4 ms·

And the developers get compensated for their work how?

by trvz 5mo ago

zakirullin 5mo ago
That's yet to be decided :D For the first time, I put a sponsorship button. Will see if it works.
pests 5mo ago
The same way they do now?
helloplanets 5mo ago
Feels like a lot of apps that launch these days have an open source core app and a subscription based platform. The subscription based platform with automatic cloud hosting and other quality of life features, whatever those are depending on the app. Although there's a bunch of 100% open source projects and developers that get enough donations to make it their full time job just off of that. Not that it's the way to go if you want to get rich, but it's still very much a real thing.
drumttocs8 5mo ago
Are you asking how the open source ecosystem works in general? In my experience, if the dev wishes to be compensated in dollars, they also sell a commercial license, cloud services, etc.
whateveracct 5mo ago
get a job
portmanteur 5mo ago
Given the explosion of open source released projects I've seen over the past six months, I believe developers are getting compensated by the tool they are building for themselves creating real value for them. I have a problem, I spend a few days building a tool that solves the problem, it works pretty well for me, and I release it to let others get value from it. They make tweaks to it, perhaps improve it, and I get value from those enhancements and bugfixes.
- mgfist 5mo ago
  Obsidian has a number of full time employees who all want to eat and afford rent
  - alwillis 5mo ago
    > Obsidian has a number of full time employees who all want to eat and afford rent They have lots of sponsors [1]; you can pay $4/month for sync service or $50 a year, per person for a commercial license. [1]: https://obsidian.md/enterprise/ https://obsidian.md/enterprise/
- 0x696C6961 5mo ago
  The burden of OSS is dealing with PRs that you don't want to merge. The drive by bug fixes don't compensate for that.
  - bonesss 5mo ago
    There is no obligation to maintain, no obligation to merge. Copyright is just that, copy right, it’s not an entitlement. Free as in beer and free as in speech means those ‘contributors’ are also free as in Linus to go fork themselves. Don’t like it? Go fork, yourself. Want it different? Pay, money, make, it, happen. Don’t like paying? Go fork, yourself, harder.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
godelski 5mo ago
Do you not sponsor projects that you get value out of? I'm not saying you have to, but you asked how they get compensated and there's nothing stopping you from giving them money. It's easy to forget that you get a lot of value out of something and not give back. If you end up getting a good paying job with your programming experience just buy your favorite projects "a beer" one a month, or once a year. God knows it's better spent there all the subscriptions we have like Netflix or Spotify. Cheaper too. Also, if the projects are big enough you can usually get tax credit. If you work at a decently sized company they also usually do some charity matching.
- arcanemachiner 5mo ago
  Donationware is a viable business model for basically nobody. Most people won't pay for something if they don't have to.
  - backscratches 5mo ago
    And yet the majority of all computers dont just have some open source software, their operating systems are open source. The worlds digital infrastructure is largely open source.
    - godelski 5mo ago
      Not to mention the majority of business software depends on open source software too! Be it the thousands of libraries we use (so we don't have to implement ourselves and we get better integration with others) to literally building on top of open source stuff (Android, every slicer for your 3d printer, all your servers, and literally millions of other things)
      - backscratches 5mo ago
        Exactly, this is what I was getting at. The guy above uses open source software every time he touches anything electric.
thegagne 5mo ago
Not all software needs to be for-profit. Simple utility stuff I believe should fit in this category. Things like a text editor. The profit comes from elsewhere, larger more complex systems. Of course someone can TRY to profit off a text editor, but unless it solves complex enough problems (like a full blown IDE, but even then...). The issue is there is intense demand for it, and ALSO easy supply. If someone attempts a profit driving rugpull, another will pop up in it's place. I am still using Dendron because it meets my needs, but I'm always half tempted to replace it, and I'm fairly confident I could come up with something that meets my own needs in a day or two, and it would likely also be valuable to countless others. I just keep assuming that someone else will spend that day or two, and my pain points with Dendron are not that bad for me to spend the time.
- bryanhogan 5mo ago
  A text editor with good UX is quite complex, I think it's hard to argue otherwise. Most text-editors by large corporations don't even pass this bar.
  - thegagne 5mo ago
    How many text editors have you paid for, versus how many have you used for free? I do think there is room for a few good paid text editors in the world, but most people won't pay directly for them, though they might use them if they are bundled ala Google Docs / O365 Word.
    - bryanhogan 5mo ago
      I have paid for Obsidian and Samsung Notes as part of buying a Samsung phone. I also paid for a few more, e.g. Notion, but I think it's better to focus on: There's definitely value in good text editors. They can greatly enhance your experience with a system, e.g. if Samsung Notes was amazing I'd be much more likely to stick to using a Samsung phone.
      - thegagne 5mo ago
appplication 5mo ago
I don’t mean to be condescending but it feels like if this were an important question it would have halted OSS development decades ago.
- ytpete 5mo ago
  But if the flip side (getting compensated) wasn't also an important concern then maybe far more software would be OSS in recent decades...
- Barrin92 5mo ago
  >but it feels like if this were an important question it would have halted OSS development decades ago no because the people who maintain the nuts and bolts of the open source world, like the often individual or handful contributors to projects like ffmpeg or xz-utils have been passionately doing that and at times burning out (which in case of the latter caused pretty prominent problems). Does the world look to you like it's in a state where important questions and problems don't go unanswered? The reason this stuff works is because there's random guys in a basement in Kentucky somewhere who thanklessly work their asses off and nobody cares. They simply keep doing it because half of the internet would fall apart otherwise.
raincole 5mo ago
How does Obsidian team get paid when the app is 100% free? Now you have the answer.
kid64 5mo ago
Obsidian is just a shitty wrapper around CodeMirror, which does the actual heavy lifting. How much of the money should Obsidian hand over to the CodeMirror developer?

