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The Rollup project appreciates and thanks Sentry for the contribution. I'd like to ask a question in earnest: Does $500 reflect the value and developer time sa

The Rollup project appreciates and thanks Sentry for the contribution. I'd like to ask a question in earnest: Does $500 reflect the value and developer time savings you've received from the project over the years?

zeeg 5y ago
I'm not actually sure we use Rollup fwiw. The contributions were democratized via our employees - we asked them where we should direct funding for individual projects. So what that ultimately means is some person(s) at Sentry valued the project and your contributions :)
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Appreciate you sharing the process and providing a democratic say to those on the Sentry team in handing out this open source comp.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  Great insight, thanks for sharing.
- bentlegen 5y ago
  We do use Rollup: https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/blob/master/packages/vue/rollup.config.js https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/blob/master/p...
whit537 5y ago
It's tough, I think it depends on the framing and is definitely something worth talking about. Part of what we were trying to do with this initiative is start with some _global_ concept of "fair" and then allocate that amount as best we could. The total amount we came up with is $150,000 which is $2,000 per engineer on staff. Sooooo ... > Does [$155,999.89] reflect the value and developer time savings you've received from [all community-run open source projects] over the year[]? Yes. We believe that contributing $2,000 annually per engineer is a meaningful amount that fairly compensates the value we receive from open source volunteers. May I flip the question? Does $500 reflect the value and developer time savings you've given to Sentry over the past year?
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > May I flip the question? You certainly may, but without knowing how much Sentry uses Rollup it’s hard to say.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  > > Does [$155,999.89] reflect the value and developer time savings you've received from [all community-run open source projects] over the year[]? > May I flip the question? Does $500 reflect the value and developer time savings you've given to Sentry over the past year? It must be frustrating no one would have said anything if Sentry gave $0 instead of $500. Your response seems disingenuous though. They didn't ask about just this year or any other project. The brackets show you knew that.
  - whit537 5y ago
    Right, I was intentionally reframing the question. As a company we wanted to arrive at a budget through a global view and then allocate from there. Rather than look at 100+ projects individually and build up from "How much value did we get from this one? Or that one? And that one?" ... we wanted to reason about a fair amount overall. Is that bad? What's a good (practical, repeatable, reasonable) way to determine fairness?
    - ohyeshedid 5y ago
      > What's a good (practical, repeatable, reasonable) way to determine fairness? If, by magic, these OSS components you use disappeared: How much would it cost to build them? I'm not taking a stance here, I'm just interested.
      - Volundr 5y ago
        > If, by magic, these OSS components you use disappeared: How much would it cost to build them? Hmm... I'm not sure that's a reasonable metric. If Microsoft disappeared it would no doubt cost millions to rebuild SQL Server. That doesn't meant that it would be reasonable for them to charge a 1 million dollar license fee to use it. The cost is amortized across their entire customer base. Similarly I don't think it's reasonable to expect Sentry to pay the NGINX developers 1 million just because it'd cost them that to redevelop in house. One would instead hope ALL dontations summed to something reasonable.
maximedupre 5y ago
That's a great question and I have some thoughts as an outsider. It's pretty much impossible to reflect/match the value received over time. Think about a SAAS that charges 5$ per month, even though the time it saves you is months, if not years. It's also impossible to accurately know what the value received over time is. The best we can all do is support OSS in a way in which we are comfortable, whether that is more or less than the objective received value.
ridaj 5y ago
Likely much lower than the value and developer time savings, but (a) that's usually the case even with licensed software (nobody buys Microsoft Office nearly the amount of "developer time savings" coming from not having to reimplement an office business suite) and (b) by setting up your project as open source, you're essentially saying that you're not interested in capturing any of that value anyways, so I don't really see how it's relevant.
waynesonfire 5y ago
> Does $500 reflect the value and developer time savings you've received from the project over the years? Nice try, people are not paid by the amount of "value" they add. This is a common sales tactic to find and establish an arguable ceiling.

zeeg 5y ago

I'm not actually sure we use Rollup fwiw. The contributions were democratized via our employees - we asked them where we should direct funding for individual projects. So what that ultimately means is some person(s) at Sentry valued the project and your contributions :)

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Appreciate you sharing the process and providing a democratic say to those on the Sentry team in handing out this open source comp.
andrew_ 5y ago
Great insight, thanks for sharing.
bentlegen 5y ago
We do use Rollup: https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/blob/master/packages/vue/rollup.config.js https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/blob/master/p...

whit537 5y ago

It's tough, I think it depends on the framing and is definitely something worth talking about. Part of what we were trying to do with this initiative is start with some _global_ concept of "fair" and then allocate that amount as best we could. The total amount we came up with is $150,000 which is $2,000 per engineer on staff. Sooooo ... > Does [$155,999.89] reflect the value and developer time savings you've received from [all community-run open source projects] over the year[]? Yes. We believe that contributing $2,000 annually per engineer is a meaningful amount that fairly compensates the value we receive from open source volunteers. May I flip the question? Does $500 reflect the value and developer time savings you've given to Sentry over the past year?

Aeolun 5y ago
> May I flip the question? You certainly may, but without knowing how much Sentry uses Rollup it’s hard to say.
pseudalopex 5y ago
> > Does [$155,999.89] reflect the value and developer time savings you've received from [all community-run open source projects] over the year[]? > May I flip the question? Does $500 reflect the value and developer time savings you've given to Sentry over the past year? It must be frustrating no one would have said anything if Sentry gave $0 instead of $500. Your response seems disingenuous though. They didn't ask about just this year or any other project. The brackets show you knew that.
- whit537 5y ago
  Right, I was intentionally reframing the question. As a company we wanted to arrive at a budget through a global view and then allocate from there. Rather than look at 100+ projects individually and build up from "How much value did we get from this one? Or that one? And that one?" ... we wanted to reason about a fair amount overall. Is that bad? What's a good (practical, repeatable, reasonable) way to determine fairness?
  - ohyeshedid 5y ago
    > What's a good (practical, repeatable, reasonable) way to determine fairness? If, by magic, these OSS components you use disappeared: How much would it cost to build them? I'm not taking a stance here, I'm just interested.
    - Volundr 5y ago
      > If, by magic, these OSS components you use disappeared: How much would it cost to build them? Hmm... I'm not sure that's a reasonable metric. If Microsoft disappeared it would no doubt cost millions to rebuild SQL Server. That doesn't meant that it would be reasonable for them to charge a 1 million dollar license fee to use it. The cost is amortized across their entire customer base. Similarly I don't think it's reasonable to expect Sentry to pay the NGINX developers 1 million just because it'd cost them that to redevelop in house. One would instead hope ALL dontations summed to something reasonable.

maximedupre 5y ago

That's a great question and I have some thoughts as an outsider. It's pretty much impossible to reflect/match the value received over time. Think about a SAAS that charges 5$ per month, even though the time it saves you is months, if not years. It's also impossible to accurately know what the value received over time is. The best we can all do is support OSS in a way in which we are comfortable, whether that is more or less than the objective received value.

ridaj 5y ago

Likely much lower than the value and developer time savings, but (a) that's usually the case even with licensed software (nobody buys Microsoft Office nearly the amount of "developer time savings" coming from not having to reimplement an office business suite) and (b) by setting up your project as open source, you're essentially saying that you're not interested in capturing any of that value anyways, so I don't really see how it's relevant.

waynesonfire 5y ago

> Does $500 reflect the value and developer time savings you've received from the project over the years? Nice try, people are not paid by the amount of "value" they add. This is a common sales tactic to find and establish an arguable ceiling.