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Open-Source Contributors Worth Sponsoring
- ushakov 5y agoIf you like Guitars, Machine Learning and FOSS, consider checking out GuitarML http://github.com/guitarml http://github.com/guitarml patreon: https://patreon.com/guitarml https://patreon.com/guitarml (disclosure: i'm a contributor)
- hiyer 5y agoI would like to nominate Kovid Goyal, the author of Calibre[1] and Kitty[2], to this list. I don't know if he accepts sponsorship (and/or donations) - I've not seen anything of that sort on his websites - but I'll be eternally grateful for the wonderful stuff he's created! 1. https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/ 2. https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ Edit: formatting
- astoilkov 5y agoI'm looking at him right now — https://github.com/kovidgoyal https://github.com/kovidgoyal. You can sponsor him at https://github.com/sponsors/kovidgoyal https://github.com/sponsors/kovidgoyal. It seems like he's spending a lot of time developing Calibre and has only 9 sponsors. Do you know of any other way he can make money out of Calibre? GitHub contributions graph shows that he has consistently worked on Calibre for the past 12 years. That's amazing!
- ddoeth 5y agoDamn, I have never seen a git contribution overview with so little missing days.
- heurisko 5y agoI've used ebook-convert [1] from the Calibre project. It is unrivalled in my opinion. [1] https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/generated/en/ebook-convert.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/generated/en/ebook-convert....
- david_allison 5y agoI've posted about Kovid before. He's on sponsors[0] making >=$40/m. He also makes $2,142/m on Patreon[1] and ~$74/m on Liberapay[2]. The calibre site[3] also accepts PayPal. [0] https://github.com/sponsors/kovidgoyal https://github.com/sponsors/kovidgoyal [1] https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal [2] https://liberapay.com/kovidgoyal/donate https://liberapay.com/kovidgoyal/donate [3] https://calibre-ebook.com/donate https://calibre-ebook.com/donate
- math-dev 5y agoCalibre is Amazing!
- Isthatablackgsd 5y agoCalibre is a great piece of software. I am using it for Legos instructions set for my partner hobby which have over 300 paper instruction booklets. I have majority of the digital instruction sets in PDF from various sources and put them in Calibre Web for my partner to access the PDFs without needing to through the box to find it. Surely Legos have their own digital library but they only hold small pool of instructions on their sites which prompted me to use Calibre Web. It works well for him and I am happy with that.
- darthcloud 5y agoI personally sponsor: Hector Martin: https://github.com/sponsors/marcan https://github.com/sponsors/marcan Apple M1 silicon RE & Linux port Ryan C. Gordon: https://github.com/sponsors/icculus https://github.com/sponsors/icculus SDL lib maintainer They make awesome work and look like decent human beings.
- astoilkov 5y agoCool. I will need some time to understand what they are doing as I'm not an expert on Linux.
- faho 5y agoThis really seems like a rich-getting-richer sort of deal. It recommends Sindre Sorhus, who already gets over $10K/month via Github Sponsors [0]. If you're interested in making this sort of funding viable, it would be better to give your money to someone else, maybe to allow them to do it full-time or part-time? Github itself also likes recommending already popular people. [0]: https://sindresorhus.com/thanks https://sindresorhus.com/thanks
- astoilkov 5y agoI agree, I'm helping the Power Law distribution. I wondered a lot if I should add Sindre to the list — most people know him, he earns a lot. I decided to add him because he contributes back (sponsors other open-source creators) and creates tons of value for the community.
- Kovah 5y ago> Open-source creators are underpaid. Maybe you should rephrase your article, or remove him. Sindre is one of the most-paid open source creators. There are other creators which definitely deserve to be listed here instead of him.
- astoilkov 5y agoAll the arguments make sense. I've removed him from the list.
- PicassoCTs 5y agoThe price of freedom aka not to have your work crippled by stakeholder interests
- faho 5y agoBut he'll do that whether he gets $10000 or $10005 a month. Giving to someone who makes less is much more of a change for them, giving you more bang for your buck.
- 5y ago
- fps_doug 5y agoI'd like to throw in PhotoPrism[1], a web-based photo management tool. It's already moving forward steadily, having recently added a first version of facial recognition. The author wants to make it his full time job, but isn't quite there yet funding-wise. [1]: https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism
- astoilkov 5y agoI like this type of business model. Create it for free and earn from your biggest fans. However, it's probably a big struggle for them.
- asicsp 5y agoI tried getting donations on my GitHub repos (this was before Sponsors was announced). I got just one sponsor for about $1/month, which got cancelled after some months due to payment gateway changes. In hindsight, I didn't do a good job of asking for donation and my repos were on programming tutorials rather than open source software. This pushed me towards adapting my tutorials to ebooks and self publishing. I promoted the books as pay-what-you-want for a few days after completing each book. This method of donation worked much better for me [0] I feel free software could also adapt similar approach during installation/download in addition to setting up Sponsors. [0] https://learnbyexample.github.io/my-book-writing-experience/ https://learnbyexample.github.io/my-book-writing-experience/
- jdorfman 5y agoI would like to nominate XhmikosR[0], maintainer of Bootstrap. At the time of this writing he has 4 sponsors. We were co-maintainers of BootstrapCDN and even though we recently archived & split our Open Collective earnings, I know he barely gets by. [0]: https://github.com/sponsors/XhmikosR https://github.com/sponsors/XhmikosR
- astoilkov 5y agoThanks. I like this nomination as maintainers of popular repos are even more underpaid than the original creators of the repos.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kuon 5y agoI do not want to hijack this thread or promote myself, but maybe you could suggest something. I realized I was working up to 50% on open source projects, and I wanted to accept sponsoring, but I moved away from github (which is surely a terrible idea for an open source guy, but I had my "stallman moment"). I do work mostly on gitlab and my own gitea instance. What I did is setup stripe, with donate button on my blog but it is not very friendly and there is no social effect. Do you know an alternative to github sponsor that allow source to be scattered around?
