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I just realised I have been thinking about OSS funding the wrong way around It’s not “the world economy depends on this stuff why is it not properly funded” (w

I just realised I have been thinking about OSS funding the wrong way around It’s not “the world economy depends on this stuff why is it not properly funded” (which is true) it’s “never before has a coupe of guys or girls in a garage been able to reach so many people, and stand a chance of getting funding” The troubles people have finding ways to make a living whilst providing value to people suggests something is wrong not with them but the economy

whizzter 11mo ago
The problem is the arbitrary way the funding is allocated, find something interesting to companies du jour with a clear path to funding and you're golden. If whatever OSS is too obscure to be noticed by non-techies but still fundamental (think OpenSSL, libxz,etc) it's more likely to lead to burnout far before anyone wants to put in any sane money (curl is one of few counter-examples but that hasn't had a straight journey).
VikingCoder 11mo ago
If you're making a product, I think Kickstarter is awesome. If you're making entertainment, I think Patreon is awesome. If you're making OSS... I'm not sure we have a good system. Buy Me A Coffee or a TipJar... Starring a repository... They're good... but they're not enough. Upvoting on Hacker News whenever I see something promising is another thing I do that I hope might help... I kind of wish I could subscribe to some monthly payment that tracked my usage of OSS, and sent each a fraction of the money, and that they appraised which systems they depended on, so it flowed down to them, too, and etc...
- 0x1ch 11mo ago
  I've donated quite a bit through the Kofi and Tipjar payment systems for neat OSS apps I use. I agree that it's not enough, however we do have other systems in place via Github sponsorships, Patreon (consistent funding), etc. It's up for the community to adopt those platforms for their project
- fragmede 11mo ago
  I like where you're going. I'm intrigued! but what would it look like? For example, curl. I use curl it's awesome. I love it. It's not at a level where I'm going to go to community meet ups for it though, but I'm super happy it exists. I can buy stickers for my laptop and do free advertising? It's all psychological. If curl had a micropayment system and every time you used it, it cost a 10th of a penny and there's a monthly subscription. Oh God, holy hell, no! But at the same time, I don't want Daniel Stenberg to go hungry.
  - fragmede 11mo ago
    or maybe that's a direction to go towards. Similar to Spotify wrapped, someone else made a thing to go through your bash history and say what your popular things were.
  - VikingCoder 11mo ago
    I'm thinking more about a subscription to a monthly fee that you and I and other fans of OSS voluntarily pay. Say, I pay $10 a month. It figures out I used curl 850 times. I used gunzip 1246 times. And etc. It may turn out that I'm donating a 10th of a penny to curl every time I use it. Do I want to commit to donating a 10th of a penny BEFORE I can use curl each time? No. But if I set a flat rate of donating to OSS - $10 a month - and there were a simple tool that figured out a semi-reasonable way to allocate that money... I think that'd be neat. Like, "Steam for Donating to OSS."
    - all2 11mo ago
      The tracking app would be pretty simple. A shim in the shell that tracks the first argument on the command line and increments a counter. Then usage stats are pushed to the service every 24 hours (or something like that). app usage / all tracked app usage --> donation to app. Handling the payments portion would be... nightmarish? With crypto it would be really easy. I'd be tempted to take cash on the frontend, convert to crypto, split, then reconvert to cash and make payouts. How do we handle registering apps that you use? What about upstream dependencies? Example: you just spun up a new React project, do we target all deps on that project? Is this only for command line? What about cron jobs, or systemd? Or that systemd service script you copied from a gist somewhere?
estimator7292 11mo ago
Humans in their "free time" will make and create things of great value to society. We should have a system whereby you don't die of pneumonia homeless on the street if you don't have a job. The things OSS developers do for free are of value completely incomparable with what almost all of us do in our day jobs. People should be free to make art and music and anything else they want. People should be free to contribute to our culture and society. Alas, someone wants to take 99% of the value of your work for themselves and give you only the barest minimum they can get away with. And if you don't comply, you don't deserve to live.
billyjobob 11mo ago
Bruce Perens (creator of The Open Source Definition) is attempting to remedy this at https://postopen.org/ https://postopen.org/