And the developers get compensated for their work how?

by trvz 5mo ago

And the developers get compensated for their work how?

zakirullin 5mo ago

That's yet to be decided :D For the first time, I put a sponsorship button. Will see if it works.

pests 5mo ago

The same way they do now?

helloplanets 5mo ago

Feels like a lot of apps that launch these days have an open source core app and a subscription based platform. The subscription based platform with automatic cloud hosting and other quality of life features, whatever those are depending on the app. Although there's a bunch of 100% open source projects and developers that get enough donations to make it their full time job just off of that. Not that it's the way to go if you want to get rich, but it's still very much a real thing.

drumttocs8 5mo ago

Are you asking how the open source ecosystem works in general? In my experience, if the dev wishes to be compensated in dollars, they also sell a commercial license, cloud services, etc.

whateveracct 5mo ago

get a job

portmanteur 5mo ago

Given the explosion of open source released projects I've seen over the past six months, I believe developers are getting compensated by the tool they are building for themselves creating real value for them. I have a problem, I spend a few days building a tool that solves the problem, it works pretty well for me, and I release it to let others get value from it. They make tweaks to it, perhaps improve it, and I get value from those enhancements and bugfixes.

mgfist 5mo ago
Obsidian has a number of full time employees who all want to eat and afford rent
- alwillis 5mo ago
  > Obsidian has a number of full time employees who all want to eat and afford rent They have lots of sponsors [1]; you can pay $4/month for sync service or $50 a year, per person for a commercial license. [1]: https://obsidian.md/enterprise/ https://obsidian.md/enterprise/
0x696C6961 5mo ago
The burden of OSS is dealing with PRs that you don't want to merge. The drive by bug fixes don't compensate for that.
- bonesss 5mo ago
  There is no obligation to maintain, no obligation to merge. Copyright is just that, copy right, it’s not an entitlement. Free as in beer and free as in speech means those ‘contributors’ are also free as in Linus to go fork themselves. Don’t like it? Go fork, yourself. Want it different? Pay, money, make, it, happen. Don’t like paying? Go fork, yourself, harder.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

