback, if you think that makes sense. Take a look at Lyft’s post-ride survey. Rate your ride, plus a set of chips that let people express what stood out about the driver, plus a comment field. Very simple & quick to complete.
    - Aearnus 7y ago
      Right now, the system works on a black and white "I was satisfied with this answer"/"I wasn't satisfied with this answer". If too many users note that they were continually unsatisfied with a particular answerer's answers, then I'm planning on handling that issue myself.
  - pnako 7y ago
    My understanding was that you would vet open source contributors so they can support their own stuff. So looking at GitHub, commits, etc. Otherwise your platform is really a way for random people to get money (nothing wrong with that) while the actual maintainers are busy writing code, reviewing tickets, etc. I know monetizing open source is terribly difficult so I don't want to sound too negative.
    - Aearnus 7y ago
      > My understanding was that you would vet open source contributors so they can support their own stuff. So looking at GitHub, commits, etc Ideally, this is the plan.
mch82 7y ago
Interesting idea. It might be worth offering two pricing options: (1) Pay for private answers, (2) free/bounty open source answers. Your concept seems to have some overlap with StackOverflow. A problem with StackOverflow is their content is licensed CC-BY-SA. That can make some answers dicey for companies to use. Publicly visible answers on your site might be more valuable than StackOverflow answers if you released them as CC0. CC0 answers could also be merged into the docs of the FOSS projects. Having those answers on your site should drive more search traffic to you, bringing more leads for paid private Q&A. On the expert side of what you’re doing... if you can streamline the payment process & generate a 1099 for taxes (like Lyft-style companies do) that might remove some overhead for experts & get them interested.
- Aearnus 7y ago
  Payment process definitely isn't streamlined right now (the button to cash out just sends me an email), but I am planning on paying through a 1099, if that makes things any easier.
  - mch82 7y ago
    To me, what you’re sort of doing is flipping the StackOverflow model around so that the authors share in the profits. That’s an interesting concept to experiment with. I wonder if “Teachers Pay Teachers” might be a company for you to benchmark? Side note... It’s not often we see HN front page stories from Tucson, AZ & that’s awesome!
    - Aearnus 7y ago
      I think that there's a large way that Immutable Coffee differs from Stack Overflow, and that's in the fact that Immutable Coffee is: * Private (answers don't circulate around the internet! that's important because of how quickly answers on stack overflow become invalidated) and * Immediate & one-on-one (waiting for answers/responses in a comment chain on Stack Overflow is a super frustrating experience!) And thank you! Lots of love for Tuscon. Bear down!
faxel 7y ago
Interesting idea, and seemingly not dissimilar to https://lyfevest.io https://lyfevest.io, although Lyfevest has an all-you-can-eat subscription for asking questions, and the platform seemingly vets the experts automatically in some way (e.g. looking at the expert's public contributions).
- Aearnus 7y ago
  Lyfevest seems more geared towards enterprises, and the subscription will have to be EXPENSIVE to justify all-you-can-post questions. I don't think that's friendly to hobbyists and students -- which both groups that I want Immutable Coffee to be open for.
  - faxel 7y ago
    Good point.
hactually 7y ago
Sent you an email, very curious about an idea I had for flipping FOSS on its head a little
vinayms 7y ago
You should consider redesigning the website colors to spare visitors' eyes. I mean, the posted link opens a page with white text on black background, but clicking on the "immutable coffee" link takes to a page with black text on white background. I was viewing in a brightly lit room yet was severely jolted, can only imagine the fate of those viewing in dimly lit room or in the dark.
ezekg 7y ago
I feel like the easiest way to fund open source is to offer dual licensing and somehow charge businesses. There have been many that have done this and it seems to work well, most notably IMO is mperham with Sidekiq, but there are many others. Open source developers are too timid of charging for their code. Relying on donations seems like a bad move, business-wise, because I'd guess (no data to back this up, just gut feeling) that most donations will come from individuals and not busineses, yet the businesses are the ones making money off of your code.
- cavneb 7y ago
  I recommend visiting http://oss.fund http://oss.fund

100 points by Aearnus 7y ago

jdorfman 7y ago

Looks awesome. If CodeFund could be of any help ping me Justin at codefund.io

Aearnus 7y ago
Never seen CodeFund before, but I love what y'all are offering. I'll be in contact.

