4 ms·

Would anyone donate to a service that maps your dependency tree and breaks up your donation to support the projects in your entire tree (not only surface level)

Would anyone donate to a service that maps your dependency tree and breaks up your donation to support the projects in your entire tree (not only surface level) proportional to their usage or something like that?

rabidrat 6y ago
It's been proposed and tried before, and I think generally deemed not worth it. a) Almost no one donates, b) the donations would be broken up to infinitesimal levels, helping no one, and c) there are people who devote their working lives to OSS without compensation, other people who write a few cute small libraries/tools but don't need the money, and then there are corporations who contribute to open-source for their own benefit. The proportion of money that would go to your favorite OSS heroes would be embarrassingly small; compounded by the low donation level and general dilution.
- koolba 6y ago
  Also you end up with a handful of people making 1000s of one liner libraries that link to each other in an effort to game such systems.
  - Mtinie 6y ago
    Single line anti-gaming algorithms could be open sourced to combat this.
  - whatch 6y ago
    At the same time other people will be more motivated not to include one-liner libraries to not further dilute donations.
  - m463 6y ago
    Maybe that would lead to 1000s of new possible libraries to use in your projects, some of them useful.
  - talaketu 6y ago
    Would this be prevented if the fiscal flow followed the dependency graph? On the other hand, in market capitalism, economy of scale is a powerful force for conglomeration that sometimes results in an anti-competitive reduction in consumer choice.
- aetherspawn 6y ago
  I guess you could have a heuristic that takes into consideration the number of lines of code from the projects source repository, the last date of commit (i.e. exclude projects that are unsupported for >3mo), the number of contributors, whether the author has opted-in up to receive donations and some heuristic on the number and size of commits to try and estimate the number of hours spent authoring. And then of course, manually approving each hours/month estimate above a certain amount i.e. 10 hours per month.
  - prepend 6y ago
    > heuristic that takes into consideration the number of lines of code from the projects source repository Not only is this a horrible metric of value, it’s ridiculously easy to game. It’s pretty hard to measure objective value of software. I think the closest is letting the market set a price and that has lots of flaws. One of the upsides of OSS is that it bypasses that whole aspect. I think the best approach is to let projects choose their own license according to their goals. If they want to charge, let them. If they want to be free, let them.
    - rabidrat 6y ago
      I wish there were a vetted Open Source license that: - allowed the code to be visible and available as a general rule - allowed an individual user to use it and modify it for non-commercial use - disallowed redistributing modified versions (distributing patches would be fine) - disallowed commercial use Basically, a license that would allow free experimentation and grassroots adoption and all kinds of open-source goodness for individuals, while not giving FAANG profiteers a handout for RMS' ideological reasons.
      - rpdillon 6y ago
        What you're describing would preclude someone from forking the project, even to maintain it after the author lost interest. That's one of the main risks I seek to avoid by using Free software.
- m463 6y ago
  There was one time though... When redhat went public, they gave redhat stock to a long list of free software developers that had made significant contributions.
- danans 6y ago
