
Ask HN: Patreon for open source? - hackathonguy
Hey guys,<p>I&#x27;m participating in an hackathon and had this idea: users of open source github repos can contribute $X for every commit the developer contributes, with a monthly cap. It&#x27;s a recurring donation based on development activity.<p>Give some love to open source devs.<p>What do you guys think?
======
Changaco
As others have pointed out, platforms to fund work on open source projects
already exist, and the best part is: they're open source themselves, so you
can contribute! In fact I was the top developer of Gratipay for a year myself,
and now I've created a fork called Liberapay (the reasons were the legal
difficulties Gratipay faced in the US, and the decision its founder made to
turn it into a non-neutral platform).

Links:

[https://liberapay.com/](https://liberapay.com/)
[https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com](https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com)
(Python)

[https://gratipay.com/](https://gratipay.com/)
[https://github.com/gratipay/gratipay.com](https://github.com/gratipay/gratipay.com)
(Python)

[https://salt.bountysource.com/](https://salt.bountysource.com/)
[https://github.com/bountysource/core](https://github.com/bountysource/core)
(Ruby)

[https://snowdrift.coop/](https://snowdrift.coop/) (not operational)
[https://git.snowdrift.coop/sd/snowdrift](https://git.snowdrift.coop/sd/snowdrift)
(Haskell)

~~~
vijayr
Are there collaborative translation services for open source apps and
products? One could of course use google translate, but it would be nice if
the translation is done by humans who actually use the product/service they
are translating.

~~~
Changaco
Liberapay uses Weblate:
[https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/liberapay/core/](https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/liberapay/core/)

Gratipay uses Transifex:
[https://www.transifex.com/gratipay/gratipay/](https://www.transifex.com/gratipay/gratipay/)

------
icebraining
Paying per commit seems as sensible as paying per LOC (related story: [1]).
Simple recurrent monthly donations as one can easily set up (eg. on Flattr)
make more sense, in my opinion.

[1]
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt)

~~~
broodbucket
Issues closed is probably a better metric, though there's no actually good
metric for software development.

~~~
WorldMaker
"Released Versions" would be a metric more in line with other creative arts on
Patreon (finished comics, finished short stories, finished songs, ...). You
can still game what constitutes a "released version", for instance including
every patch release kicked off by a CI system, but if you stick towards
something more like semver's definition of a minor release as your goal you
have something of a benchmark idea of what constitutes a "finished release".

------
justsaysmthng
"Give some love to open source devs."

It turns out that many users of open source projects (especially libraries and
packages) are other developers !

It is hard to find a piece of modern software which doesn't depend on some
open source libraries. Those libraries might depend on other libraries and so
on. Just do an `npm ls --depth=4` in a node-based project to see what a nice
tree that is. Same thing with cocoapods, carthage, rubygems, pip, cargo,
leiningen, etc.

In my view, money should follow the project structure - developers should
donate part of the money they receive to the project dependencies and the devs
of the dependencies should do the same thing, recursively and that's how you
really spread the love !

I've started working on a prototype a year ago, but got discouraged after
someone showed me that there are literally hundreds of projects trying to
'spread the love' and as a consequence no love is being spread :)... so I kind
of gave up on it for now, but still think this is how it should be done.

------
perlgeek
I like the idea of using Patreon for Open Source, but I dislike the idea of
tying it to the number of commits, because it creates the wrong incentives.

I've also got the impression that most patrons rather prefer a predictable,
monthly amount over a varied amount, even if it comes with a cap.

~~~
icebraining
That's why I like Flattr's model - my monthly budget is consistent, even if I
occasionally tip projects outside of my regular contributions.

~~~
21echoes
which is also how Patreon works -- you choose how much you pay per month

------
seibelj
Here's my idea for getting more money to open source. Someone please implement
it, I'm too busy right now.

Central repository (database with website and API frontends) that contains
links to donation pages for all open source software. This is crowdsourced
information. So if you search for "spark", apache spark appears with link to
donation page, and of course more obscure packages will be added as well.

Then a CLI tool is written that scans your code base. This is an open source
tool, so for node it will look in NPM packages, for C projects it will look at
the make files, etc. Developers can write custom code to detect their own
packages if it's not standard.

The output of the CLI tool calls an API at the central repository that creates
a report, so you can go to the URL and see all the open source packages you
use and links to donate to them.

Now, here is the final piece that would make it so much better, but is more
difficult: the central repository itself is a non-profit organization, so
instead of having to go to each library's donation page, you donate directly
to the central repo (perhaps a set amount every month), and once a month the
central repo donates all of the amounts taken in. So if you only want to
donate $10 a month, but use 500 open source projects, that's OK, because once
a month the central repo will add up all the donations and donate one lump
sum. Of course you can change the ratios of donations if you want, so some
projects get more of your donation per month than others, and you can remove
projects you don't want to donate to even if you use them.

In this way, individuals and companies can fairly compensate all the
developers of the open source software they use, easily and fairly, in the
amount they can afford.

