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>Still one can see how few people are willing to support FOSS developers, when looking at how much money they donate, or how quick someone comes up with a fork

>Still one can see how few people are willing to support FOSS developers, when looking at how much money they donate, or how quick someone comes up with a fork when money is asked for Do you have any examples of forks being made due to someone asking for donations? As for the problem of people getting paid to write open source software, I really don't think that the 'hiding the source code and selling binaries' method is the only viable option. I also don't think people are unwilling to support FOSS developers, I think it's mainly a problem of convenience (as in payment) and exposure. Things like Kickstarter helps a great deal here and I think this is a much untapped resource for funding FOSS development. One very successful venture was Openshot, an open source video editor (GPL licenced) which had a goal of $20.000 but which reached $45.000. Granted we aren't in a situation where it's possible to make a full-time career out of developing open source software through Kickstarter style donations, but I think it's not such a big step as one might think. I would happily pay a small sum each month for someone (or someone's) to work on FOSS software I use a lot, and I think a large number of people out there would do the same, atleast enough for someone to make a decent living out of it. Again I believe the key aspect is to make the payment convenient/safe and of course have a way for projects to gain exposure. Paying a small lump sum each month for continued free open source development of software you use/rely on for your work is in my book a much better long term solution than to pay a larger sum for the latest update of 'proprietary software X' where you are solely dependant on that provider and have to accept their conditions in terms of price/licencing not to mention the intrusive DRM mechanism which are a de facto part of proprietary software today. Compare that to the FOSS situation where, given that the source code is open (and due to copyleft any forks will also remain open), you will never be locked-in to one provider and their whims even if you are totally dependant on that specific piece of software. Anyway I'm not pretending that this is the 'perfect solution', but I dare say proprietary software certainly isn't (and I make a living off writing proprietary software and have for the past 8 years) and I think that a shift from relying on proprietary to instead relying on open source code is of great importance for many of the reasons RMS outlined. YMMV and all that.

Shish2k 13y ago
> Do you have any examples of forks being made due to someone asking for donations? IIRC XChat / YChat is one off the top of my head
- gillianseed 13y ago
  Must say I've never never heard of this issue.
pjmlp 13y ago
> Do you have any examples of forks being made due to someone asking for donations? CentOS and MariaDB come to mind as two possible examples, that started as a means not to pay for the original projects. > Compare that to the FOSS situation where, given that the source code is open (and due to copyleft any forks will also remain open), you will never be locked-in to one provider and their whims even if you are totally dependant on that specific piece of software. This is exactly the problem when trying to make a living out of it. While it is very convenient for the users, it does not guarantee that you as the author will get paid to work on it. Tomorrow another guy might come along, fork the project and start getting the money instead. The Android market is a prime example of this, where lots of apps are just plain forks, with the original authors getting nothing in return.
- gillianseed 13y ago
  >CentOS and MariaDB come to mind as two possible examples, that started as a means not to pay for the original projects Well neither CentOS or MariaDB came to be because of 'asking for donations'. CentOS was forked from RHEL to be a subscription-free enterprise alternative and IS actually being funded by donations, which they ask for. MariaDB is a fork created by the same person who created and then sold MySQL to Sun for $1 billion (which he was able to do due to MySQL having copyright attribution from all contributors). I think these were at best very poor examples to support your statement. >While it is very convenient for the users, it does not guarantee that you as the author will get paid to work on it. True, it will be a competitive situation, however it's not very different from proprietary commercial development as you will need to continue to add features and improve performance etc, else users will turn to another application which does. In open source it's extremely easy to fork (ie base upon existing code) however due to copyleft it won't be a fork with exclusive lock-in features as anything can be ported back, so in essence the payment will go to the person/persons who the end users think is providing the best value for their payment, again not unlike proprietary commercial development. And in the tradition of open source software, I see no direct reason as for why developers can't consider sharing development and thus also the donations. >The Android market is a prime example of this, where lots of apps are just plain forks, with the original authors getting nothing in return. Well I think that is primarily a problem of original developers not creating Android versions of their open source applications to begin with, as such we are seeing opportunistic third-party developers creating quick ports of their software. But is that really a bad thing? If the original programmers aren't interested in supporting the Android platform and someone else provides the service then I fail to see the harm (assuming of course that the licence is abided). And I do think that when official projects enter the market place they will quickly gain the upper hand over third-party ports as not only are they again the 'official' version, but also I trust that they as core developers can typically adapt the original code better for Android use. I also think we are slowly seeing more official Android ports of well known open source desktop software, VLC comes to mind. Looking past whats already been discussed I'm sure there are viable venues which haven't yet been thought of, or at least given a fair chance. One thing I forgot to highlight was the Valve Steam Workshop donation program which just recently resulted in enough money for two 6 month development contracts for working on Blender. Again things like this makes me believe that exposure and ease of payment is the big hurdle, not that there's not enough people willing to donate for open software development.
jnbiche 13y ago
>I would happily pay a small sum each month for someone (or someone's) to work on FOSS software I use a lot[...] You're in luck. Gittip is exactly the model you are describing, and it's already active and supporting (in part) the works of hundreds of FOSS developers: https://www.gittip.com/ https://www.gittip.com/
- gillianseed 13y ago
  Thanks, yes I knew about this though last time I checked (back around when it was announced I think) it seemed pretty dead (that exposure thing again) but now it seems to be picking up. I guess it's time to have a look around to see if there are any developers there working on things that I'm interested in/relying on. I do hope that in the future we'll see more developers who will offer less abstract development plans even though I realise that gittip is not comparable to the project specific type funding as with Kickstarter etc.
pantalaimon 13y ago
> Do you have any examples of forks being made due to someone asking for donations? Ubuntu

