9 ms·

A handy guide to financial support for open source

146 points by SenHeng 4y ago

davidw 4y ago
It's all about finding or creating something that is actually scarce, unlike the open source software itself: https://journal.dedasys.com/2007/02/03/in-thrall-to-scarcity/ https://journal.dedasys.com/2007/02/03/in-thrall-to-scarcity...
- davidw 4y ago
  Uh, wow, ok. What don't people get about this? If a good is non-rivalrous and non-exclusive (or close to it), it's kind of tough to get people to pay for it, so you have to find something else they'll pay for.
mholt 4y ago
I want to submit a PR to remove Caddy from the "open core" category... or at least add it to several other categories which helped make it possible for me to work on Caddy full-time. Open Core did not work for us (hence the link to the retrospective). At first it was a donation button, then an award from Mozilla (MOSS) -- kind of like a grant but they emphasized it was not technically a grant, probably for legal reasons -- that gave my college student self 6 months of runway while I finished school. Then I continued worked on Caddy while in graduate school, until I got hired by Ardan Labs to design and launch Caddy 2. That ended just before the launch of Caddy 2, when ZeroSSL acquired the project and to this day I rely on sponsorships from ZeroSSL, Stripe, and several other sponsors to work on Caddy full time. "Sponsorware" doesn't really apply to us, but there are definitely features and fixes that have been possible because sponsors funded the work. We offer some paid support too, but that's pretty time-intensive and doesn't pay the recurring bills, just one-off contracts. I've rejected venture capital because it's not the right path for me or the project IMO. Anyway, I wrote about my recommendations for funding open source projects here: https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source
- lupire 4y ago
  How do you feel working full time on a tool, and not using the tool (which presumably is why the tool is valuable)? It's not just a paycheck, obviously. You could earn more working on something else. Did you just get "hooked" on an originally you project?
  - mholt 4y ago
    Good questions. I use Caddy often. Even some of the features coming out next month are based on my own needs. So that's a plus: it's not a project that's irrelevant to me. True, I could earn more at a large or VC-backed tech company. But the flexibility of working on something of which I'm the world expert is quite satisfying and is paying the bills for now, so I'll probably ride this wave as long as I can or want to. Building something from the ground-up and exerting so much effort to make it the best in its class has been invigorating, so you could say I got "hooked" on it. (But I do reject the notion that it's "my baby" as some people refer to it. It has over 300 contributors by now and I'm not sure I'm even the top code committer at this point.)
    - svnpenn 4y ago
      > I'm not sure I'm even the top code committer at this point you are, by a lot: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/graphs/contributors https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/graphs/contributors
      - mholt 4y ago
        Over all time, yes, but look at the last ~year: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/graphs/contributors?from=2021-08-05&to=2022-08-29&type=c https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/graphs/contributors?fro...
pabs3 4y ago
More resources for paid open source work: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources
ttcbj 4y ago
Wow, very useful. Thanks for sharing this.
teddyh 4y ago
Could use links to the following: • https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.en https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.en • https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html
Grimburger 4y ago
> Restricted licenses (reminiscent of the older shareware movement) are not open source I can look at the code. Seems open enough to me [ducks from tomatoes]. People play the semantics game on this a lot but the source is viewable/available/stealable by anyone who wants it. Hackers can find bugs to either exploit or notify the maintainers of and people can modify it to better suit their needs. Legitimate businesses will buy a license if it is of worth to them, I doubt you'll find many that are overpriced for their value. The fervent animosity towards dual free non-commercial/paid commercial licenses in the foss world has always puzzled me. In the end it is source code readable by anyone yeah? What would you actually prefer, it stays locked up forever?
- ohiovr 4y ago
  It breeds animosity if a open source software project closes the doors to the original developers who intended the project to be free software. Plex is an example.
- EarlKing 4y ago
  What they would prefer is that you continue to offer up your unpaid labor that they can then use to build fortunes upon. It is no accident that businesses are happy to encourage "open source" so long as that means "make us stuff we can use to make money with without paying you a dime". "Open source" has never meant you couldn't charge for your work or otherwise impose a noncommercial use restriction on it, though the OSI and its pro-corporate partisans have gone to great lengths to claim otherwise (much like they like to pretend the invented the term and/or the concept). At the end of the day I don't work for free, and I'm pretty sure you don't either, so if you want to get paid for what you do then make them pay you. The End. Full stop. HAND. TYVFM. FOAD. Etc. Ad nauseum. Anyone who says otherwise should not be engaged but simply told to get lost... because if they want Free Shit then they know where to find it.
  - kiba 4y ago
    Open source is never about you working for free or not being able to charge money for shit.
pomber 4y ago
My approach with Code Hike (https://codehike.org/ https://codehike.org/) was to add a sponsor-wall to some parts of the docs, not sure if it falls under any of those categories. It's working decently well ($600 per month).
- ohiovr 4y ago
  Good software needs no docs.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > https://codehike.org/demo/scrollycoding-preview https://codehike.org/demo/scrollycoding-preview > The code of this demo is hidden until it reaches five sponsors. > Become a sponsor for $9 a month to have full acces to all demos: Maybe I misunderstand, but I could either pay $9/month and would be able to access it directly, or I wait until you get 5 more sponsors (for that specific page) and then I'll be able to access the content for free, like everyone else? So if I end up sponsoring the page to view it, I could end up being the fifth sponsor, unlocking the page for everyone and ultimately spent the money for content that now everyone can view too?
  - svnpenn 4y ago
    yeah, whats wrong with that?
    - lupire 4y ago