At the end of the year, you only have to write off your donations to the
central repo, and not the hundreds of open source projects, as the central
repo is a non profit.

Thoughts?

~~~
doomtop
I think this is a great idea. I would love to build it, but don't think I have
the breadth of knowledge necessary. Does anything already exist like the CLI
tool to determine what OS packages are in your project?

~~~
matiasb
Stackshare could be a basic source, as an example, check Airbnb:

[http://stackshare.io/airbnb/airbnb](http://stackshare.io/airbnb/airbnb)

(so a company imports its Stackshare profile & you make a list of the open
source projects they're using, and if you have donation information from those
projects you show it)

~~~
seibelj
That's a superb idea, but I think that would happen after first getting the
basic donation information. I will set up a website to gather this with a
description of what the project is trying to accomplish, and see if it gets
any traction.

~~~
matiasb
Yes, let me know, I'll be happy to help and/or continue the brainstorming You
can ping me: matias AT insaurral.de :D

~~~
seibelj
Thanks! I'll shoot you an email

------
ashitlerferad
Exists:

[https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/)

Snowdrift looks interesting too:

[https://snowdrift.coop/](https://snowdrift.coop/)

~~~
infodroid
I am not sure about Snowdrift. Although the project has an interesting take on
crowd funding, it has been in development since late 2013 and does not seem to
be making any significant progress. As far as I can tell, it is still in alpha
stage and without a working payments system.

------
judofyr
[https://gratipay.com/](https://gratipay.com/) exists already, and it's mostly
(all?) open-source as well.

~~~
creshal
Patreon is more popular, though, and used by a lot of artists. You'll need
more arguments than "well it exists too" to convince users to sign up for
both.

~~~
zzzeek
It seems to not be there now, but some months ago, patreon's entry page listed
out the types of "creators" that one could sign up as. As I recall, this list
seemed to take actual pain to _not_ mention open source software, among an
otherwise exhaustive list of creative endeavors including not just art, music,
writing, but technical endeavors as well as such as research. I always took
this to mean "programmers not welcome". This was about the time that there was
a mass exodus of bloggers from Gittip (what gratipay was called at that time)
to Patreon so they almost seemed related.

edit: finally got through their registration. You get: "Which category fits
what you make best?"

Video & Film

Music

Writing

Comics

Drawing & Painting

Animation

Podcasts

Games

Photography

Comedy

Science

Education

Crafts & DIY

Dance & Theater

.. it's clear that programmers (unless you're a game programmer) are not
welcome.

~~~
21echoes
patreon engineer here! we are very welcoming of open source programmers, and
have quite a few on the platform. Many of them, we actually use their code in
prod (and pledge a fair amount).

it's pretty impossible to have an exhaustive list of all the kinds of things
you can create.. so we've been talking about ways to let people put in their
own categories for a while now, but that also has its own set of UX
complications.

~~~
zzzeek
good to know! thanks

------
jbrooksuk
I'm using Patreon for Cachet[0] and it works well enough that people can
donate, but discovery lacks for projects which aren't media based. Also, I
can't setup another Patreon page under the same account, so what about filling
in the voids there?

The idea works, the implementation could be improved.

[0] [https://patreon.com/jbrooksuk](https://patreon.com/jbrooksuk)

~~~
lowglow
You could bring your work over to Baqqer. You can create multiple projects and
have each one funded individually. Also trying to make discovery and community
more robust is part of our core values. Hit me up if you decide to check it
out, I'd appreciate your feedback.

------
kevinmchugh
patio11 has written before on why tips or especially "donations" are a bad
idea, or at least not the best idea:

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=659396](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=659396)

businesses have a much greater incentive to ensure continued development of
projects than individuals. Personally there's at most a handful of projects I
would support with my own money, but my employer's money would be very well
spent supporting at least a dozen different OS projects.

------
sveme
What I'd really like to see is some sort of business account for Patreon or
one of the others. Lots of companies use open source projects as an integral
part of their day-to-day work, yet it does not seem straightforward to set up
a monthly contribution to this work for a company. Obviously, they can use
one-time grants to the Apache Software Foundation or someone else, but
sometimes it is really just a single developer or a couple of developers that
develop a crucial software package (webpack and others). Would be great if a
company could support this easily as well.

------
osnd
I don't actually know how well it works, but there is exactly ONE way that
I've managed to financially support open source software: offer a version with
licenses.

For example, my company pays for OpenVPN Access Server not because it offers a
ton of value over OpenVPN (it really doesn't, for our use case), but because
they provided a way for me to give them money that's acceptable within a
corporate budget.

------
fridsun
Do your prior work investigation and try to take the good and avoid the bad.

Some prior work from top of my head:

\- Bountysource \- Gratipay \- Patreon \- Flattr

------
hackathonguy
Woah - received some amazing feedback here! Thanks everybody.

So I'll definitely look at all the other, similar/identical products. Another
takeaway is that this idea probably won't work on a per-commit basis - what's
a good way to make sure recurring contributions correspond with actual
development activity?

------
lanevorockz
Might work better if you build a unit test and create a bounty for it.

------
ceejayoz
I already donate to Vue and Laravel via Patreon. Per-commit seems like a
return to the line-of-code as a metric that was disastrous for obvious
reasons.