glacials 7y ago

I believe in your mission. The world needs a better way to fund open source development. At first glance, your product feels unrelated to this. It seems like a Stack Overflow replacement that's worse for posterity (read: googlers) because chats are private. It also feels like a side-gig for open source developers, asking them to basically freelance to fund their open source projects, which I don't think is how that should work. I think you'd have more luck as a platform for paid support licenses for open source software. Bootstrapping a support license program is a Big Deal for independent open source developers who don't want more administrative work. But this feels like a miss on that front. Happy to confer more. > Minus server costs and wages, all of the money processed through Immutable Coffee will go directly back to the developers and experts answering questions for the community. You might want to look into forming a nonprofit, as this is almost exactly what it is (minus ownership stakes). If you're a nonprofit people don't have to trust sentences like this, as it's baked into your existence.

Aearnus 7y ago
Might not be a bad idea to form a nonprofit -- thanks for this!! This is my first business venture so I was doing things very much "by the books" in the way of establishing everything. As far as Immutable Coffee being a Stack Overflow replacement, I don't think that's accurate. Stack Overflow is already saturated enough that I don't think that there's any need for another website to exist for posterity's sake. Being able to google questions and answers doesn't feel like a very important goal, especially considering how quickly answers get invalidated with how fast programming moves anyway. As far as it being a side-gig for open source developers, I think that's an accurate assessment -- unfortunately. I did try very hard to do something that sets this site apart from traditional freelancing, and that's in the quick pace which a developer can answer questions. It doesn't take much time at all to log onto IC and really quickly claim a few questions and start helping people, in contrast with how long it takes to set up traditional freelance gigs. Thanks for believing in the mission! I have a few other ideas that are in the works with regards to this as well, that I'm just as excited to show HN.
- mch82 7y ago
  A nonprofit may be a great model for you and I love nonprofits. It’s been traditionally difficult for open source software organizations to get recognized as a 503c nonprofit (which allows people to make tax deductible donations). Things may have changed, but the IRS has struggled to decide if FOSS is truly volunteer work or is more of a tax shelter. A nonprofit can also be more overhead in terms of structure (you need a board), record keeping & accounting than an LLC (but not much more than a C-Corp). Unless you’re operating model depends on donations, it might be worth staying an LLC for a while. Check with a lawyer, accountant, or Stripe Atlas for real guidance. It’s been a while since I looked at firming a company.
- thunderrabbit 7y ago
  Stack Overflow needs a replacement because the community has become hostile to new users. I wonder if immutable.coffee could allow the asker (or by default) publish the answer transcript as an immutable record. Then the public can upvote it, which becomes a rating system for answers and the experts who gave the answers. The idea above might tend to only reward the experts who got there first, so that's something to think about. I want to allow the answers and experts to be rated because eventually someone will try to exploit the honesty of the system and say "yeah just download this .exe and it will fix your problem.."
- breck 7y ago
  I love the mission too. I'm always on the lookout for new ways to fund open source. GitHub Sponsors is an interesting thing to watch, as well as Patreon. Btw, there are a number of big companies that do the "talk to an expert" thing, such as GLG. Might be worth checking them out. Good luck!

xrd 7y ago

I'm excited to check it out. I wish there was an easy login with GitHub or Google instead of creating yet another password.

mikro2nd 7y ago
Interesting point-of-view. I never use Github/Google/whatever to sign up with another website in an effort to minimise their cross-site tracking. In fact if a site only offers FB/Goog/Github sign-in and lacks their own sign-in identity management, I simply refuse to use it at all and go elsewhere. (And there's always an 'elsewhere'!)
Aearnus 7y ago
Sorry about that! Wasn't the first time I've heard this suggestion -- I'll definitely look into supporting this.
- mch82 7y ago
  Your site says it’s written in Ruby. Check out the OmniAuth gem for adding login providers. It’s probably worth a quick look at similar gems before choosing this one. https://github.com/omniauth/omniauth https://github.com/omniauth/omniauth

kfk 7y ago

I am also taking a look at this problem from an analytics point of view (python, pandas, jupyter, dask, etc). My thinking so far is that it would make a lot of sense to offer 1:1 support but also services around a reference architecture made of those components. Then I would pay a cut like 10-20% to Numfocus which seems to be backing a lot of this ecosystem.

