7 ms·

We Just Gave $500k to Open Source Maintainers

142 points by coloneltcb 3y ago

candiddevmike 3y ago
> rrweb ($15,000), which is the basis for our Replay product Not to rain on the humble brag, but donating 15k to a project that serves as the basis for your commercial offering seems a bit cheap
- londons_explore 3y ago
  It's a lot more generous than the $0 that the license agreement said needed to be paid.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mholt 3y ago
  That is a generous donation that is not legally required of them. But I agree that a different approach should be taken for exceptionally crucial dependencies like rrweb is for Sentry. (Edit: to clarify, I think what Sentry is doing is good and we need more of it. I mean that businesses and developers should be mindful of what is being exchanged from their relationship, if any.) If your core business/product offering relies on a certain open source project, IMO you better take that under your wing to ensure it stays maintained and developed. For Caddy, we offer Enterprise-tier sponsorships to make this happen. Our Enterprise+ tier is designed so that it does not rely on ANY other funding so your company can be guaranteed the assurance of ongoing development even if all other sponsors drop off. To not do so is simply a big risk your business is taking. Either fund the project or hire in-house experts, which is likely more expensive and less effective. I'm not criticizing Sentry here --- I applaud their initiative, which is definitely in the right direction! Implementing this requires that the project offer such a sponsorship plan in the first place. One-time donations are simply not sustainable in the long term. Just something to think about.
  - zeeg 3y ago
    Prior to this we directly funded rrweb, even when it wasn't a critical piece of Sentry's product. Not sure why everyone tries to turn things into something they're not.
    - mholt 3y ago
      That’s great to hear. I hope my tone wasn’t misunderstood. I think the initiative is wonderful. I was mainly commenting on the state of open source funding generally. IMO what Sentry is doing doesn’t deserve criticism. Keep doing what you’re doing!
- renewiltord 3y ago
  It's worth noting that they wouldn't get this reaction if they gave nothing. This is one factor in the Schelling Point for OSS donations to be zero.
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    They wouldn't get this reaction if they didn't publicize their donations as marketing content.
    - zeeg 3y ago
      What are you trying to achieve with complaining about a good cause? Our intent is to set a tone for this kind of thing. We are a well known company in the technology sector, so showcasing this creates a model for others to be inspired by. When decision makers at other companies see this, ones who might also care about this cause, it creates opportunities and materials for them to have these conversations within their own teams. Marketing is not inherently evil as you make it out to be.
    - the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
      Note that the donation run happened a while ago without announcement and comments like this made the rounds on Twitter almost immediately. So the “marketing” aspect I would argue is unrelated.
    - datenpunk 3y ago
      Hopefully, this should lead other companies to step up as well. Do you really think this is a problem?
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      Sure, they also wouldn't if they gave 100% of their revenue. But of all the points, the Schelling point is at 0 donation / 0 blog posts, and this is part of the reason.
    - mholt 3y ago
      We need more of this, so yes absolutely, publicize it. Start a movement. Set an example. Be a leader.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  How much should they have paid? How much would it cost them to get an alternative?
  - whit537 3y ago
    > How much should they have paid? Curious in this. 15k is on par with what we give to foundations such as Python, Django, Rust and OpenJS. Is that the right anchor? Another angle: Which deps should we take money away from to give more to rrweb? [I'm the post author.]
- rickette 3y ago
  Cheap? Based on what metric? It's a significant donation if you ask me. Also remember Sentry isn't a FAANG.
londons_explore 3y ago
The blog post is unclear... What proportion of authors of lines of code in all your OSS dependencies received a payment? I assume that the vast majority of tiny github accounts probably don't have github sponsors set up, and may not even have a link to a real human identity or even someone still alive. So how does that 95% number look if you take all that into account?
- whit537 3y ago
  The 95% is out of all _fundable_ dependencies. I'll update the blog post to make that clearer. Not sure about authors of lines of code, sounds like way more detail than GitHub is ever likely to provide. :-/
drcongo 3y ago
> we’re nearly doubling our commitment again, to $500,000 for 500+ Open Source maintainers. This equates to $3,700 per developer employed at Sentry By my calculations, that means Sentry has 135.13513514 developers.
- mwarkentin 3y ago
  Yes, I think that's about right (SRE at Sentry).
vikmals 3y ago
[flagged]
- whit537 3y ago
  We survey our employees for projects to include, and we do pick up some that way that we don't use in prod.
  - rickette 3y ago
    Great initiative and cool to see employees have a say in this.
mholt 3y ago
