
Funding Django is not an act of charity, it's an investment - intellectronica
https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2016/feb/04/funding-testimonial-divio/
======
dkyc
I think this comment by patio11 is very relevant here:

 _" We don't donate to OSS software which we use, because we're legally not
allowed to.

I routinely send key projects, particularly smaller projects, a request to
quote me a commercial license of their project, with the explanation that I
would accept a quote of $1,000 and that the commercial license can be their
existing OSS license plus an invoice. My books suggest we've spent $3k on this
in 2015. My bookkeeper, accountant, and the IRS/NTA are united on this issue:
they don't care whether a software license is OSS or not. A $1k invoice is a
$1k invoice; as a software company, I have virtually carte blanche to expense
any software I think is reasonably required, and I think our OSS is reasonably
required.

I would do this more often if OSS projects made it easier for me to do so.
Getting me to pay $1,000 for software is easy; committing me to doing lots of
admin work over the course of a week is less easy. Take a look at what e.g.
[http://sidekiq.org/](http://sidekiq.org/) , which is an OSS project with a
commercial model, does. Two clicks gets me to a credit card form. If I
actually used Sidekiq, Mike would have had my credit card on file the day that
form went up."_

([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863939))

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Legally not allowed? You can donate to anybody you please I would think.

Anyway I'm all for using software you pay for, because it has a higher
probability of being around next year. One person donating a responsible
amount is not going to guarantee that. Its a start I guess.

~~~
masklinn
> Legally not allowed? You can donate to anybody you please I would think.

The point patio11 makes here is that as a company things are not so easy:

> Both countries are very lenient with regards to necessary business expenses
> (必須経費 over here). Neither particularly likes arbitrary money moving out of
> the company; that smacks of unreported income.

("unreported income" here means money paid to an employee but not reported as
income). With a proper invoice and line item, all the boxes are checked and a
random audit won't fall on the company like a ton of bricks.

Even if the system handles company donations, that tends to be more complex
both internally and externally than a "software license" line item, and thus
to have way more overhead and to be way more likely to be refused.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Oh, corporate rules. Sure. So "its legally difficult if I'm to keep my tax
write-off" would be a better statement? Because it could be a personal
donation.

~~~
Mtinie
> Because it could be a personal donation.

Not if it came out of the company's coffers.

But yes, if you change the premise of the original comment, sure, you can
easily make a personal donation to an OSS project.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I thought the original comment was about _contributing_ as in, doing work for.
But I see the interpretation of "giving money" now, thanks!

~~~
masklinn
The original comment was about _donating_ not _contributing_ , and the whole
thread is in the context of corporate donations since that's the subject of
TFA.

------
travjones
>> "...a solid, stable, secure and powerful web application framework..."

I think this quote sums up Django very well. I would guess that a large chunk
of externally facing and internally facing web apps use django (e.g., apps at
Mozilla [0]). Anyone have a link to numbers? It would be neat to quantify the
prevalence of frameworks on the net. Someone must have done this already.

[0]: [https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django-
awar...](https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django-awarded-moss-
grant/)

~~~
Everhusk
669 stacks on stackshare
[http://stackshare.io/django](http://stackshare.io/django)

and for comparison:

2.2k rails [http://stackshare.io/rails](http://stackshare.io/rails) 2.34k
node.js [http://stackshare.io/nodejs](http://stackshare.io/nodejs)

~~~
travjones
Thanks for the data. I guess rails and node are "hotter," but I'm still not
convinced because it appears that stackshare relies on self report (which we
all know is pretty fallible). Further, selection bias could be at play in
these data. For example, individuals more likely to report their stack on
stackshare might be the same individuals more likely to use rails or node.
Still, at least we've got some numbers.

~~~
cholantesh
Well, .NET is under 600, and Meteor is over 1k, which I find dubious.

------
miiiiiike
It's like chipping in $10 for a bag of artisinal coconut chips on Kiskstarter,
but instead of getting a bag chips you get a mature web framework. And maybe
artisinal coconut chips.. I don't know, I've never been to DjangoCon.

~~~
tedmiston
Obligatory mention of how Tom Christie successfully funded the latest version
of Django Rest Framework from a Kickstarter campaign. While my donation was
modest, I participated because I use it regularly, and KS made it easy to
give.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomchristie/django-
rest...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomchristie/django-rest-
framework-3/description)

~~~
jsmeaton
I think donating by way of kickstarter is fine, but it attracts the same
people that regular donations attract. Developers themselves, rather than the
companies that are profiting from the use of free software. That's really the
gap that needs to be filled.

------
iyn
An indirect way to support Django is to use products and/or services of its
sponsors: [https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/corporate-
members/](https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/corporate-members/)

~~~
mooreds
Don't forget to mention you are doing so is in part because of their support
of Django.

------
brianwawok
Kind of unrelated to the topic.. but I recently checked out Django for the
first time ever recently (I know, 5 years late) - and was impressed. It has a
lot of the things I like in web development with mostly sane defaults (most
insane thing found so far: Closing database connection after each request,
really?). Edit - Yes I know you can change config to keep connection open, but
as a default for prod mode it seemed rather weird ;)

Still fighting the internal battle that I know I like better compile time
checking (ala Scala), but having changes happen so fast in dev is pretty
freakin nice...