godelski 5mo ago

Do you not sponsor projects that you get value out of? I'm not saying you have to, but you asked how they get compensated and there's nothing stopping you from giving them money. It's easy to forget that you get a lot of value out of something and not give back. If you end up getting a good paying job with your programming experience just buy your favorite projects "a beer" one a month, or once a year. God knows it's better spent there all the subscriptions we have like Netflix or Spotify. Cheaper too. Also, if the projects are big enough you can usually get tax credit. If you work at a decently sized company they also usually do some charity matching.

arcanemachiner 5mo ago
Donationware is a viable business model for basically nobody. Most people won't pay for something if they don't have to.
- backscratches 5mo ago
  And yet the majority of all computers dont just have some open source software, their operating systems are open source. The worlds digital infrastructure is largely open source.
  - godelski 5mo ago
    Not to mention the majority of business software depends on open source software too! Be it the thousands of libraries we use (so we don't have to implement ourselves and we get better integration with others) to literally building on top of open source stuff (Android, every slicer for your 3d printer, all your servers, and literally millions of other things)
    - backscratches 5mo ago
      Exactly, this is what I was getting at. The guy above uses open source software every time he touches anything electric.

thegagne 5mo ago

Not all software needs to be for-profit. Simple utility stuff I believe should fit in this category. Things like a text editor. The profit comes from elsewhere, larger more complex systems. Of course someone can TRY to profit off a text editor, but unless it solves complex enough problems (like a full blown IDE, but even then...). The issue is there is intense demand for it, and ALSO easy supply. If someone attempts a profit driving rugpull, another will pop up in it's place. I am still using Dendron because it meets my needs, but I'm always half tempted to replace it, and I'm fairly confident I could come up with something that meets my own needs in a day or two, and it would likely also be valuable to countless others. I just keep assuming that someone else will spend that day or two, and my pain points with Dendron are not that bad for me to spend the time.

bryanhogan 5mo ago
A text editor with good UX is quite complex, I think it's hard to argue otherwise. Most text-editors by large corporations don't even pass this bar.
- thegagne 5mo ago
  How many text editors have you paid for, versus how many have you used for free? I do think there is room for a few good paid text editors in the world, but most people won't pay directly for them, though they might use them if they are bundled ala Google Docs / O365 Word.
  - bryanhogan 5mo ago
    I have paid for Obsidian and Samsung Notes as part of buying a Samsung phone. I also paid for a few more, e.g. Notion, but I think it's better to focus on: There's definitely value in good text editors. They can greatly enhance your experience with a system, e.g. if Samsung Notes was amazing I'd be much more likely to stick to using a Samsung phone.
    - thegagne 5mo ago

appplication 5mo ago

I don’t mean to be condescending but it feels like if this were an important question it would have halted OSS development decades ago.

ytpete 5mo ago
But if the flip side (getting compensated) wasn't also an important concern then maybe far more software would be OSS in recent decades...
Barrin92 5mo ago
>but it feels like if this were an important question it would have halted OSS development decades ago no because the people who maintain the nuts and bolts of the open source world, like the often individual or handful contributors to projects like ffmpeg or xz-utils have been passionately doing that and at times burning out (which in case of the latter caused pretty prominent problems). Does the world look to you like it's in a state where important questions and problems don't go unanswered? The reason this stuff works is because there's random guys in a basement in Kentucky somewhere who thanklessly work their asses off and nobody cares. They simply keep doing it because half of the internet would fall apart otherwise.

raincole 5mo ago

How does Obsidian team get paid when the app is 100% free? Now you have the answer.

kid64 5mo ago

Obsidian is just a shitty wrapper around CodeMirror, which does the actual heavy lifting. How much of the money should Obsidian hand over to the CodeMirror developer?