7 ms·

I think this is good will for sure, and 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software, but the real problem with (most) FOSS is the lack of cle

I think this is good will for sure, and 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software, but the real problem with (most) FOSS is the lack of clear structure or organization in terms of payment. Not only who gets paid, but also how much to pay, how to quantity roles and work, spending if necessary, etc. That’s the real problem/opportunity for someone like Gratipay.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aordano 5y ago
I think a possible solution may be paying not in terms of money. For a free and open source project, the ultimate goal IMO is growth and usability, to fulfill the reason why the software itself exists, and that can be done by donating that money in the shape of a hiring dedicated to work on the software. Some companies already do this, and i don't see why the practice couldn't be more established as a way to ensure a quid pro quo with the community.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  That would only work for the largest companies hiring for the largest FOSS projects, without some sort of independent administration.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    Hiring a full time dev just for FOSS submissions probably isn't justifiable to most employers, but diverting just a little employee time seems reasonable, especially if it's directed at bugs/feature improvements impacting the devs' use of the thing.
    - xboxnolifes 5y ago
      An issue with that is that even if you use a FOSS solution, your devs might not have the domain experience to contribute. Of if they could, it may be pretty inefficient to or take a while to get up to speed to get any meaningful contributions in.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      Instead of a little time from a lot of employees (which might be as much a burden for the project as a blessing), it might be better for many companies to pay into a pot that provides someone's salary, while one of the companies donates the desk. This is what I meant by administration.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I have a few small-time OSS projects, the most popular only has ~50 stars on GitHub. A couple of years back, someone asked if they could donate $250 to me - that was the first (and until now, only) time anyone did such a thing. I was really happy about it - not so much about the money, but more the fact they liked the project so much they were willing to hand over money. Anyway, I asked if they could donate it to a charity instead, and I suggested a few that have personal meaning. They were quite happy with that, and actually donated $500 instead :)
inter_netuser 5y ago
perhaps this is something DAOs can fix.
- uncomputation 5y ago
  Could you elaborate? My understanding of what you’re saying is the organization will be specified in code, whether that be compensation via commits or transactions or what have you, and then companies pay into this DAO contract?
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    essentially it could license the open source for commercial use transparently and automatically, when you pull the library/package. zero negotiations, zero lawyers, just a commandline one-liner or something. micropayments for package management.
sam0x17 5y ago
Worst case scenario, I guarantee you if you open an issue on a repo (especially a small / one-person repo) saying you want to donate $1k/yr, or some non-trivial amount, you'll get a meaningful response. True though that for larger projects there can be a lack of ownership problem. The conversation could become "hey we'd like to lend you our legal resources to help you set up a foundation for this project, and then we'd like to donate $X/month to the foundation going forward." When it comes down to it, if a project is able to cut releases, there is some sort of structure in there that is working, just have to figure it out.
- uncomputation 5y ago
  Right, this is the most common model I’ve seen: forming a foundation and companies contribute via that foundation, either workers/staff/people or money.
whit537 5y ago
> 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software 2k per engineer ... that's more than a rounding error. It'd be interesting to compare to per-seat licensing for commercial software. Anyone have examples?
- dnautics 5y ago
  It's not far off for a developer in the US. You figure they make somewhere from 80-150k in the median, X2 all-in cost as a rule of thumb for employment in the US, so 2k/dev is ~1% or "rounding error"
  - whit537 5y ago
    Sure, but I'm saying compare it to something like Oracle (what other commercial software is still out there? I don't know). What does a company pay annually for Oracle (expressed per engineer for comparison)?
    - whit537 5y ago
      Okay this is really complicated. D: https://wintelguy.com/oracle-db-licensing-calc.pl https://wintelguy.com/oracle-db-licensing-calc.pl https://www.orskl.com/what-is-the-cost-of-oracle-database-license-lets-find-out/ https://www.orskl.com/what-is-the-cost-of-oracle-database-li...
    - whit537 5y ago
      Soooooo I realized that commercial software is no longer onpremise (Oracle) but SaaS. :D Anecdotally, $2,000 per user per year would be a really expensive SaaS app (right?). Not exactly apples to apples but so far I think $2,000/user/yr is a good ballpark for open source value. Note also that the blog post indicates a 50% markdown in labor value because companies pay a tax to direct employee time, so people should expect to get paid less when working self-determinedly on open source.
  - coolspot 5y ago
    Can you please elaborate what are “X2 all-in cost” for a $150k software engineer? I can imagine it would include things like an office space, snacks, yoga classes, etc. I don’t think it is anywhere close to additional $150k, maybe $10-20k.
malwarebytess 5y ago
There's several 100+ million dollar businesses where I live that make their money on phone support/installation/deployment of open source software they maintain. Nobody pays for the software, but they'll pay out the nose on a yearly basis for support.
- curryst 5y ago
  That creates a perverse incentive where you want your open source stuff to be hard to use so people have to pay you. Plus there's no guarantee that the developers will be the ones making money. There's a lot of ire at Amazon because of that.
  - dudus 5y ago
    Or even worse, it creates an incentive for the big cloud conglomerates to offer that software as a managed service and pocket the revenue.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      That's what Affero GPL is for.
  - malwarebytess 5y ago
    I don't agree. One example of this business plan is the best software of its category on the market: open dental software.
    - whit537 5y ago
      TIL. Neat! :) https://www.opendental.com/ https://www.opendental.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Dental https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Dental
  - kawsper 5y ago
    It happens with paid subscriptions as well. Some examples of this, that I can think of: - Varnish Cache where you need a paid subscription, or community patches and you have to do the compilation yourself, to make it understand SRV-records instead of hardcoding IPs or hostnames. - Nginx also need a paid subscription to understand SRV-records. Both of these companies have realized that in order for people to effectively run the software within a cluster, you need support for SRV-records to get service discovery working.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aordano 5y ago