~~~
Scarblac
I'm not sure if this is in fact what you're saying, but the closing the
database connection each time is only the default (historical reasons),
changing it is a matter of changing one setting:
[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/databases/#connect...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/databases/#connection-
management)

~~~
bluetech
This is still a similar problem for the memcached cache backend (which django
recommends):
[https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/11331](https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/11331)

~~~
brianwawok
Oh interesting.

I did not mess with memcached, just django + gunicorn + nginx... was pretty
nice performance for simple webappy stuff.

------
collinmanderson
It's amazing what the Django Software Foundation was able to accomplish with
the recent fundraising. It has greatly increased the project's reliability and
stability. Let's keep it up. :)

------
DanieleProcida
If you rely on Django or another open-source project, can you afford not to
help fund it?

------
mixonic
I've been pondering corporate roles in modern OSS projects for a few months,
especially those in projects that have no single owner.

Supporting developers or community members of an OSS project your company uses
through employee time or financial means is less of an investment, and more of
a hedge. You've picked up a product off the shelf, however that product has a
future direction decided by a number of people in a community.

A company that chooses not (through inaction or action) to participate in the
project is relying on the existing powers-that be, and their existing
influences, to make decisions that will benefit the company. This is a risk.

A company that chooses to participate cannot _control_ a decentralized
project, but they can absolutely influence the software and community by
choosing what projects to fund, what kind of roles to hire for, what projects
to sponsor, and what to publicly talk about. This influence nudges the
community in directions beneficial to the company, and ensures the project
doesn't head in a different direction.

For example in the last year the Ember.js community has seen an influx of
larger companies hiring positions that include OSS time for employees. Large
companies sponsoring OSS work is becoming more common. This means the parts of
Ember that benefit large company needs (lots of devices, big dev teams) are
getting more focus. The transition is exciting and fascinating to observe.

Support OSS projects important to your company, or accept the risk that comes
with allowing foundational parts of your business to be managed by others
(without your needs in mind).

------
stefanfoulis
Developing software means you're standing on the shoulders of the opensource
giants. Let's feed them from time to time :-)

------
kmfrk
Wagtail is one of the most interesting Django projects at the moment
([https://wagtail.io](https://wagtail.io)).

A great attempt to make CMSes as useable as humanly possible, which can't be
said for WordPress, Drupal, and the usual fare.

~~~
sergiotapia
Wordpress exploded in popularity largely in part because it's easy to use.

~~~
acdha
I wish the OP had used less sweeping terminology – WordPress is definitely
easy to install but keeping it running, customizing it, and staying secure are
all areas where reasonable people can have different opinions. It'd be nice if
people didn't slag off other projects but instead mentioned what they'd found
better/worse about the one they're recommending.

------
danjoc
I can't help but wonder if Django wouldn't do better with a multi-licensing
strategy like MongoDB uses. Asking for donations typically doesn't work out so
well.

I see a lot of underfunded open source projects. The whole internet seems to
run on them. OpenSSL was one prominent example. I don't think it is
coincidence that they are almost always BSD type licenses.

To me BSD licensing just seems like the starving artist living on the good
will of a few wealthy donors. Donors who frequently end up steering the
project. Multi-licensing seems like a healthier approach.

~~~
jsmeaton
You're right, and the Django Software Foundation (along with projects like
BeeWare) are actively trying to work out how to solve these problems. DSF has
hired a part time "director of advancement", Adrienne Lowe, to try to get
money back into Django.
[https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/nov/23/introducing...](https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/nov/23/introducing-
dsfs-director-advancement/)

------
pankajdoharey
I dont see the point, Rails already solves the problems that Dj-ango is trying
to solve again. Rails/ruby combo already solves the problem in a very elegant
way. There is no need for another half baked solution that tries to solve the
same problem.

~~~
DanieleProcida
Django's been around for a pretty long time. Projects like Django and Rails
need each other. If there were just one dominant web application framework, it
would stagnate.

------
tedmiston
Food for thought - As a prospective employee, I'd more likely want to work at
a company whose name I saw on the corporate sponsors page (of Django, or
whatever framework they use).

------
cbertschy
I approve this message :-)

------
booop
Can we see the Django Software Foundation's latest Form 990?

~~~
ubernostrum
Information on how to do that here:

[https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/records/](https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/records/)

------
mrfusion
I'd like to see something like celery built in. But easier to use and doesn't
need a separate db. Is it possinlble to fund that like south was?

~~~
fleetfox
Isn't celery plug and play nowadays? If you need a something simpler take a
look at django-rq. I don't think a serious job queue is possbile with RDBMS as
backend.

~~~
mrfusion
What's so special about a job queue that it can't use an rdbms? I never
understood that.

~~~
rajivm
One reason: Most RDBMS's aren't designed for "waiting for newly queued items".
You literally have to have each worker poll at some time interval for new
items: `SELECT * FROM jobs WHERE status = 'new'`, transactionally claim the
job, and if a worker dies, un-claim it. It's not that it's not possible to use
an RDBMS and work around these problems, but generally, it won't lead to the
most scalable and robust solution for the problem. Message brokers / AMQP are
better designed for this problem set. If you have a small site, with a low
volume queue, your RDBMS might be just fine though.

~~~
houzi
This is not the case if you're using Postgres, which will signal/notify
listening clients, instead of having the clients poll for changes.