Love to see this kind of leadership from stewards of open source. I hope more companies will follow their lead in general. (Not necessarily saying this approach is the most effective, but the messaging is in the right direction!) Netted about $25 from their funding round, which is very nice. I can imagine if 1000 companies did this, then on average, many open source maintainers would have their living expenses covered in most parts of the world. That said, in my case, $25k/yr isn't enough to survive on where I live without aid. Not all open source maintainers need to make a living from their open source work, but it will almost certainly increase the quality of our open source libraries if the developers both choose to do that and are able to sustain their living. I wrote about the open source funding problem a while ago with my thoughts on solutions here: https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source I don't actually go into these "payments-scaled-by-dependency" solutions because the one big problem I see is that it doesn't distinguish between projects and developers who want/need to make a living from their work, versus those who just want a coffee for motivation to keep going. Surely companies should want an active relationship with the developers of their most important and fundamental projects as well. This is why I typically advocate for sponsorships. Maintainers extend their reach for sustainability, and companies "reach the reach" of those they rely on and establish a business relationship to satisfy what open source licenses leave lacking. Granted, their approach is certainly easier than developing relationships with all the developers, but I am curious to see if they will reap the results they are hoping for in a few more years.
- zeeg 3y ago
  I share some of your sentiment on the dep mapping. We actually approach support in a variety of ways, but the dependency graph is the more novel aspect of what we do. I _personally_ think its not overly compelling, but part of that is because of how hard it becomes to distribute any substantial amount of funds when you're trying to do it across thousands of dependencies. Outside of the dependency funding we will often directly fund developers (e.g. as contractors, which we did with rrweb back when the author was full time on the project), we subsidize a our services for open source projects (https://sentry.io/for/open-source/ https://sentry.io/for/open-source/), and we also do direct contributions in a variety of ways to organizations (some of that was listed in the post, but even things like continuous support of many community run events). People will often think a lot of these things as marketing (such as events), and they are, but its marketing that helps both sides. If we were truly lead gen oriented on these things though I can tell you it absolutely does not have the payback you'd get from some other traditional investments. Edit: One thing I did want to mention- we're not actually looking for a return on investment for these github sponsorships. We don't consider it maintenance fees, but rather as a signal of gratitude. If someone stops maintaining a project thats fine, code doesn't have to live forever. We bundle this into our annual budget at this point more from a charitable giving angle than some kind of R&D cost center.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nfriedly 3y ago
I was one of the recipients of this, $4 from sentry and $3 from codeconv. It's not a life-changing amount, but I certainly appreciate it. Thanks Sentry!
- whit537 3y ago
  Seeing one other company on github.com/sponsors/nfriedly, glad we could triple your sponsors. :D P.S. There might be more on Thanks.dev. Cheers! [I'm the post author.]
  - nfriedly 3y ago
    Yep, I now have 3 incoming sponsors, and 3 outgoing sponsorships on github - perfectly balanced! There's a bit of a story behind the first sponsor, Zuplo: They wanted to sponsor one specific project of mine, express-rate-limit, and I almost just turned them down. I have a decent day job, and didn't feel like I needed it. But, express-rate-limit had received a ton of contributions from another individual, gamemaker1, to the point that I had already given him contributor access to the repo. So, I decided to ask if he wanted it before turning Zuplo down. He persuaded me to split it with him. Once we tried to accept, we learned that he is ineligible to sign up for most sponsorship/giving platforms because he is currently a minor. So, right now the full amount comes to me and then I transfer half from my bank account to his. We haven't done any major functional changes to express-rate-limit since accepting sponsorship, but we have made a lot of small improvements since then and I think the sponsorship deserves some credit for encouraging that.
    - whit537 3y ago
      Heart-warming! :D
benatkin 3y ago
> Sentry is an Open Source company Not to me, it isn’t. Their main product is under the BSL. Their docs IMO describe it in a way that undermines the Open Source Definition and the Open Source Initiative.
arcanemachiner 3y ago
Don't know if anyone at Sentry will read this, but I think the idea of the Functional Source License is pretty interesting. But is it customizable? e.g. does the source has to be made available 1 year? How about 2? How about 1.5? How about something like FSL-Y2-MIT for a 2-year limitation? You could still use FSL-MIT for the standard 1 year term. Then you could maybe allow quarter- or half-integer values, e.g. FSL-Y1.5-MIT or FSL-Y0.25-MIT. All of this easily represented in the name or with minimal digging. Just wanted to throw in my share of the bike-shedding.
- whit537 3y ago
  Cross-posted at https://github.com/getsentry/loose-confederation/issues/4#issuecomment-1777805138 https://github.com/getsentry/loose-confederation/issues/4#is.... ;-) One of our goals is to keep the parameters to an absolute minimum, to aid in adoption. The simpler we can keep it the more easily it will get picked up, is the thinking.
osdotsystem 3y ago
This piece is just brilliant: "We dedicated 10% of our budget to giving small amounts (in the $4 to $10 per month range) to as many dependencies on GitHub Sponsors as we could. We were able to achieve 95% or greater coverage of our fundable dependencies in our three primary GitHub organizations (getsentry, codecov, and syntaxfm). We were not able to reach 100% because some of our dependencies have minimum sponsorships higher than $10, and a few of our dependencies are maintained by employees. Sentry is the first company to approach 100% coverage of all of our fundable dependencies through GitHub Sponsors. Nobody else even comes close (I asked)."