      Probably would get much better results if it said "$50 bounty for this demo" or whatever, and collected pledges of any amount, instead of hoping for exactly 5 whales to show up. And making a subscription makes the value prop even more confusing. Seems like an own-goal.
  - pomber 4y ago
    that's right
- wodenokoto 4y ago
rapnie 4y ago
See also prior HN discussion: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784448 (2017, 51 comments) And this featured a couple more times, and some other related links too: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/nayafia https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/nayafia
qwerki 4y ago
This list is maintained by Nadia Eghbal of "Working in public" fame. Great summary of the different mechanisms. I'm working on something in this space. Would love some feedback. Putting final touches to it at https://thanks.dev https://thanks.dev. The concept is "my donation should distribute across my dependency tree".
- pabs3 4y ago
  There are a lot of competitors in this space, everything from for-profits like Open Collective to non-profits like snowdrift (which isn't live yet). https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/ https://snowdrift.coop/ https://snowdrift.coop/
- bombcar 4y ago
  You ate my back button on iPhone and I couldn’t return.
  - qwerki 4y ago
    Apologies for that. I've disabled the default redirect to /home for now so that shouldn't happen anymore. Will figure out the correct solution asap. Thanks for letting me know!
    - lupire 4y ago
      window.location.replace https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43838496/redirect-with-javascript-but-without-affecting-the-history https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43838496/redirect-with-j...
      - qwerki 4y ago
        Following this hint turns out I had left out the `replace={true}` prop on react router's Navigate component. Thank you for taking the time to point me in the right direction!
svnpenn 4y ago
I recently switched a couple of my projects to non-commercial: https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0 https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0 I would recommend it to anyone, but it does have some drawbacks. Notably, GitHub and the Go programming language refuse to support it: https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/1015 https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/1015 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/54683 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/54683
ohiovr 4y ago
I have a project I'd like to make available to all as open source if I had some kind of contributor backing. I've had an inquiry about it already. So I think the project could have value to people looking to explore sounds of instruments in the orchestra especially since it can be easier to get satisfying results with the system I am working on compared to expensive and clumsy systems already available. The problem I have is that just putting the code out there hoping that there would be interest is a bit like putting baby in an orphanage hoping someone will adopt the project when I would have to move on from it anyway due to no money coming in from other sources. I love free software and my entire software world IS free software now with pretty much no exceptions. I'd like to contribute back to a community that has given me access to some of the best software I've used to date. But I'm poor, hard to employ, and have skills or strengths that are in an unusual combination. I like Ton Roosendaal's approach with Blender. I've been following his story since the late 1990s when I was using Lightwave 3D. I bought his book and tried to use his software but could not figure out what to do with it at the time. I think the book was unprofitable for him as it was expensive to make. But I observed his software get more and more powerful to where I am finding it easy to use Blender today. I don't know if Ton has financial difficulties I sure hope not but it seems he has some kind of support. I'm not as talented as Ton. He could program great software without the niceties of Stack Overflow and all the learning help I have now. But because of the talents of so many people I can make reasonably good quality products from my software and have ideas to make it a lot better than it is now. I could do this over and over if I had backing. How did curl and wget make it? And so many other tools that are simply taken for granted. I really want to have creative control of the development of my software and I really don't want to see Adobe or Amazon to snatch it up, package it, and sell it as a service under my nose making tons of money where I am hoping to find enough work to pay my electric bill and subsidized rent. The framework I'm building could be adapted to so many different ways of making melody, harmony, and rhythm. There are thousands of files from great composers that don't get much play time which can sound very interesting in instrumentation that they weren't written for. The software can be a great way to explore composition style and get ideas. Although it can offer sonic realism I don't want the software to replace human performance. I really want it to be a starting point for developing new compositions worthy of being performed.
jqpabc123 4y ago
How do you become financially independent by developing your own Open Source project? Short answer --- in most cases you don't. To earn enough money to survive, most have to do something other than software development --- like provide a service, provide support or sell a non-open version. Becoming a charity (a software panhandler) is an option but most can't survive this way. Down vote if it makes you feel better but the most obvious, basic fact remains --- open source devalues the work of software development --- and is thus self limiting. Do it long enough and financial reality will intrude and convince you that you need to do something else.
- ohiovr 4y ago
  Software has no intrinsic value. It is harder to convey value of any kind unless it makes life easier somehow. But soon it gets replaced in a cascade of new solutions from the future that are hard to predict.
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    So you're telling me that my software doesn't make life easier for my clients? It's pretty obvious that they disagree; otherwise, they wouldn't pay me. My bank account has the proof to the contrary.
    - ohiovr 4y ago
      It is hard(-er) to convey value of any kind unless it makes life easier somehow.
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        What software doesn’t make life easier? Why would such software ever get built?
        ohiovr 4y ago
        Adobe Flash and Actionscript 3.0. As for why actionscript 3.0 was made it was built I think Adobe wanted to turn Flash into an application programming language. And it failed pretty badly at this. Actionscript 2.0 had a well defined purpose that is to control animation. But Actionscript 3.0 became a monster that imposed a lot of work to do those basic things and it really did not excel at anything beyond that.