  > c) there are people who devote their working lives to OSS without compensation, other people who write a few cute small libraries/tools but don't need the money Serious question. If you are devoting your working life (that is, time that would otherwise be dedicated to remunerative work) to OSS without compensation, then by definition you probably don't need the money, right? Perhaps because you are already wealthy, or have a family that will support you. There's nothing wrong with this of course, many of us would contribute to OSS for free if we didn't have mortgages and families to pay for. It's basically like doing volunteer work after retirement. Put another way, are there many people devoting their entire working lives to OSS with no other compensation or resources, essentially going bankrupt to write OSS? I'd imagine very few people are in that category, or if they are, can't sustain it for very long.
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    I took a sabbatical from work in 2017 and devoted that time to creating an open source project which I felt was important to exist in the world. I am not wealthy, nor was anyone else supporting me; I had saved up enough to take a year off, and instead of travelling or learning the saxophone, I spent my time developing software that I released under GPL. I guess because I was not living hand-to-mouth, I didn't "need" the money? But I wound up nearly going into debt, because it took another year to get a job after that--turns out that maintaining an open-source project is not an asset for employers but a liability. I had an offer from a HugeCo for decent money, but I turned it down because it would basically have precluded me from working further on this project which is only now starting to walk on its own. It's not my entire working life, by any stretch, but those 2 years were 5% of it, and I figure that cost me $200k+ in "lost" wages. And that does not count all the "free" time I've spent since, fixing bugs and helping people use it, because I love the thing and I want other people to love it too. I'm glad I created it, it's very useful to me and other people who do data exploration in the terminal, but now I have to accept that I probably won't ever recover any significant amount of that value, because...people don't pay for open-source software.
    - freedomben 6y ago
      May I ask, what project did you build?
sgillen 6y ago
Hmm maybe, I would want to avoid donating to big projects supported by google etc though and instead focus on smaller community projects, regardless of their usage. Measuring usage in general I think will be tricky..
x1798DE 6y ago
I think you are describing Tidelift: tidelift.com
gowld 6y ago
Why bother? FOSS is a charitable gift to humanity. Appreciate the givers, and give what you can too. If you have money and not time/skill to give, then you can give your money to any charitable cause that needs it (FOSS, or any other cause). If you satisfy one need, then someone else can satisfy another. There's no need to distibute your gift in a complicated way. Example: Bram Moolenaar (ViM) asks users to :help uganda, not to pay him. And I speculate that he wouldn't be offended if you donated to help someone else in need instead.
mulmen 6y ago
What if instead of donating to the project proportional to use it donated developer time to projects most in need?
LeonB 6y ago
There is this existing (and somewhat complex) system that measures people's income and diverts a portion of that to a fund which is then used to support systems that people deem to be socially beneficial. Various versions of it are installed around the world. A lot of big companies that should contribute the most seem to find a way not to contribute at all, and others use their influence to divert the spending away from socially beneficial programmes. And there's quite a lot of disagreement about it, generally.
gitgud 6y ago
This would sort of discourage code-reuse and modularity, as people would rather copy a module into their project to prevent their donations from diluting to them...