142 points by coloneltcb 3y ago

> rrweb ($15,000), which is the basis for our Replay product Not to rain on the humble brag, but donating 15k to a project that serves as the basis for your commercial offering seems a bit cheap

londons_explore 3y ago
It's a lot more generous than the $0 that the license agreement said needed to be paid.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mholt 3y ago
That is a generous donation that is not legally required of them. But I agree that a different approach should be taken for exceptionally crucial dependencies like rrweb is for Sentry. (Edit: to clarify, I think what Sentry is doing is good and we need more of it. I mean that businesses and developers should be mindful of what is being exchanged from their relationship, if any.) If your core business/product offering relies on a certain open source project, IMO you better take that under your wing to ensure it stays maintained and developed. For Caddy, we offer Enterprise-tier sponsorships to make this happen. Our Enterprise+ tier is designed so that it does not rely on ANY other funding so your company can be guaranteed the assurance of ongoing development even if all other sponsors drop off. To not do so is simply a big risk your business is taking. Either fund the project or hire in-house experts, which is likely more expensive and less effective. I'm not criticizing Sentry here --- I applaud their initiative, which is definitely in the right direction! Implementing this requires that the project offer such a sponsorship plan in the first place. One-time donations are simply not sustainable in the long term. Just something to think about.
- zeeg 3y ago
  Prior to this we directly funded rrweb, even when it wasn't a critical piece of Sentry's product. Not sure why everyone tries to turn things into something they're not.
  - mholt 3y ago
    That’s great to hear. I hope my tone wasn’t misunderstood. I think the initiative is wonderful. I was mainly commenting on the state of open source funding generally. IMO what Sentry is doing doesn’t deserve criticism. Keep doing what you’re doing!
renewiltord 3y ago
It's worth noting that they wouldn't get this reaction if they gave nothing. This is one factor in the Schelling Point for OSS donations to be zero.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  They wouldn't get this reaction if they didn't publicize their donations as marketing content.
  - zeeg 3y ago
    What are you trying to achieve with complaining about a good cause? Our intent is to set a tone for this kind of thing. We are a well known company in the technology sector, so showcasing this creates a model for others to be inspired by. When decision makers at other companies see this, ones who might also care about this cause, it creates opportunities and materials for them to have these conversations within their own teams. Marketing is not inherently evil as you make it out to be.
  - the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
    Note that the donation run happened a while ago without announcement and comments like this made the rounds on Twitter almost immediately. So the “marketing” aspect I would argue is unrelated.
  - datenpunk 3y ago
    Hopefully, this should lead other companies to step up as well. Do you really think this is a problem?
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Sure, they also wouldn't if they gave 100% of their revenue. But of all the points, the Schelling point is at 0 donation / 0 blog posts, and this is part of the reason.
  - mholt 3y ago
    We need more of this, so yes absolutely, publicize it. Start a movement. Set an example. Be a leader.
saagarjha 3y ago
How much should they have paid? How much would it cost them to get an alternative?
- whit537 3y ago
  > How much should they have paid? Curious in this. 15k is on par with what we give to foundations such as Python, Django, Rust and OpenJS. Is that the right anchor? Another angle: Which deps should we take money away from to give more to rrweb? [I'm the post author.]
rickette 3y ago
Cheap? Based on what metric? It's a significant donation if you ask me. Also remember Sentry isn't a FAANG.

