2 ms·

(Speaking only for myself.) Having open indices charge money is the “easy” part, relatively speaking. The author is correct that most companies will grumble a

(Speaking only for myself.) Having open indices charge money is the “easy” part, relatively speaking. The author is correct that most companies will grumble a bit and then fork over the nominal amount of money needed to preserve their existing assumptions. I think the rest of this don’t really work in practice though: it’s actually incredibly hard to distribute money to open source maintainers across hundreds of jurisdictions, and it’s not immediately obvious how a service like PyPI (which is barely funded to maintain and sustain itself) would shoulder such a burden without diverting a very large fraction of that money for things that would make people upset (read: lawyers and tax professionals). (NPM would appear to be the exception to this since it has - at least on paper - the legal resources of Microsoft behind it. But I think it’s largely a quirk of history that the JavaScript packaging ecosystem ended up with a single corporate owner, and no ecosystem I’ve worked with seems eager to pursue a similar relationship.)

jongjong 13d ago
This is why I just advocate for UBI nowadays. It's impossible for certain people to get paid for work they do and value they create and the reasons are numerous and different for every single person. A lot of it is because human attention has been fully centralized and monopolized. Regulations are the nail in the coffin. This industry is cooked, to a crisp. Tech people who have been excluded from the tech markets should be paid some kind of compensation.
- woodruffw 13d ago
  I think Alex Gaynor is essentially right here[1]. [1]: https://alexgaynor.net/2025/apr/08/putting-a-price-tag-on-open-source/ https://alexgaynor.net/2025/apr/08/putting-a-price-tag-on-op...
  - jongjong 13d ago
    The first time I understood there is a systemic problem was years ago when I started attending investor events and was pitching my open source software to tech companies and investors and they were all asking me "But what are you selling?" and I kept telling them "I'm not selling anything, I'm just looking for adopters of my open source product." and I was shaking hands with every person in the room. They couldn't understand. They must have thought I was crazy. But the thing is, I couldn't even sell it for free. Even though it was provably useful and many similar companies did use my product successfully, at scale. It really felt like "It's a big club and you ain't in it." It was like; they couldn't believe how much work I was putting in to give away a product for free. I think it might have made some people uncomfortable even. And although I am more honest and cynical now about my own intentions, I still think that 'making money' was not and is not the primary goal; it was always a secondary goal which I planned to attend to later if/when the conditions would be right. I was literally just trying to get big companies to adopt so that other smaller companies would look at them and tell themselves "Look, it's OK, big company X is using the product, so I can use it too!" My goal was not to sell anything, it was to dismantle systemic taboos which worked against me as a small contributor. 10 years later, the taboos are worse than before! I don't know how anyone can start an open source project without the badge of corporate sponsorship these days.
kelnos 12d ago
I was thinking this too, and also thinking about who even gets paid. Like say I start an open source project and work on it for a few years, build a reputation and user base, and the registry is paying me. I decide to step down, and nominate a trusted contributor as the new maintainer. Do I deserve to still get part of those payments? If so, what percentage do I get, and what does the new maintainer get? I recently actually did take over maintenance for a Rust crate that was unmaintained and archived (but still widely used). The two (former) maintainers are still active, working on a related piece of software. Would I then deserve to get a cut of payments? Should the original maintainers still get something? Sure, I'm putting in lots of time and work now, but in total I've spent less than 1% of the time they have. I guess you could adopt what I'd think of as the employment-based method. Whoever is actively maintaining gets payments, and that's it. That feels unsatisfying somehow, though. Ultimately every project would have to decide how to divide the payments, and that feels hard to do equitably in many cases. That's going to create resentment and hurt feelings. Not saying that invalidates the idea, but it does make it harder on people in practice.

jongjong 13d ago

This is why I just advocate for UBI nowadays. It's impossible for certain people to get paid for work they do and value they create and the reasons are numerous and different for every single person. A lot of it is because human attention has been fully centralized and monopolized. Regulations are the nail in the coffin. This industry is cooked, to a crisp. Tech people who have been excluded from the tech markets should be paid some kind of compensation.

woodruffw 13d ago
I think Alex Gaynor is essentially right here[1]. [1]: https://alexgaynor.net/2025/apr/08/putting-a-price-tag-on-open-source/ https://alexgaynor.net/2025/apr/08/putting-a-price-tag-on-op...
- jongjong 13d ago
  The first time I understood there is a systemic problem was years ago when I started attending investor events and was pitching my open source software to tech companies and investors and they were all asking me "But what are you selling?" and I kept telling them "I'm not selling anything, I'm just looking for adopters of my open source product." and I was shaking hands with every person in the room. They couldn't understand. They must have thought I was crazy. But the thing is, I couldn't even sell it for free. Even though it was provably useful and many similar companies did use my product successfully, at scale. It really felt like "It's a big club and you ain't in it." It was like; they couldn't believe how much work I was putting in to give away a product for free. I think it might have made some people uncomfortable even. And although I am more honest and cynical now about my own intentions, I still think that 'making money' was not and is not the primary goal; it was always a secondary goal which I planned to attend to later if/when the conditions would be right. I was literally just trying to get big companies to adopt so that other smaller companies would look at them and tell themselves "Look, it's OK, big company X is using the product, so I can use it too!" My goal was not to sell anything, it was to dismantle systemic taboos which worked against me as a small contributor. 10 years later, the taboos are worse than before! I don't know how anyone can start an open source project without the badge of corporate sponsorship these days.

kelnos 12d ago

I was thinking this too, and also thinking about who even gets paid. Like say I start an open source project and work on it for a few years, build a reputation and user base, and the registry is paying me. I decide to step down, and nominate a trusted contributor as the new maintainer. Do I deserve to still get part of those payments? If so, what percentage do I get, and what does the new maintainer get? I recently actually did take over maintenance for a Rust crate that was unmaintained and archived (but still widely used). The two (former) maintainers are still active, working on a related piece of software. Would I then deserve to get a cut of payments? Should the original maintainers still get something? Sure, I'm putting in lots of time and work now, but in total I've spent less than 1% of the time they have. I guess you could adopt what I'd think of as the employment-based method. Whoever is actively maintaining gets payments, and that's it. That feels unsatisfying somehow, though. Ultimately every project would have to decide how to divide the payments, and that feels hard to do equitably in many cases. That's going to create resentment and hurt feelings. Not saying that invalidates the idea, but it does make it harder on people in practice.