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y agoopencollective, maybe? Here's an example: https://opencollective.com/neovim https://opencollective.com/neovim
- kuon 5y agoThanks for the suggestion.
- brightly-salty 5y agoko-fi.com is an alternative, similar to Patreon. It offers many different types of links and buttons, and is comparable to GitHub sponsors in terms of features and tiers, as far as I can tell. (Not affiliated, by the way)
- kuon 5y agoThis is a nice platform, it seems to be close to what I was thinking.
- david_allison 5y agohttps://liberapay.com/ https://liberapay.com/ https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/ (typically requires OSS license + 100 stars + 2 contributors)
- kuon 5y ago
- ulnarkressty 5y agoRecently wanted to back up my CD collection and came upon Aaru, which supports an impressive amount of formats: https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru The main developer is currently getting $100 a month on Patreon.
- 0des 5y agoSubmitted for the approval of the midnight society: I'd like to propose the currently underappreciated and undersupported developer of Qutebrowser - a minimal browser with our best interests in mind that isn't another chrome clone. https://github.com/sponsors/The-Compiler/ https://github.com/sponsors/The-Compiler/
- ivan4th 5y agoSomewhat related: if you're using Common Lisp, and SBCL in particular, please consider sponsoring Stas Boukarev, who is an important SBCL contributor https://www.patreon.com/stassats https://www.patreon.com/stassats JS is here to stay regardless of the sponsorships, but lispers are few and far between ;)
- jimaek 5y agoGitHub Sponsors is great but there is still not enough people and companies willing to spend money to support free and open projects. It's a lot easier to get them to give you free services worth thousands of dollars than donate 20$ per month. Another problem is that the people building these projects are often developers who focus on the technology and completely ignore the marketing side of things. Or simply have no idea how to do marketing. Which makes it finding sponsors almost impossible. Our project is a good example of that, I've been trying to fix the marketing issue for years and I'm still struggling https://github.com/jsDelivr https://github.com/jsDelivr If anyone has any ideas how to make it more attractive to companies to support us please let me know, I would really appreciate it.
- that_guy_iain 5y agoPersonally, I would much prefer we move over to source-available options that would allow people to charge commerical companies generating x amount of money a fee while providing free of charge for everyone else. The whole idea that I as a private person need to sponsor someone else to do open source work so I can use their code at my paid job to do something for my for-profit employer seems outragous to me and a sign that out ecosystem is corrupt. Companies get rich while we pay out.
- rglullis 5y agoDoes "source available" allow people to fork a project and redistribute it? What happens if the original author abandons the project for any reason? "Source available" is just a nicer name for shareware. I am less inclined to support someone making shareware than someone who is making free software. > so I can use their code at my paid job Free software is not just about "your code at work". There are plenty of projects not related to dev tooling that you could contribute.
- that_guy_iain 5y ago>Does "source available" allow people to fork a project and redistribute it? What happens if the original author abandons the project for any reason? A project generating enough revenue would just be outsourced to someone else, sold, etc. Just like normal commerical software. > I am less inclined to support someone making shareware than someone who is making free software The point is you wouldn't need to support them, they would be generating revenue from for-profit companies using the software. Companies that generate money using the code would have to pay for the code.
- rglullis 5y ago> Just like normal commerical software. Yeah, but that means that it is "just like normal commercial software", which is not the point of Free/Libre/Open Source Software. You are basically saying "I wish that people writing FOSS stopped doing that." > they would be generating revenue from for-profit companies using the software. That makes the very naive assumption that a FOSS project that has grown to be successful would have reached the same status if it were "source available".
- mythz 5y agoDrilling down this list helped me to find https://notable.app https://notable.app by @fabiospampinato It looks like a beautifully simple Markdown Notes Desktop App (Win/Mac/Linux). Have just been playing with it to import plain .txt files lying around on my Desktop. Has a simple out-of-the-way UI for creating markdown pages, organize active ones in tags, favorites or pin to top. Saves as plain .md files in 1 folder. Zen, floating & translucent modes. Looks like a TODO.txt notepad.exe replacement that might stick.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Alacart 5y agoI also recommend sponsoring Matt Holt for his work on Caddy and several other very useful and high quality open source repos. He's very under sponsored for having built a server that a lot of companies use. https://github.com/sponsors/mholt https://github.com/sponsors/mholt
- mholt 5y agoThank you. Could definitely use more sponsorships, particularly from companies. I'm also open to ideas on how to make sponsorships more attractive to those who are considering it! (Without taking away too much from dev time, if possible.)
- pid-1 5y agoI sponsor the FastAPI dude, great project.
- toastercat 5y ago[flagged]
- zohch 5y agoGolang world? I mean they congratulate themselves on not having generics and not having absolute value functions because everyone can just write the function themselves.
- chucke 5y agoDon't forget me. I'm incendiary too!
- ngcc_hk 5y agoIf you look at recent case of switch to Ks from lisp, it is not the money but the community formation that is the key. No doubt it is nit either or. But more money may not be helpful if people just copy cat. Money ok as open source is not free source. But money is not the key.
- oldsecondhand 5y agoI nominate Synfig, which is a 2D vector animation tool. This is the most mature opensource tool in its category, but it still needs a lot of work to be able to compete with the commercial offering. https://www.synfig.org/ https://www.synfig.org/ https://www.synfig.org/donate/ https://www.synfig.org/donate/