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Show HN: KickStarter for open source projects and LinkedIn for OSS contributors
- hbadgery 7y agoAfter 20 years of working in open source, Travis Oliphant, the co-creator of Numpy, Scipy & Numba and the founder of PyData, NumFOCUS, & Anaconda, decided the economics of open source needed to change. Organizations are disconnected from the communities and lack support and maintenance from the open source projects they depend on. Open source teams are burned out, underpaid, underrepresented. These problems have made open source software difficult to maintain. This is the reason Travis started OpenTeams, a marketplace to connect open source communities with organizations. On one side of the marketplace, we connect companies with teams to help fund project development and maintenance. On the other side, we create a way for open source contributors to showcase their work, help them get recognized for their work and hired to work on projects they care about. Put simply, it’s like a KickStarter for open source projects and a LinkedIn for open source contributors. Please give us feedback to help make open source software sustainable. Thank you!
- throwGuardian 7y agoThis is a two sided marketplace - which side are you focusing on first? Developers or sponsors?
- hbadgery 7y agoGreat question! We focused on building out the contributor side of the marketplace first. However, we are now focusing on building out both sides of the marketplace in parallel.
- travisoliphant 7y agoTravis Oliphant, here. OpenTeams is much bigger than me, but I have been part of the early team putting energy into the effort. Henry has captured some of the personal motivations for me. They are sincere. There are plenty of ways for me to make money more easily than wrestling with the economics of open-source software. This is my calling and something I care about a lot. You can watch a video of me talking something about this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCEUPosJuIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCEUPosJuIY if you want to get to know me better. I have had the privilege of watching open-source projects I started or participated in get used by millions. I want to see a world where more people are paid a great living to work on open-source software. There are several approaches to improving the funding fabric for open-source. OpenTeams is one of them. Quansight Initiate (http://www.qi.ventures http://www.qi.ventures) is another one. Quansight Labs (http://labs.quansight.org http://labs.quansight.org) and Quansight (http://www.quansight.com http://www.quansight.com) are others. A group of us are also working on a few other ideas including FairOSS (not going to give the website because it is a behind-the scenes operation for now --- ping me if you are interested in learning more). I have spent many years writing open-source software, improving open-source ecosystems, hiring open-source developers, and paying people to work on open-source software. I have also spent the past 12 years in particular working in industry watching open-source get used and seeing the disconnect between open-source usage and open-source communities. There are several business models that can work to improve things. With OpenTeams we are building out a platform and ecosystem to help open-source communities thrive by directing money from industries that use them to the communities that exist while also learning from the basic laws of incentive alignment and local choice making that are at the heart of every economy. One of my core believes is that not all software will be or should be open source. I don't make this conclusion lightly. However all software will be based on and use open source foundations. Those communities that produce these foundations should be able to thrive and yet retain their freedom and self direction. OpenTeams is a platform to make that happen by connecting companies that use open-source and want to fund specific features and improvements with organizations that hire open-source developers to work on proposals that have input from community participants and leaders. Some initiatives will be new projects, some will be usability improvements and feature proposals for existing projects. An effect of OpenTeams is also to enable a place for all open-source contributors to build their reputation (not just contributions that lead to pull-requests). We are in a pre-alpha stage at the moment, but will be continuing to add features and are open to suggestions and ideas. Thanks for your feedback.
- AdrienLemaire 7y agoI searched for OpenTeams' OSS license, but all I'm seeing is * © 2019 OpenTeams. All rights reserved. * https://openteams.com/terms-of-service https://openteams.com/terms-of-service Why isn't a project who wants to change the economics of open source, open-source itself? Can you reconsider your licensing choices?
- echelon 7y agoAn organization collecting funds for open source should itself be open source and not earn margin for anything other than upkeep and paying engineers' salaries. I kind of feel like Patreon and Kickstarter are in the same vein: rent seeking marketplaces that would be better if they were replaced with entirely open source alternatives that belonged to their respective communities. Patreon should be funded via patreon. If Wikipedia were started today, I worry that it would have ads or be for-profit.
- numtel 7y agoAs someone working on a crowdfunding platform that I would like to be able to release the source code as an open consumer union implementation, I have concerns about enabling unmoderated crowdfunding. The power of a collective wallet is not something to be taken lightly. Whether it's environmental destruction or divisive politics, I have yet to decide that setting something like this free is for the best interest. I would like to see an open source license like the GPL that has enforceable, well-defined provisions for environmental protection and human rights. It seems like to go all the way, a smart contract would need to be used to ensure the transparency that a standard webserver-based infrastructure cannot provide. But credit cards are the standard for online payments so this would put a project in a further category from the start.
- hbadgery 7y agoThank you for sharing your concerns. We will not be an unmoderated platform and I will look into the GPL license, thank you. We are at the very beginning of our journey and so there are many features to come.
- xwowsersx 7y agoThe voice-over voice in the video on the landing page is terrible. Sorry :(
- hbadgery 7y agoDon't apologize! We really do appreciate the feedback, so thank you.
- mch82 7y agoCould be cool to use Mattermost instead of Slack, given the concept is supporting open source. Along those lines, I appreciated login with GitLab!
- hbadgery 7y agoThanks for the suggestion! I'll be bringing this up with the team.
- vintermann 7y agoAs I recall, there was an attempt at "Kickstarter for open source" before. Only, it might even have been before Kickstarter (in which case I guess it was a "Fundable for open source"). I never heard of it again. I like the idea, but it might not be the easiest to get off the ground. Why not just use Kickstarter? (Except that they're doing union busting, I know).