146 points by SenHeng 4y ago

It's all about finding or creating something that is actually scarce, unlike the open source software itself: https://journal.dedasys.com/2007/02/03/in-thrall-to-scarcity/ https://journal.dedasys.com/2007/02/03/in-thrall-to-scarcity...

davidw 4y ago
Uh, wow, ok. What don't people get about this? If a good is non-rivalrous and non-exclusive (or close to it), it's kind of tough to get people to pay for it, so you have to find something else they'll pay for.

mholt 4y ago

I want to submit a PR to remove Caddy from the "open core" category... or at least add it to several other categories which helped make it possible for me to work on Caddy full-time. Open Core did not work for us (hence the link to the retrospective). At first it was a donation button, then an award from Mozilla (MOSS) -- kind of like a grant but they emphasized it was not technically a grant, probably for legal reasons -- that gave my college student self 6 months of runway while I finished school. Then I continued worked on Caddy while in graduate school, until I got hired by Ardan Labs to design and launch Caddy 2. That ended just before the launch of Caddy 2, when ZeroSSL acquired the project and to this day I rely on sponsorships from ZeroSSL, Stripe, and several other sponsors to work on Caddy full time. "Sponsorware" doesn't really apply to us, but there are definitely features and fixes that have been possible because sponsors funded the work. We offer some paid support too, but that's pretty time-intensive and doesn't pay the recurring bills, just one-off contracts. I've rejected venture capital because it's not the right path for me or the project IMO. Anyway, I wrote about my recommendations for funding open source projects here: https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source

lupire 4y ago
How do you feel working full time on a tool, and not using the tool (which presumably is why the tool is valuable)? It's not just a paycheck, obviously. You could earn more working on something else. Did you just get "hooked" on an originally you project?
- mholt 4y ago
  Good questions. I use Caddy often. Even some of the features coming out next month are based on my own needs. So that's a plus: it's not a project that's irrelevant to me. True, I could earn more at a large or VC-backed tech company. But the flexibility of working on something of which I'm the world expert is quite satisfying and is paying the bills for now, so I'll probably ride this wave as long as I can or want to. Building something from the ground-up and exerting so much effort to make it the best in its class has been invigorating, so you could say I got "hooked" on it. (But I do reject the notion that it's "my baby" as some people refer to it. It has over 300 contributors by now and I'm not sure I'm even the top code committer at this point.)
  - svnpenn 4y ago
    > I'm not sure I'm even the top code committer at this point you are, by a lot: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/graphs/contributors https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/graphs/contributors
    - mholt 4y ago
      Over all time, yes, but look at the last ~year: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/graphs/contributors?from=2021-08-05&to=2022-08-29&type=c https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/graphs/contributors?fro...