londons_explore 3y ago

The blog post is unclear... What proportion of authors of lines of code in all your OSS dependencies received a payment? I assume that the vast majority of tiny github accounts probably don't have github sponsors set up, and may not even have a link to a real human identity or even someone still alive. So how does that 95% number look if you take all that into account?

whit537 3y ago
The 95% is out of all _fundable_ dependencies. I'll update the blog post to make that clearer. Not sure about authors of lines of code, sounds like way more detail than GitHub is ever likely to provide. :-/

drcongo 3y ago

> we’re nearly doubling our commitment again, to $500,000 for 500+ Open Source maintainers. This equates to $3,700 per developer employed at Sentry By my calculations, that means Sentry has 135.13513514 developers.

mwarkentin 3y ago
Yes, I think that's about right (SRE at Sentry).

vikmals 3y ago

[flagged]

whit537 3y ago
We survey our employees for projects to include, and we do pick up some that way that we don't use in prod.
- rickette 3y ago
  Great initiative and cool to see employees have a say in this.

mholt 3y ago

Love to see this kind of leadership from stewards of open source. I hope more companies will follow their lead in general. (Not necessarily saying this approach is the most effective, but the messaging is in the right direction!) Netted about $25 from their funding round, which is very nice. I can imagine if 1000 companies did this, then on average, many open source maintainers would have their living expenses covered in most parts of the world. That said, in my case, $25k/yr isn't enough to survive on where I live without aid. Not all open source maintainers need to make a living from their open source work, but it will almost certainly increase the quality of our open source libraries if the developers both choose to do that and are able to sustain their living. I wrote about the open source funding problem a while ago with my thoughts on solutions here: https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source I don't actually go into these "payments-scaled-by-dependency" solutions because the one big problem I see is that it doesn't distinguish between projects and developers who want/need to make a living from their work, versus those who just want a coffee for motivation to keep going. Surely companies should want an active relationship with the developers of their most important and fundamental projects as well. This is why I typically advocate for sponsorships. Maintainers extend their reach for sustainability, and companies "reach the reach" of those they rely on and establish a business relationship to satisfy what open source licenses leave lacking. Granted, their approach is certainly easier than developing relationships with all the developers, but I am curious to see if they will reap the results they are hoping for in a few more years.