- indigochill 7y agoThere's Bountysource. Dunno if that's what you had in mind, but it seems like a similar principle. People put "bounties" on features in open source projects. Someone closes a PR for that feature, they get the bounty. Someone wants to encourage work on a feature, they contribute to the feature's bounty. In my view this is a natural next step for open source as it closes the loop on users who don't contribute code but do use the software. Now they can contribute financially, in theory fueling more code contributors (in practice, most bounties I've seen are not worth the work, but I've only had my eye on one obscure little open source game, so this may not be representative). I think Kickstarter is not great for this model simply because it has a fixed end date for fundraising and there is less of a direct tie to specific features in a particular codebase.
- hbadgery 7y agoWe agree that a KickStarter style of funding is the best way to succesfully fund a project as it has many benefits. For example, funding companies mitigate risk by sharing the burden of cost. Check out our early Initiatives page and you'll find two early projects we are currently working with to get funding. Thanks for your awesome comment!
- hbadgery 7y agoWe understand that creating a successful startup is difficult. But we are determined! While KickStarter might be useful to get funding for an open source project, we are aiming to become THE platform for open source innovation. OpenTeams is a marketplace that connects open source stakeholders with organizations to facilitate funding for new development and maintenance. Unlike KickStarter which only provides funding, we're enabling project leaders, contributors working on the funded project, funders themselves, and OpenPartners (middlemen 'general contractors) to collaborate and get the work done in the best way possible. Thanks for the feedback! We really appreciate it.
- stanislavb 7y agoApart from KickStarter and LinkedIn, what other projects/companies do you think would be considered as competitors?
- hbadgery 7y agoOur competition is companies that help open source contributors to be hired or paid in one way or another. Additionally, any companies that help open source projects get funding would be considered competition. Competition includes: * Bounty-based companies like Gitcoin, BountySource, and IssueHunt * Donation-based companies like Github Sponsors, Liberapay, and Patreon * Subscription-based companies like Tidelift However, there is no direct competitor creating a marketplace that connects open source stakeholders with organizations to facilitate funding for new development and maintenance.
- lemming 7y agoOne of the subtitles for this is "a KickStarter for open source projects". I looked at their landing page and utterly failed to understand if this description is accurate for the funding part of this product. However, if it is, I think it's a terrible model for OSS development, or for funding development in general. I develop Cursive (https://cursive-ide.com https://cursive-ide.com), an IDE for Clojure code. When I was starting out and deciding how to fund it, lots of people told me I should do a Kickstarter like Light Table, another popular Clojure IDE. I decided not to and instead did the old-school thing of actually charging for the value I create. 4 years later, Cursive is going great and Light Table has been dead for years, despite obtaining $315k (IIRC) in Kickstarter funding. So what went wrong with Light Table? The problem is that that funding is not ongoing, it's a one-off thing. $315k sounds like a lot of money, but if you have a couple of people living in San Francisco, you burn through it very quickly. When that money runs out, what do you do? It's really hard to go back and ask for more, and even if you do you're only kicking the can down the road - a year later or whatever you have the same problem again. Obviously Cursive is not directly comparable to OSS development since it's closed-source and commercial. But the principle remains the same - development needs ongoing funding, not lump sums. As distasteful as it is to many developers, the model that best matches the actual requirements of funding software development is subscription pricing. When I was discussing possible licensing models on my mailing list, one of my users made this point more eloquently than I could: Software is never delivered as a complete static product, it evolves over time to meet the needs of its users. Perpetual licensing leaves developers in the awkward position of deciding to support that product forever for free, or releasing new paid-for versions regularly and stepping onto the feature treadmill where you have to keep delivering 'value' to attract users away from your old versions. Perpetual licensing is bad for developers and bad for users. As I said above, I couldn't work out whether OpenTeams is actually more similar to Kickstarter or something like Patreon. I really hope they're aiming for ongoing funding and not one-off lump sums.
- rambojazz 7y ago> I decided not to and instead did the old-school thing of actually charging for the value I create Did you convert the license from open source to proprietary, or was it never open source in the first place?
- xvilka 7y agoHow is this compared to OpenCollective [1][2]? [1] https://opencollective.com https://opencollective.com [2] https://github.com/opencollective https://github.com/opencollective
- hbadgery 7y agoGreat question! Thank you. OpenTeams' vision is to become THE platform for open source innovation. OpenCollective uses a donation-based model. On the other hand, OpenTeams is creating a marketplace that connects open source software consuming companies to open source consulting and development companies who are proposing fundable roadmaps for new features and maintenance of critical open source software.
- pabs3 7y agoSome comments from some friends: The website needs to be open source too. You being able to revise the terms of service with no notice is a deal breaker. The privacy policy might not be GDPR compliant due to changes being effective immediately instead of being consented to. Why are you using Slack instead of something more open (like self-hosted Mattermost)?
- chendjoue 7y agoThank you for the feedback!
- hbadgery 7y agoThank you for this fantastic feedback. We will discuss all of these points as a team. Really appreciate it!
- pabs3 7y agoAnother comment: You need to be super transparent about what sort of cut you are taking from funders and how you are funding the OpenTeams project itself and what expenses that funding is paying for (salaries, development, servers etc).
- hbadgery 7y agoWe will be taking a 10% cut on the funding which will go to further development of the platform. The OpenPartner's are responsible for creating the product roadmap in liaison with the development team. This includes a clear budget for where the money is going, just as you described.
- ANDY1997 7y agoFascinating idea and I look forward to seeing where it goes!
- brylie 7y agoRight sidebar and popover message obscures the page and is hard to click away.