whizzter 11mo ago

The problem is the arbitrary way the funding is allocated, find something interesting to companies du jour with a clear path to funding and you're golden. If whatever OSS is too obscure to be noticed by non-techies but still fundamental (think OpenSSL, libxz,etc) it's more likely to lead to burnout far before anyone wants to put in any sane money (curl is one of few counter-examples but that hasn't had a straight journey).

VikingCoder 11mo ago

If you're making a product, I think Kickstarter is awesome. If you're making entertainment, I think Patreon is awesome. If you're making OSS... I'm not sure we have a good system. Buy Me A Coffee or a TipJar... Starring a repository... They're good... but they're not enough. Upvoting on Hacker News whenever I see something promising is another thing I do that I hope might help... I kind of wish I could subscribe to some monthly payment that tracked my usage of OSS, and sent each a fraction of the money, and that they appraised which systems they depended on, so it flowed down to them, too, and etc...

0x1ch 11mo ago
I've donated quite a bit through the Kofi and Tipjar payment systems for neat OSS apps I use. I agree that it's not enough, however we do have other systems in place via Github sponsorships, Patreon (consistent funding), etc. It's up for the community to adopt those platforms for their project
fragmede 11mo ago
I like where you're going. I'm intrigued! but what would it look like? For example, curl. I use curl it's awesome. I love it. It's not at a level where I'm going to go to community meet ups for it though, but I'm super happy it exists. I can buy stickers for my laptop and do free advertising? It's all psychological. If curl had a micropayment system and every time you used it, it cost a 10th of a penny and there's a monthly subscription. Oh God, holy hell, no! But at the same time, I don't want Daniel Stenberg to go hungry.
- fragmede 11mo ago
  or maybe that's a direction to go towards. Similar to Spotify wrapped, someone else made a thing to go through your bash history and say what your popular things were.
- VikingCoder 11mo ago
  I'm thinking more about a subscription to a monthly fee that you and I and other fans of OSS voluntarily pay. Say, I pay $10 a month. It figures out I used curl 850 times. I used gunzip 1246 times. And etc. It may turn out that I'm donating a 10th of a penny to curl every time I use it. Do I want to commit to donating a 10th of a penny BEFORE I can use curl each time? No. But if I set a flat rate of donating to OSS - $10 a month - and there were a simple tool that figured out a semi-reasonable way to allocate that money... I think that'd be neat. Like, "Steam for Donating to OSS."
  - all2 11mo ago
    The tracking app would be pretty simple. A shim in the shell that tracks the first argument on the command line and increments a counter. Then usage stats are pushed to the service every 24 hours (or something like that). app usage / all tracked app usage --> donation to app. Handling the payments portion would be... nightmarish? With crypto it would be really easy. I'd be tempted to take cash on the frontend, convert to crypto, split, then reconvert to cash and make payouts. How do we handle registering apps that you use? What about upstream dependencies? Example: you just spun up a new React project, do we target all deps on that project? Is this only for command line? What about cron jobs, or systemd? Or that systemd service script you copied from a gist somewhere?

estimator7292 11mo ago

Humans in their "free time" will make and create things of great value to society. We should have a system whereby you don't die of pneumonia homeless on the street if you don't have a job. The things OSS developers do for free are of value completely incomparable with what almost all of us do in our day jobs. People should be free to make art and music and anything else they want. People should be free to contribute to our culture and society. Alas, someone wants to take 99% of the value of your work for themselves and give you only the barest minimum they can get away with. And if you don't comply, you don't deserve to live.

billyjobob 11mo ago

Bruce Perens (creator of The Open Source Definition) is attempting to remedy this at https://postopen.org/ https://postopen.org/