Shish2k 13y ago

> Do you have any examples of forks being made due to someone asking for donations? IIRC XChat / YChat is one off the top of my head

gillianseed 13y ago
Must say I've never never heard of this issue.

pjmlp 13y ago

> Do you have any examples of forks being made due to someone asking for donations? CentOS and MariaDB come to mind as two possible examples, that started as a means not to pay for the original projects. > Compare that to the FOSS situation where, given that the source code is open (and due to copyleft any forks will also remain open), you will never be locked-in to one provider and their whims even if you are totally dependant on that specific piece of software. This is exactly the problem when trying to make a living out of it. While it is very convenient for the users, it does not guarantee that you as the author will get paid to work on it. Tomorrow another guy might come along, fork the project and start getting the money instead. The Android market is a prime example of this, where lots of apps are just plain forks, with the original authors getting nothing in return.

gillianseed 13y ago
>CentOS and MariaDB come to mind as two possible examples, that started as a means not to pay for the original projects Well neither CentOS or MariaDB came to be because of 'asking for donations'. CentOS was forked from RHEL to be a subscription-free enterprise alternative and IS actually being funded by donations, which they ask for. MariaDB is a fork created by the same person who created and then sold MySQL to Sun for $1 billion (which he was able to do due to MySQL having copyright attribution from all contributors). I think these were at best very poor examples to support your statement. >While it is very convenient for the users, it does not guarantee that you as the author will get paid to work on it. True, it will be a competitive situation, however it's not very different from proprietary commercial development as you will need to continue to add features and improve performance etc, else users will turn to another application which does. In open source it's extremely easy to fork (ie base upon existing code) however due to copyleft it won't be a fork with exclusive lock-in features as anything can be ported back, so in essence the payment will go to the person/persons who the end users think is providing the best value for their payment, again not unlike proprietary commercial development. And in the tradition of open source software, I see no direct reason as for why developers can't consider sharing development and thus also the donations. >The Android market is a prime example of this, where lots of apps are just plain forks, with the original authors getting nothing in return. Well I think that is primarily a problem of original developers not creating Android versions of their open source applications to begin with, as such we are seeing opportunistic third-party developers creating quick ports of their software. But is that really a bad thing? If the original programmers aren't interested in supporting the Android platform and someone else provides the service then I fail to see the harm (assuming of course that the licence is abided). And I do think that when official projects enter the market place they will quickly gain the upper hand over third-party ports as not only are they again the 'official' version, but also I trust that they as core developers can typically adapt the original code better for Android use. I also think we are slowly seeing more official Android ports of well known open source desktop software, VLC comes to mind. Looking past whats already been discussed I'm sure there are viable venues which haven't yet been thought of, or at least given a fair chance. One thing I forgot to highlight was the Valve Steam Workshop donation program which just recently resulted in enough money for two 6 month development contracts for working on Blender. Again things like this makes me believe that exposure and ease of payment is the big hurdle, not that there's not enough people willing to donate for open software development.

jnbiche 13y ago

>I would happily pay a small sum each month for someone (or someone's) to work on FOSS software I use a lot[...] You're in luck. Gittip is exactly the model you are describing, and it's already active and supporting (in part) the works of hundreds of FOSS developers: https://www.gittip.com/ https://www.gittip.com/

gillianseed 13y ago
Thanks, yes I knew about this though last time I checked (back around when it was announced I think) it seemed pretty dead (that exposure thing again) but now it seems to be picking up. I guess it's time to have a look around to see if there are any developers there working on things that I'm interested in/relying on. I do hope that in the future we'll see more developers who will offer less abstract development plans even though I realise that gittip is not comparable to the project specific type funding as with Kickstarter etc.

pantalaimon 13y ago

> Do you have any examples of forks being made due to someone asking for donations? Ubuntu