Aearnus 7y ago
Not sure I understand what you're saying -- are you suggesting that Immutable Coffee should expand the topics that it's currently offering? Ideally, I'd like to, but we currently just don't have the manpower to do that.
- kfk 7y ago
  Thanks for your reply. Open source is great but most of the time you need to put together a solution which requires the orchestration of multiple open source libraries and solutions. For instance, with analytics you need Python, Pandas, Dask, SQLAlchemy, Jupyter etc.. So packaging a solution (i.e. a docker image) and then selling certification, support and training should be valuable and a % of the money could go to no profit organizations that maintain those libraries. This is only my personal experience and I am open to discuss it more via email if it helps. I could definitely see the value of a service like yours to get to know companies that need consulting in the analytics space, but I think for now you are not focusing into any specific open source industry.
  - mch82 7y ago
    One way to test whether people will buy consulting in analytics might be to sign up as an “analytics expert” on Instant Coffee and get leads from the OP. Then Instant Coffee is covering a chunk of the payment & client acquisition overhead you’d otherwise need to duplicate.
    - Aearnus 7y ago
      Definitely wouldn't mind adding analytics as a topic on the website.

gremlinsinc 7y ago

Sounds to me like a scrappy clone of Codementor. I think the real way to equalize OSS software is to make it partially OSS ... maybe any company w/ < 10 mill profits it's FOSS, any company over that has to pay in man-hours (contributions) or $$ to use the product. Amazon/FB/Microsoft and other Faang's could easily reproduce any oss software to meet their needs using their own staff... Maybe even just have a github like site to host software and each organization pays based on their value, w/ startups/small companies under 10 million annual revenues essentially having free access. Larger companies would pay a per employee fee, that fee would be divided up among all FOSS software that company uses. They could get some refunds for any contributions accepted to FOSS. It'd basically be like patreon for software in a semi-walled garden. Small members could also 'opt-in' to pay $x per month that would also be divided up among other OSS projects. Either random, or they could pick by grouped projects or just pick their favorites to receive a % of their monthly donation.

Aearnus 7y ago
Never seen Codementor before -- but thanks for pointing it out to me. I guess that in functionality the sites are similar, but hopefully the overarching goals of the project will bring them in different directions.
quantummkv 7y ago
> I think the real way to equalize OSS software is to make it partially OSS ... maybe any company w/ < 10 mill profits it's FOSS, any company over that has to pay in man-hours (contributions) or $$ to use the product. A friendly reminder that it is Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer. Doing what you suggest is a good approach for Free Beer, not Freedom. Qt has the perfect business model for OSS. Respect the LGPL license for Qt and get it for free without any extra restrictions. Or go straight for a commercial license. Plus they sell add-ons and other software and support around Qt. And considering all the places where Qt is used, I would say they are very successful at it.
- Aearnus 7y ago
  I definitely like the model that's used by the Python foundation and the like -- respecting Freedom, but making profit through consultancy. That was what kind of inspired me to make Immutable Coffee.

jwildeboer 7y ago

„open source developers work for pennies on the dollar. It is near impossible to make a living contributing to open source“ Literally thousands of developers at Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, working full time, fully paid on upstream projects, would slightly disagree. I’m not saying that every F/OSS developer makes a lot of money, but I oppose the notion that it is “near impossible” to do so. [disclaimer: I work at Red Hat since 14 years as EMEA Evangelist]

Aearnus 7y ago
Getting into a position like that requires an incredible amount of luck. It's very much a "right time, right place, right project" sort of ordeal. It just isn't reality for the majority of developers.
zaarn 7y ago
Alright, so how do I get hired part-time or full-time to work on my own pet FOSS projects?
- vertex-four 7y ago
  Find a company that uses it and wants to see it continuing to be developed in a way that works for them, and ask for them to employ you.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    So they get all the benefits of the project while i get a regular flat salary? Why not just work as a regular programmer regardless of what i work on is FOSS instead and keep my own projects under my control for myself?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - vertex-four 7y ago
      Sure, you can do that! I was answering the person's question, in which they wanted to get paid for developing their FOSS.

ganzuul 7y ago

Bountysource is another interesting platform in this vein.

Aearnus 7y ago
+1 to that -- that seems like a really cool project!
- klaustopher 7y ago
  From what you are posting here it sounds like you have not done much market research on the field you are entering.

pnako 7y ago

How do you plan to vet experts?