pabs3 4y ago

More resources for paid open source work: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

ttcbj 4y ago

Wow, very useful. Thanks for sharing this.

teddyh 4y ago

Could use links to the following: • https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.en https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.en • https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

Grimburger 4y ago

> Restricted licenses (reminiscent of the older shareware movement) are not open source I can look at the code. Seems open enough to me [ducks from tomatoes]. People play the semantics game on this a lot but the source is viewable/available/stealable by anyone who wants it. Hackers can find bugs to either exploit or notify the maintainers of and people can modify it to better suit their needs. Legitimate businesses will buy a license if it is of worth to them, I doubt you'll find many that are overpriced for their value. The fervent animosity towards dual free non-commercial/paid commercial licenses in the foss world has always puzzled me. In the end it is source code readable by anyone yeah? What would you actually prefer, it stays locked up forever?

ohiovr 4y ago
It breeds animosity if a open source software project closes the doors to the original developers who intended the project to be free software. Plex is an example.
EarlKing 4y ago
What they would prefer is that you continue to offer up your unpaid labor that they can then use to build fortunes upon. It is no accident that businesses are happy to encourage "open source" so long as that means "make us stuff we can use to make money with without paying you a dime". "Open source" has never meant you couldn't charge for your work or otherwise impose a noncommercial use restriction on it, though the OSI and its pro-corporate partisans have gone to great lengths to claim otherwise (much like they like to pretend the invented the term and/or the concept). At the end of the day I don't work for free, and I'm pretty sure you don't either, so if you want to get paid for what you do then make them pay you. The End. Full stop. HAND. TYVFM. FOAD. Etc. Ad nauseum. Anyone who says otherwise should not be engaged but simply told to get lost... because if they want Free Shit then they know where to find it.
- kiba 4y ago
  Open source is never about you working for free or not being able to charge money for shit.

pomber 4y ago

My approach with Code Hike (https://codehike.org/ https://codehike.org/) was to add a sponsor-wall to some parts of the docs, not sure if it falls under any of those categories. It's working decently well ($600 per month).

ohiovr 4y ago
Good software needs no docs.
capableweb 4y ago
> https://codehike.org/demo/scrollycoding-preview https://codehike.org/demo/scrollycoding-preview > The code of this demo is hidden until it reaches five sponsors. > Become a sponsor for $9 a month to have full acces to all demos: Maybe I misunderstand, but I could either pay $9/month and would be able to access it directly, or I wait until you get 5 more sponsors (for that specific page) and then I'll be able to access the content for free, like everyone else? So if I end up sponsoring the page to view it, I could end up being the fifth sponsor, unlocking the page for everyone and ultimately spent the money for content that now everyone can view too?
- svnpenn 4y ago
  yeah, whats wrong with that?
  - lupire 4y ago
    Probably would get much better results if it said "$50 bounty for this demo" or whatever, and collected pledges of any amount, instead of hoping for exactly 5 whales to show up. And making a subscription makes the value prop even more confusing. Seems like an own-goal.
- pomber 4y ago
  that's right
wodenokoto 4y ago

rapnie 4y ago

See also prior HN discussion: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784448 (2017, 51 comments) And this featured a couple more times, and some other related links too: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/nayafia https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/nayafia

qwerki 4y ago

This list is maintained by Nadia Eghbal of "Working in public" fame. Great summary of the different mechanisms. I'm working on something in this space. Would love some feedback. Putting final touches to it at https://thanks.dev https://thanks.dev. The concept is "my donation should distribute across my dependency tree".

