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After 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 e

After 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 ago
This is a two sided marketplace - which side are you focusing on first? Developers or sponsors?
- hbadgery 7y ago
  Great 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 ago
Travis 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.

throwGuardian 7y ago

This is a two sided marketplace - which side are you focusing on first? Developers or sponsors?

hbadgery 7y ago
Great 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 ago

Travis 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.