Aearnus 7y ago
I've been doing it manually: looking at resumes, code samples, and asking sample questions to judge for myself. Not sure there's any automated way to do that that will work any better.
- mch82 7y ago
  You’ll also have the option to use customer feedback, if you think that makes sense. Take a look at Lyft’s post-ride survey. Rate your ride, plus a set of chips that let people express what stood out about the driver, plus a comment field. Very simple & quick to complete.
  - Aearnus 7y ago
    Right now, the system works on a black and white "I was satisfied with this answer"/"I wasn't satisfied with this answer". If too many users note that they were continually unsatisfied with a particular answerer's answers, then I'm planning on handling that issue myself.
- pnako 7y ago
  My understanding was that you would vet open source contributors so they can support their own stuff. So looking at GitHub, commits, etc. Otherwise your platform is really a way for random people to get money (nothing wrong with that) while the actual maintainers are busy writing code, reviewing tickets, etc. I know monetizing open source is terribly difficult so I don't want to sound too negative.
  - Aearnus 7y ago
    > My understanding was that you would vet open source contributors so they can support their own stuff. So looking at GitHub, commits, etc Ideally, this is the plan.

mch82 7y ago

Interesting idea. It might be worth offering two pricing options: (1) Pay for private answers, (2) free/bounty open source answers. Your concept seems to have some overlap with StackOverflow. A problem with StackOverflow is their content is licensed CC-BY-SA. That can make some answers dicey for companies to use. Publicly visible answers on your site might be more valuable than StackOverflow answers if you released them as CC0. CC0 answers could also be merged into the docs of the FOSS projects. Having those answers on your site should drive more search traffic to you, bringing more leads for paid private Q&A. On the expert side of what you’re doing... if you can streamline the payment process & generate a 1099 for taxes (like Lyft-style companies do) that might remove some overhead for experts & get them interested.

Aearnus 7y ago
Payment process definitely isn't streamlined right now (the button to cash out just sends me an email), but I am planning on paying through a 1099, if that makes things any easier.
- mch82 7y ago
  To me, what you’re sort of doing is flipping the StackOverflow model around so that the authors share in the profits. That’s an interesting concept to experiment with. I wonder if “Teachers Pay Teachers” might be a company for you to benchmark? Side note... It’s not often we see HN front page stories from Tucson, AZ & that’s awesome!
  - Aearnus 7y ago
    I think that there's a large way that Immutable Coffee differs from Stack Overflow, and that's in the fact that Immutable Coffee is: * Private (answers don't circulate around the internet! that's important because of how quickly answers on stack overflow become invalidated) and * Immediate & one-on-one (waiting for answers/responses in a comment chain on Stack Overflow is a super frustrating experience!) And thank you! Lots of love for Tuscon. Bear down!

faxel 7y ago

Interesting idea, and seemingly not dissimilar to https://lyfevest.io https://lyfevest.io, although Lyfevest has an all-you-can-eat subscription for asking questions, and the platform seemingly vets the experts automatically in some way (e.g. looking at the expert's public contributions).

Aearnus 7y ago
Lyfevest seems more geared towards enterprises, and the subscription will have to be EXPENSIVE to justify all-you-can-post questions. I don't think that's friendly to hobbyists and students -- which both groups that I want Immutable Coffee to be open for.
- faxel 7y ago
  Good point.

hactually 7y ago

Sent you an email, very curious about an idea I had for flipping FOSS on its head a little

vinayms 7y ago

You should consider redesigning the website colors to spare visitors' eyes. I mean, the posted link opens a page with white text on black background, but clicking on the "immutable coffee" link takes to a page with black text on white background. I was viewing in a brightly lit room yet was severely jolted, can only imagine the fate of those viewing in dimly lit room or in the dark.

ezekg 7y ago

I feel like the easiest way to fund open source is to offer dual licensing and somehow charge businesses. There have been many that have done this and it seems to work well, most notably IMO is mperham with Sidekiq, but there are many others. Open source developers are too timid of charging for their code. Relying on donations seems like a bad move, business-wise, because I'd guess (no data to back this up, just gut feeling) that most donations will come from individuals and not busineses, yet the businesses are the ones making money off of your code.

cavneb 7y ago
I recommend visiting http://oss.fund http://oss.fund