I think a possible solution may be paying not in terms of money. For a free and open source project, the ultimate goal IMO is growth and usability, to fulfill the reason why the software itself exists, and that can be done by donating that money in the shape of a hiring dedicated to work on the software. Some companies already do this, and i don't see why the practice couldn't be more established as a way to ensure a quid pro quo with the community.

pessimizer 5y ago
That would only work for the largest companies hiring for the largest FOSS projects, without some sort of independent administration.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  Hiring a full time dev just for FOSS submissions probably isn't justifiable to most employers, but diverting just a little employee time seems reasonable, especially if it's directed at bugs/feature improvements impacting the devs' use of the thing.
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    An issue with that is that even if you use a FOSS solution, your devs might not have the domain experience to contribute. Of if they could, it may be pretty inefficient to or take a while to get up to speed to get any meaningful contributions in.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Instead of a little time from a lot of employees (which might be as much a burden for the project as a blessing), it might be better for many companies to pay into a pot that provides someone's salary, while one of the companies donates the desk. This is what I meant by administration.
GordonS 5y ago
I have a few small-time OSS projects, the most popular only has ~50 stars on GitHub. A couple of years back, someone asked if they could donate $250 to me - that was the first (and until now, only) time anyone did such a thing. I was really happy about it - not so much about the money, but more the fact they liked the project so much they were willing to hand over money. Anyway, I asked if they could donate it to a charity instead, and I suggested a few that have personal meaning. They were quite happy with that, and actually donated $500 instead :)

inter_netuser 5y ago

perhaps this is something DAOs can fix.

uncomputation 5y ago
Could you elaborate? My understanding of what you’re saying is the organization will be specified in code, whether that be compensation via commits or transactions or what have you, and then companies pay into this DAO contract?
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  essentially it could license the open source for commercial use transparently and automatically, when you pull the library/package. zero negotiations, zero lawyers, just a commandline one-liner or something. micropayments for package management.

sam0x17 5y ago

Worst case scenario, I guarantee you if you open an issue on a repo (especially a small / one-person repo) saying you want to donate $1k/yr, or some non-trivial amount, you'll get a meaningful response. True though that for larger projects there can be a lack of ownership problem. The conversation could become "hey we'd like to lend you our legal resources to help you set up a foundation for this project, and then we'd like to donate $X/month to the foundation going forward." When it comes down to it, if a project is able to cut releases, there is some sort of structure in there that is working, just have to figure it out.

uncomputation 5y ago
Right, this is the most common model I’ve seen: forming a foundation and companies contribute via that foundation, either workers/staff/people or money.

whit537 5y ago

> 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software 2k per engineer ... that's more than a rounding error. It'd be interesting to compare to per-seat licensing for commercial software. Anyone have examples?

dnautics 5y ago
It's not far off for a developer in the US. You figure they make somewhere from 80-150k in the median, X2 all-in cost as a rule of thumb for employment in the US, so 2k/dev is ~1% or "rounding error"
- whit537 5y ago
  Sure, but I'm saying compare it to something like Oracle (what other commercial software is still out there? I don't know). What does a company pay annually for Oracle (expressed per engineer for comparison)?
  - whit537 5y ago
    Okay this is really complicated. D: https://wintelguy.com/oracle-db-licensing-calc.pl https://wintelguy.com/oracle-db-licensing-calc.pl https://www.orskl.com/what-is-the-cost-of-oracle-database-license-lets-find-out/ https://www.orskl.com/what-is-the-cost-of-oracle-database-li...
  - whit537 5y ago
    Soooooo I realized that commercial software is no longer onpremise (Oracle) but SaaS. :D Anecdotally, $2,000 per user per year would be a really expensive SaaS app (right?). Not exactly apples to apples but so far I think $2,000/user/yr is a good ballpark for open source value. Note also that the blog post indicates a 50% markdown in labor value because companies pay a tax to direct employee time, so people should expect to get paid less when working self-determinedly on open source.
- coolspot 5y ago
  Can you please elaborate what are “X2 all-in cost” for a $150k software engineer? I can imagine it would include things like an office space, snacks, yoga classes, etc. I don’t think it is anywhere close to additional $150k, maybe $10-20k.

malwarebytess 5y ago

There's several 100+ million dollar businesses where I live that make their money on phone support/installation/deployment of open source software they maintain. Nobody pays for the software, but they'll pay out the nose on a yearly basis for support.

curryst 5y ago
That creates a perverse incentive where you want your open source stuff to be hard to use so people have to pay you. Plus there's no guarantee that the developers will be the ones making money. There's a lot of ire at Amazon because of that.
- dudus 5y ago
  Or even worse, it creates an incentive for the big cloud conglomerates to offer that software as a managed service and pocket the revenue.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    That's what Affero GPL is for.
- malwarebytess 5y ago
  I don't agree. One example of this business plan is the best software of its category on the market: open dental software.
  - whit537 5y ago
    TIL. Neat! :) https://www.opendental.com/ https://www.opendental.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Dental https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Dental
- kawsper 5y ago
  It happens with paid subscriptions as well. Some examples of this, that I can think of: - Varnish Cache where you need a paid subscription, or community patches and you have to do the compilation yourself, to make it understand SRV-records instead of hardcoding IPs or hostnames. - Nginx also need a paid subscription to understand SRV-records. Both of these companies have realized that in order for people to effectively run the software within a cluster, you need support for SRV-records to get service discovery working.