rabidrat 6y ago

It's been proposed and tried before, and I think generally deemed not worth it. a) Almost no one donates, b) the donations would be broken up to infinitesimal levels, helping no one, and c) there are people who devote their working lives to OSS without compensation, other people who write a few cute small libraries/tools but don't need the money, and then there are corporations who contribute to open-source for their own benefit. The proportion of money that would go to your favorite OSS heroes would be embarrassingly small; compounded by the low donation level and general dilution.

koolba 6y ago
Also you end up with a handful of people making 1000s of one liner libraries that link to each other in an effort to game such systems.
- Mtinie 6y ago
  Single line anti-gaming algorithms could be open sourced to combat this.
- whatch 6y ago
  At the same time other people will be more motivated not to include one-liner libraries to not further dilute donations.
- m463 6y ago
  Maybe that would lead to 1000s of new possible libraries to use in your projects, some of them useful.
- talaketu 6y ago
  Would this be prevented if the fiscal flow followed the dependency graph? On the other hand, in market capitalism, economy of scale is a powerful force for conglomeration that sometimes results in an anti-competitive reduction in consumer choice.
aetherspawn 6y ago
I guess you could have a heuristic that takes into consideration the number of lines of code from the projects source repository, the last date of commit (i.e. exclude projects that are unsupported for >3mo), the number of contributors, whether the author has opted-in up to receive donations and some heuristic on the number and size of commits to try and estimate the number of hours spent authoring. And then of course, manually approving each hours/month estimate above a certain amount i.e. 10 hours per month.
- prepend 6y ago
  > heuristic that takes into consideration the number of lines of code from the projects source repository Not only is this a horrible metric of value, it’s ridiculously easy to game. It’s pretty hard to measure objective value of software. I think the closest is letting the market set a price and that has lots of flaws. One of the upsides of OSS is that it bypasses that whole aspect. I think the best approach is to let projects choose their own license according to their goals. If they want to charge, let them. If they want to be free, let them.
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    I wish there were a vetted Open Source license that: - allowed the code to be visible and available as a general rule - allowed an individual user to use it and modify it for non-commercial use - disallowed redistributing modified versions (distributing patches would be fine) - disallowed commercial use Basically, a license that would allow free experimentation and grassroots adoption and all kinds of open-source goodness for individuals, while not giving FAANG profiteers a handout for RMS' ideological reasons.
    - rpdillon 6y ago
      What you're describing would preclude someone from forking the project, even to maintain it after the author lost interest. That's one of the main risks I seek to avoid by using Free software.
m463 6y ago
There was one time though... When redhat went public, they gave redhat stock to a long list of free software developers that had made significant contributions.
danans 6y ago
> c) there are people who devote their working lives to OSS without compensation, other people who write a few cute small libraries/tools but don't need the money Serious question. If you are devoting your working life (that is, time that would otherwise be dedicated to remunerative work) to OSS without compensation, then by definition you probably don't need the money, right? Perhaps because you are already wealthy, or have a family that will support you. There's nothing wrong with this of course, many of us would contribute to OSS for free if we didn't have mortgages and families to pay for. It's basically like doing volunteer work after retirement. Put another way, are there many people devoting their entire working lives to OSS with no other compensation or resources, essentially going bankrupt to write OSS? I'd imagine very few people are in that category, or if they are, can't sustain it for very long.
- rabidrat 6y ago
  I took a sabbatical from work in 2017 and devoted that time to creating an open source project which I felt was important to exist in the world. I am not wealthy, nor was anyone else supporting me; I had saved up enough to take a year off, and instead of travelling or learning the saxophone, I spent my time developing software that I released under GPL. I guess because I was not living hand-to-mouth, I didn't "need" the money? But I wound up nearly going into debt, because it took another year to get a job after that--turns out that maintaining an open-source project is not an asset for employers but a liability. I had an offer from a HugeCo for decent money, but I turned it down because it would basically have precluded me from working further on this project which is only now starting to walk on its own. It's not my entire working life, by any stretch, but those 2 years were 5% of it, and I figure that cost me $200k+ in "lost" wages. And that does not count all the "free" time I've spent since, fixing bugs and helping people use it, because I love the thing and I want other people to love it too. I'm glad I created it, it's very useful to me and other people who do data exploration in the terminal, but now I have to accept that I probably won't ever recover any significant amount of that value, because...people don't pay for open-source software.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    May I ask, what project did you build?

sgillen 6y ago

Hmm maybe, I would want to avoid donating to big projects supported by google etc though and instead focus on smaller community projects, regardless of their usage. Measuring usage in general I think will be tricky..

x1798DE 6y ago

I think you are describing Tidelift: tidelift.com

gowld 6y ago

Why bother? FOSS is a charitable gift to humanity. Appreciate the givers, and give what you can too. If you have money and not time/skill to give, then you can give your money to any charitable cause that needs it (FOSS, or any other cause). If you satisfy one need, then someone else can satisfy another. There's no need to distibute your gift in a complicated way. Example: Bram Moolenaar (ViM) asks users to :help uganda, not to pay him. And I speculate that he wouldn't be offended if you donated to help someone else in need instead.

mulmen 6y ago

What if instead of donating to the project proportional to use it donated developer time to projects most in need?

LeonB 6y ago

There is this existing (and somewhat complex) system that measures people's income and diverts a portion of that to a fund which is then used to support systems that people deem to be socially beneficial. Various versions of it are installed around the world. A lot of big companies that should contribute the most seem to find a way not to contribute at all, and others use their influence to divert the spending away from socially beneficial programmes. And there's quite a lot of disagreement about it, generally.

gitgud 6y ago

This would sort of discourage code-reuse and modularity, as people would rather copy a module into their project to prevent their donations from diluting to them...