
Preact: Countering the Perception That Open Source Must Be Free - jdorfman
https://medium.com/open-collective/why-and-how-to-fund-the-open-source-projects-you-depend-on-da62a582307#.m2l03rvjm
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legostormtroopr
I've had this argument with a number of different open-source groups, and they
all come back to the fact that open-source communities don't like charging for
products or services and try to survive on voluntary donations.

I tried to explain that companies and governments (especially governments)
just cannot donate money for open-source. In IT, everything has a price and is
a line item and needs to be justified. If a company doesn't have to pay that
$100 for a badge on a website, they won't.

I think the long-term answer for open-source, especially for frameworks and
languages, is through open-source IT certifications.

Being able to pay for some kind of certification would be a boon for everyone.
Developers can show case their skills (and get a tax-deduction on their
investment), Employers have a standard they can look for when hiring devs, and
open-source communities get money based on the popularity of their projects
and can show case who is getting certs or hiring based on them - showing the
value of their work.

I'd gladly pay $500-1000 for a cert (even one I know I'd easily pass), but
have trouble justifying $100 for warm-fuzzy-feelings, even when I know its
going to a framework I depend on.

~~~
parenthephobia
Usually, paying somebody to do something that materially benefits you isn't
called donating. As the article suggests, organizations should think of
voluntary open source funding as insurance.

Of course, some companies _do_ just donate money for open source, many more
donate _in kind_ \- e.g. with hosting services - and still others develop
internally and donate source code.

Naturally they do this because continued maintenance of the software supports
their business objectives, and not out of an egalitarian sense of charity.

~~~
hueving
Even though it's nice to think of it as insurance, it's not the same thing
because it doesn't come with any actual insurance.

You can donate money to a project to hope for help when you encounter some
critical bug in the future. However, you don't actually get any guarantees
that the community will help with said bug or return your money if they don't.
That's a really hard sell if you're trying to pitch it as insurance.

------
danjoc
And it's MIT license, or as I think of it, the starving artist license. Why
not license under AGPLv3, the way MongoDB does? You want to use it in open
source stuff? Free. You want to use it in commercial product? Commercial
license is available for a fee.

~~~
tracker1
No way... We're taking about a front end framework... Which means you really
can't use it for any commercial front end.. period.

Not to mention no corporation would touch it with a 10ft pole

~~~
danjoc
Sure you could. Pay for a commercial license. Corporations pay for those all
the time, and usually don't even get source.

~~~
tracker1
And that's worked out horribly for maintainers.. it's the whole reason for
open-source. Look there are plenty of use cases where (A)GPL is perfectly
suitable... a front end gui framework is not a good example imho.

I've used plenty of closed source tools in the past... and they've always bit
me in the ass at some point. I'd rather roll/adapt my own, or use something
with a permissive license I don't have to worry about. I participate in the
broader community, and prefer ISC/MIT licensing for most of what I do and use.

If it's a given database server, sure, AGPL is fine as long as the client
library is permissive.

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Swizec
I like to pay for software I use. Especially if it's something I use to make
money.

But if you don't ask me, I won't pay. Too many people are afraid to ask. I'm
happy Jason is working towards changing that.

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kartickv
One solution that I feel hasn't been explored enough is a commercial reuse
license: [https://kartick-log.blogspot.in/2016/11/a-commercial-
reuse-l...](https://kartick-log.blogspot.in/2016/11/a-commercial-reuse-
license-can-be-best.html)

Like open-source, this helps people reuse your effort to build something else,
without having to reinvent the wheel.

Like closed-source, it's easy to charge users for the software, and not have
somone undercut you by offering the same thing free.

~~~
Oxitendwe
I think you have a really good idea! It doesn't just solve the problem with
open versus closed source, it also solves a different and much more
fundamental problem, which is that people who work on free and open source
software do not get rewarded proportional to the value they provide to others.
People who work on free software generally do so in their spare time, and work
on proprietary software to pay the bills. This should be a sad state of
affairs to anyone who actually cares about free software, that the only way to
do it is to make proprietary software to keep the lights on. If one of them
makes a program that is of great value and utility to others, how might they
expect to be rewarded? If they are lucky, they can expect a few donations. If
they are very lucky, a reasonably paid position maintaining their program paid
for by a company that probably produces proprietary software.

How much are Linux kernel devs paid? How much value does Linux provide to
others? On the other side of the coin, how much does the CEO of Snapchat make,
and how much value does Snapchat provide to the world at large? This is
unacceptable, people who make truly useful things should be rewarded
appropriately, it's not fair that people can profit off the work of others
while giving none of it back. Pull requests do not put food on the table, when
people are able to make a living off of open source software, we'll see a lot
more of it than we ever did when they relied on charity, goodwill, and a day
job writing proprietary software.

~~~
kartickv
Agreed.

My proposal isn't intended to make open-source sustainable. I don't have any
magic solutions.

Rather, my proposal is pragmatic. Can we derive some of the benefits of open-
source in a sustainably-funded way?

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javajosh
Imagine if every 6-figure dev gave just $1k a year to a basket of all the OSS
they use daily.... Man that would be a different (and better) world.