zeeg 3y ago
I share some of your sentiment on the dep mapping. We actually approach support in a variety of ways, but the dependency graph is the more novel aspect of what we do. I _personally_ think its not overly compelling, but part of that is because of how hard it becomes to distribute any substantial amount of funds when you're trying to do it across thousands of dependencies. Outside of the dependency funding we will often directly fund developers (e.g. as contractors, which we did with rrweb back when the author was full time on the project), we subsidize a our services for open source projects (https://sentry.io/for/open-source/ https://sentry.io/for/open-source/), and we also do direct contributions in a variety of ways to organizations (some of that was listed in the post, but even things like continuous support of many community run events). People will often think a lot of these things as marketing (such as events), and they are, but its marketing that helps both sides. If we were truly lead gen oriented on these things though I can tell you it absolutely does not have the payback you'd get from some other traditional investments. Edit: One thing I did want to mention- we're not actually looking for a return on investment for these github sponsorships. We don't consider it maintenance fees, but rather as a signal of gratitude. If someone stops maintaining a project thats fine, code doesn't have to live forever. We bundle this into our annual budget at this point more from a charitable giving angle than some kind of R&D cost center.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nfriedly 3y ago

I was one of the recipients of this, $4 from sentry and $3 from codeconv. It's not a life-changing amount, but I certainly appreciate it. Thanks Sentry!

whit537 3y ago
Seeing one other company on github.com/sponsors/nfriedly, glad we could triple your sponsors. :D P.S. There might be more on Thanks.dev. Cheers! [I'm the post author.]
- nfriedly 3y ago
  Yep, I now have 3 incoming sponsors, and 3 outgoing sponsorships on github - perfectly balanced! There's a bit of a story behind the first sponsor, Zuplo: They wanted to sponsor one specific project of mine, express-rate-limit, and I almost just turned them down. I have a decent day job, and didn't feel like I needed it. But, express-rate-limit had received a ton of contributions from another individual, gamemaker1, to the point that I had already given him contributor access to the repo. So, I decided to ask if he wanted it before turning Zuplo down. He persuaded me to split it with him. Once we tried to accept, we learned that he is ineligible to sign up for most sponsorship/giving platforms because he is currently a minor. So, right now the full amount comes to me and then I transfer half from my bank account to his. We haven't done any major functional changes to express-rate-limit since accepting sponsorship, but we have made a lot of small improvements since then and I think the sponsorship deserves some credit for encouraging that.
  - whit537 3y ago
    Heart-warming! :D

benatkin 3y ago

> Sentry is an Open Source company Not to me, it isn’t. Their main product is under the BSL. Their docs IMO describe it in a way that undermines the Open Source Definition and the Open Source Initiative.

arcanemachiner 3y ago

Don't know if anyone at Sentry will read this, but I think the idea of the Functional Source License is pretty interesting. But is it customizable? e.g. does the source has to be made available 1 year? How about 2? How about 1.5? How about something like FSL-Y2-MIT for a 2-year limitation? You could still use FSL-MIT for the standard 1 year term. Then you could maybe allow quarter- or half-integer values, e.g. FSL-Y1.5-MIT or FSL-Y0.25-MIT. All of this easily represented in the name or with minimal digging. Just wanted to throw in my share of the bike-shedding.

whit537 3y ago
Cross-posted at https://github.com/getsentry/loose-confederation/issues/4#issuecomment-1777805138 https://github.com/getsentry/loose-confederation/issues/4#is.... ;-) One of our goals is to keep the parameters to an absolute minimum, to aid in adoption. The simpler we can keep it the more easily it will get picked up, is the thinking.

osdotsystem 3y ago

This piece is just brilliant: "We dedicated 10% of our budget to giving small amounts (in the $4 to $10 per month range) to as many dependencies on GitHub Sponsors as we could. We were able to achieve 95% or greater coverage of our fundable dependencies in our three primary GitHub organizations (getsentry, codecov, and syntaxfm). We were not able to reach 100% because some of our dependencies have minimum sponsorships higher than $10, and a few of our dependencies are maintained by employees. Sentry is the first company to approach 100% coverage of all of our fundable dependencies through GitHub Sponsors. Nobody else even comes close (I asked)."