~~~
countdownnet
Yeah, Vue.js is quite successful on Patreon:
[https://graphtreon.com/creator/evanyou](https://graphtreon.com/creator/evanyou)

------
edem
There is
[Gratipay]([https://gratipay.com/~Gittip/](https://gratipay.com/~Gittip/))
which is based on donations. You might look into that as well. A commit I
think is not representing anything apart from the fact that it is a
(hopefully) compound piece of code. You might want to pay for finished user
stories which are estimated properly.

------
ruipgil
> $X for every commit

Even if you're supposedly giving money to reputable developers that are the
percentile less likely to commit fraud, there's still a risk of it happening.

A more reasonable approach would be a monthly or a "version" contribution.

Even better than that would be a "fund" where you pledged your money to
developers/projects, and it would be distributed equally or by a clear metric.

~~~
Changaco
There is no perfect metric to determine how much a contributor deserves, but
there is another simple solution: let each member choose how much of the
project's income they take! This is how Liberapay teams work, and how they
used to work on Gratipay (they're working on bringing that feature back).

If you want to know more, the second part of [https://medium.com/liberapay-
blog/a-new-platform-to-fund-wor...](https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/a-new-
platform-to-fund-work-on-open-source-projects-a97fac218cc7) is a short
introduction to our teams system and contains a few additional links.

------
tlo
There is Tip4Commit: [https://tip4commit.com/](https://tip4commit.com/)

------
kzisme
You should check out Gratipay(Formerly Gittip) - Although we currently aren't
back up to speed (with working payments) it's an open source project/company.

[https://gratipay.com/](https://gratipay.com/)

------
curo
[http://www.backerpass.com](http://www.backerpass.com) would work well as it
doesn't require backers to signup for an account like Patreon. (disclaimer: i
know the guy who created it.)

~~~
makeee
Thanks for the mention! In case anyone is interested here's an example of an
OSS project using BackerPass:
[https://backerpass.com/tomatoes](https://backerpass.com/tomatoes). If anyone
wants beta access shoot me an email: gabe@backerpass.com

------
lowglow
That's what we're doing over at Baqqer.com
([https://baqqer.com/](https://baqqer.com/)) - come over and add your project!

If you're interested in helping out you should join us. :)

~~~
jasonlotito
Was curious what you guys do, but honestly, every page redirects to a
signup/login page.

"A social community of makers building, selling, and crowdfunding together"

There is no clarity as to what you actually do.

~~~
lowglow
Which page redirects you back? Even the explore/about/tos pages? We're working
on redesigning the front-page right now to solve the messaging problem. Thanks
for the feedback Jason.

~~~
jasonlotito
Sorry, redirect is probably a bad term? It seemed like all links off the main
page that I were interested directed me to a signup page.

For example, links under build your dream and sell your product both bring me
to a Create Your Account page. I don't want to create an account. I want to
know what the heck you do.

Also, your headline: "Welcome to Baqqer A social community of makers building,
selling, and crowdfunding together" doesn't tell me anything about what you
do, or more importantly, the problem you are solving.

If it's "Let users give you money for your open source project" then just say
it.

------
countdownnet
Side tangent: if you want to know how Patreon creators are doing:
[https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators](https://graphtreon.com/top-
patreon-creators)

------
al_chemist
If you measure wrong thing then you will get wrong results. Do you want
programmers to think about "how many commits this issue is worth"? Just
publish your Bitcoin address in readme file.

~~~
jerf
Patreon produces money. Payment information in a README doesn't. They're not
comparable.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX_pF03vCSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX_pF03vCSU)

~~~
al_chemist
"Produces money"? "Payment information"? I think we misunderstood each other.
If you want a way to receive donations, you can publish Bitcoin address. If
you want an elaborate way to enforce payment and produce money out of
voluntary but unconscious decision - yes, Patreon is the way.

I know that the best thing you can do from SaaS perspective is to get
customer's credit card and permission to bill small non-defined amount
indefinitely, but I find it morally wrong.

Still, I don't think that WinRAR would have many paying fans on Patreon.

~~~
jerf
"If you want a way to receive donations, you can publish Bitcoin address."

Yes. If you _want_ payments, you can publish a Bitcoin address, or anything
else you'd like (my point here is not about Bitcoin specifically). To a first
approximation, you won't actually _get_ any payments, though.

That's the difference.

We don't live in a world where people haven't ever tried this brand new
donation idea. We live in a world where a lot of people have. Their reports
are almost uniform... they literally write blog posts when they receive enough
money to pay for a meal in a month or a year, because that's how rarely it
happens. It's not a functional mechanism for making money. It doesn't even
rise to the level of paying for a hobby; it tends to run at donation rates
roughly comparable to what the author could get walking down a busy street
every day and keeping their eye out for loose change, and well below the rate
of "collecting bottles out of the trash" in any state with a bottle deposit.