pabs3 4y ago
There are a lot of competitors in this space, everything from for-profits like Open Collective to non-profits like snowdrift (which isn't live yet). https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/ https://snowdrift.coop/ https://snowdrift.coop/
bombcar 4y ago
You ate my back button on iPhone and I couldn’t return.
- qwerki 4y ago
  Apologies for that. I've disabled the default redirect to /home for now so that shouldn't happen anymore. Will figure out the correct solution asap. Thanks for letting me know!
  - lupire 4y ago
    window.location.replace https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43838496/redirect-with-javascript-but-without-affecting-the-history https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43838496/redirect-with-j...
    - qwerki 4y ago
      Following this hint turns out I had left out the `replace={true}` prop on react router's Navigate component. Thank you for taking the time to point me in the right direction!

svnpenn 4y ago

I recently switched a couple of my projects to non-commercial: https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0 https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0 I would recommend it to anyone, but it does have some drawbacks. Notably, GitHub and the Go programming language refuse to support it: https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/1015 https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/1015 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/54683 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/54683

ohiovr 4y ago

I have a project I'd like to make available to all as open source if I had some kind of contributor backing. I've had an inquiry about it already. So I think the project could have value to people looking to explore sounds of instruments in the orchestra especially since it can be easier to get satisfying results with the system I am working on compared to expensive and clumsy systems already available. The problem I have is that just putting the code out there hoping that there would be interest is a bit like putting baby in an orphanage hoping someone will adopt the project when I would have to move on from it anyway due to no money coming in from other sources. I love free software and my entire software world IS free software now with pretty much no exceptions. I'd like to contribute back to a community that has given me access to some of the best software I've used to date. But I'm poor, hard to employ, and have skills or strengths that are in an unusual combination. I like Ton Roosendaal's approach with Blender. I've been following his story since the late 1990s when I was using Lightwave 3D. I bought his book and tried to use his software but could not figure out what to do with it at the time. I think the book was unprofitable for him as it was expensive to make. But I observed his software get more and more powerful to where I am finding it easy to use Blender today. I don't know if Ton has financial difficulties I sure hope not but it seems he has some kind of support. I'm not as talented as Ton. He could program great software without the niceties of Stack Overflow and all the learning help I have now. But because of the talents of so many people I can make reasonably good quality products from my software and have ideas to make it a lot better than it is now. I could do this over and over if I had backing. How did curl and wget make it? And so many other tools that are simply taken for granted. I really want to have creative control of the development of my software and I really don't want to see Adobe or Amazon to snatch it up, package it, and sell it as a service under my nose making tons of money where I am hoping to find enough work to pay my electric bill and subsidized rent. The framework I'm building could be adapted to so many different ways of making melody, harmony, and rhythm. There are thousands of files from great composers that don't get much play time which can sound very interesting in instrumentation that they weren't written for. The software can be a great way to explore composition style and get ideas. Although it can offer sonic realism I don't want the software to replace human performance. I really want it to be a starting point for developing new compositions worthy of being performed.

jqpabc123 4y ago

How do you become financially independent by developing your own Open Source project? Short answer --- in most cases you don't. To earn enough money to survive, most have to do something other than software development --- like provide a service, provide support or sell a non-open version. Becoming a charity (a software panhandler) is an option but most can't survive this way. Down vote if it makes you feel better but the most obvious, basic fact remains --- open source devalues the work of software development --- and is thus self limiting. Do it long enough and financial reality will intrude and convince you that you need to do something else.

ohiovr 4y ago
Software has no intrinsic value. It is harder to convey value of any kind unless it makes life easier somehow. But soon it gets replaced in a cascade of new solutions from the future that are hard to predict.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  So you're telling me that my software doesn't make life easier for my clients? It's pretty obvious that they disagree; otherwise, they wouldn't pay me. My bank account has the proof to the contrary.
  - ohiovr 4y ago
    It is hard(-er) to convey value of any kind unless it makes life easier somehow.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      What software doesn’t make life easier? Why would such software ever get built?
      - ohiovr 4y ago
        Adobe Flash and Actionscript 3.0. As for why actionscript 3.0 was made it was built I think Adobe wanted to turn Flash into an application programming language. And it failed pretty badly at this. Actionscript 2.0 had a well defined purpose that is to control animation. But Actionscript 3.0 became a monster that imposed a lot of work to do those basic things and it really did not excel at anything beyond that.