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This can work, if there's a sales team attached to the company that actually goes out and sells the idea of paying money to the open source project. For a maint
by noway421 5y ago
This can work, if there's a sales team attached to the company that actually goes out and sells the idea of paying money to the open source project. For a maintainer to do an SDR and a salesperson job is just not sustainable - they are not good at it and it will take them a lot of time that they can spend writing code.
Instead, you could set up a structure where open source authors set up an LLC, and then get a salesperson hired on a revenue-based retainer. The salesperson then actually goes out and talks about "supply chain attacks" and "open source sustainability" to the target companies and tries to close deals with them. Maybe they can even work on stuff like "vendor approval assessment" and other paperwork. Maybe the salesperson hires more people that actually do the paperwork and sales development, and the salesperson themselves only does the closing. That way, the maintainer continues to write code and now it's a salesperson who actually brings in the revenue.
You can even set up a marketplace startup which caters to this whole workflow. 2 user types: open source authors and salespeople. Open source authors can create an LLC with a click (integrate with Stripe Atlas?), then they go into 'Call-for-salesperson' directory, put out a listing saying we're so-and-so open source project with 10k stars on GitHub, come represent us. Then on the supply side, a salesperson sees the listing, writes up a proposal which might include a percentage fee they'll receive from the sales (say 25%). After receiving a few offers, open source author can choose who to go with. Maybe if it doesn't quite work out with this salesperson, they go back and re-list.
Just a quick idea on how this can be solved with a marketplace model. Everyone in this structure is happy: open source authors get money, salespeople get their percentage fee, corporations get sustainable open source projects.