~~~
zeppelin101
That's such a brilliant idea. What if there was a website where people could
divide up which OSS projects their $1k or 1% goes to? It could be anonymous,
pseudonymous, or public, depending on how bold the philanthropist was.

~~~
javajosh
Well let's bang out some details right here. First, payments. Taking them and
then disbursing them. In terms of taking, we'd need a subscription, and
probably monthly. In terms of disbursing, I'd like to aim for 100% with
operating costs coming from people voluntarily adding _us_ to their basket.
Locating the actual target of the money is also potentially difficult. It's
easy for some projects (Redis -> antirez) hard for others (node -> Ryan
Dahl???). Also, would have to take into account some OSS has deep backing, and
probably doesn't need money. Last but not least, taxes.

To summarize: before beginning I'd like to find similar systems
('competition'), how to locate recipients, and how to move the money around
without losing any of it to fees, ideally. The marketing angle is easy:
6-figure devs might like the idea of giving in this way. Your basket could
even be a sharable point of pride.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Locating the actual target of the money is also potentially difficult.

You'd almost always want it to go to appropriate foundations (501(c)3 or
equivalent), not individuals, except when supporting projects that really only
have a single developer and no organization behind them. That also makes it
easier for companies and individuals to give, since they can deduct it from
their taxes.

~~~
javajosh
Hmm. I guess I was envisioning _the service_ as being the non-profit, and the
disbursement need not be to other non-profits.

But this brings up a few interesting points. First, if you give only to the
founder, and not the contributor, will this engender resentment? Second,
ideally the result would be that the founder would work more on the project in
a consistent way, but that sort of gift would need to be something more along
the lines of a stipend over the course of a year or two. Third, if the amounts
were large enough (which would be the case if _every_ 6-figure dev gave
$1k/year), you could do something along the lines of the MacArthur foundation
so-called "genius grants".

~~~
JoshTriplett
Foundation, not founder; foundations are required to be much more accountable
with funds than individuals are. I'm suggesting in most circumstances that
it's preferable to give to an accountable organization chartered with the
stewardship of a project, rather than to any particular individual.

~~~
javajosh
Well this is a useful discussion, because I'm realizing how much I want to
give the maker/user community itself the power to hold itself accountable. To
take your point to the logical conclusion is to assert that all successful OSS
projects should have a foundation, or even a for-profit org. I'd like to see
something looser, a dynamic, democratic assignment of value by those who
benefit the most.

------
arjie
To be honest, the only time I'm going to pay for open source is if you bounty
or ransom it and I want it. Neovim for instance.

OpenSSH, probably never. Just being honest here. And considering half the
population here blocks ads, I doubt they'd pay either.

~~~
alannallama
Makes sense that you'd only want to pay for things that provide you with value
directly. I think that applies when donating a small amount to support a
project you make use of, when you get something in return (like a t-shirt or
sticker), or as you say to fund specific features or changes you want. That
also goes for sponsors: they should get value in return, and they do, like
exposure and reputation in the dev community, a platform for their recruitment
message, etc. To me, this dynamic seems quite different from ads, which are
non-consensual and not tied to a direct value exchange.

~~~
arjie
Yeah. That makes sense.

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marknadal
An annual budget of $6K is going to take a long time to gain momentum.

Compare against other successful projects, like:

\- VueJS, $9K / month:
[https://www.patreon.com/evanyou](https://www.patreon.com/evanyou)

\- GUN (mine, an Open Source Firebase) $1.9K / month:
[https://www.patreon.com/gunDB](https://www.patreon.com/gunDB)

It looks like the Patreon route is better than the open collective route.

I'd be interested to have a debate, though - just seems like the numbers tell
their own story. No?

~~~
alannallama
Well, the article specifically discusses Open Collective vs Patreon,
referencing VueJS. What do you think of the differences mentioned there?

~~~
marknadal
Jason seems to be opposed to the idea of a BDFL in exchange for a day job. To
me, this is why the numbers are going to be different. Ideas need a prophet, a
messiah to attach to. I'm strongly against centralization, but
decentralization and P2P and "open" don't mean "lacking a visionary". And you
can't hand a "rally call" over to a group of people - not that a group isn't
powerful, but personality is important to any movement. And if a group adopts
a personality, it becomes conformity.

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kbob
> [Preact is] still just 600–800 lines of code if you remove the comments.

I'd never heard of Preact. I still don't know what it is or does. Maybe it's
truly groundbreaking. But how can 800 SLOC be a product? That's barely more
than an afternoon's hacking session, not something to release and form a
community around.

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RoboPlumber
I really hate the "gigantic block quotes between paragraphs" thing. It's very
distracting from the flow and content of the article.

~~~
alannallama
Yeah that's always a tricky stylistic choice - I include them because I know
some readers prefer to scan headlines as opposed to reading every word, and I
want to help them take something useful away, too. Though I do really
appreciate thorough readers like you so I hope it's not too off putting :)

~~~
mintplant
FYI, pull quotes usually duplicate segments of writing from the article body
---they're the article quoting itself, pulling out the highlights. You're
supposed to be able to skip over them when reading the full article.

~~~~ "they're the article quoting itself, pulling out the highlights" ~~~~

Like this comment: the pull quote was already present in the text.

