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That page argues (convincingly!) that open source is growing faster and faster in terms of contributors, projects, commits, etc. This is definitely the case, de

That page argues (convincingly!) that open source is growing faster and faster in terms of contributors, projects, commits, etc. This is definitely the case, despite the fact that the funding problem is unsolved. But who knows how much faster OSS would be growing if it was solved?

wolco 6y ago
Want a new idea? Sell direction of the project. Offer roadmap milestones. Sell priority over features maybe even bug features. Sell hats/logos/branded hosting environments. Sell access to internal conversation. Sell invites to internal product Zoom meetings. Sell access to private jira boards/trello cards.
- colinmcd 6y ago
  One of the projects I had in mind when writing this post is the "color" module on npm. It's a fantastic utility for reading in colors in different formats (hex, decimal, CMYK), applying transformations, and getting a modified color back (in your format of choice). For all intents and purposes this module is "done". It's extremely mature and has already implemented everything it set out to do. It has 3.3k stars and 8M monthly downloads. When I look at your list of proposals, none of them really apply to "color". The projects you have in your head are big, ambitious projects, not the smaller utility projects I describe in the article.
  - wolco 6y ago
    But if there is no active development why would these projects need additional funding? Is it just a thank you gift?
    - merlinsbrain 6y ago
      At that point it’s just a license to use. MIT isn’t going to fly anymore if the intention is to make money off of that.
    - colinmcd 6y ago
      Yes
rsa25519 6y ago
> But who knows how much faster OSS would be growing if it was solved? Not just how much faster it would grow, but how much existing projects would improve. Maintainer burnout is real, and I think that OSS would benefit a lot from long-term maintenance being encouraged by even a few dollars a year. Even $3/year would make OSS maintenance a lot more fulfilling for me personally, because that $3 shows that I'm actually helping people.
prepend 6y ago
I think there are challenges with how to make money from open source projects, but that is very different than “ Existing open source funding models don't work for small projects.” I think the fundamental funding model seems to work well based on the number and rate of growth in small projects- philanthropy. The vast majority of small projects don’t require funding because their authors donate their time and code produced. This seems to work really well based on how many people do it. Perhaps more would do it if there was funding, perhaps less. We do have a large commercial software industry and they have a pretty figured out model.

wolco 6y ago

Want a new idea? Sell direction of the project. Offer roadmap milestones. Sell priority over features maybe even bug features. Sell hats/logos/branded hosting environments. Sell access to internal conversation. Sell invites to internal product Zoom meetings. Sell access to private jira boards/trello cards.

colinmcd 6y ago
One of the projects I had in mind when writing this post is the "color" module on npm. It's a fantastic utility for reading in colors in different formats (hex, decimal, CMYK), applying transformations, and getting a modified color back (in your format of choice). For all intents and purposes this module is "done". It's extremely mature and has already implemented everything it set out to do. It has 3.3k stars and 8M monthly downloads. When I look at your list of proposals, none of them really apply to "color". The projects you have in your head are big, ambitious projects, not the smaller utility projects I describe in the article.
- wolco 6y ago
  But if there is no active development why would these projects need additional funding? Is it just a thank you gift?
  - merlinsbrain 6y ago
    At that point it’s just a license to use. MIT isn’t going to fly anymore if the intention is to make money off of that.
  - colinmcd 6y ago
    Yes

rsa25519 6y ago

> But who knows how much faster OSS would be growing if it was solved? Not just how much faster it would grow, but how much existing projects would improve. Maintainer burnout is real, and I think that OSS would benefit a lot from long-term maintenance being encouraged by even a few dollars a year. Even $3/year would make OSS maintenance a lot more fulfilling for me personally, because that $3 shows that I'm actually helping people.

prepend 6y ago

I think there are challenges with how to make money from open source projects, but that is very different than “ Existing open source funding models don't work for small projects.” I think the fundamental funding model seems to work well based on the number and rate of growth in small projects- philanthropy. The vast majority of small projects don’t require funding because their authors donate their time and code produced. This seems to work really well based on how many people do it. Perhaps more would do it if there was funding, perhaps less. We do have a large commercial software industry and they have a pretty figured out model.