

With Assembly (YC W12), anyone can contribute to open-source and get paid - awwstn
http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/21/7258667/assembly-collaborative-work-open-source

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bitsweet
Today we announced $2.9MM in funding from Union Square Ventures, Thrive,
Collaborative Fund, and others. We're eager to get back to work.

Happy to answer questions.

~~~
debacle
Why do the ownership shares of a project never seem to add up to the total
bounties for that project?

It seems like many users are creating bounties for projects that they work on
and then fulfilling those same bounties.

Most projects also have a single user with over 90% of the ownership of a
project. While that mirrors how many OSS projects are structured, it doesn't
really favor the "collaborative" message of Assembly. Are you doing anything
to adjust that, or is it something that is fine in your minds?

If an OSS project gains traction, it generally becomes a PaaS solution with
3-5 major providers and many smaller providers. How in the world can Assembly
hope to promise people revenue with that model?

~~~
bitsweet
> Why do the ownership shares of a project never seem to add up to the total
> bounties for that project?

Open bounties represent new ownership potential. Transparency is important
here - it is one reason why ownership is on the blockchain, this allows it to
be verifiable outside of Assembly.

> It seems like many users are creating bounties for projects that they work
> on and then fulfilling those same bounties.

All new ownership in a product is earned through the same mechanism. This
makes progress transparent and participation fair.

> Most projects also have a single user with over 90% of the ownership of a
> project. While that mirrors how many OSS projects are structured, it doesn't
> really favor the "collaborative" message of Assembly. Are you doing anything
> to adjust that, or is it something that is fine in your minds?

Active products rarely have owners with anything close to 90%. Some products
may be skewed to an individual that's done a lion share of work initially, but
there are many others that are more spread out or become so with time. Opposed
to completely working alone, having others to bounce ideas or make other
contributions that complement your skills is what Assembly community members
find collaborative.

> If an OSS project gains traction, it generally becomes a PaaS solution with
> 3-5 major providers and many smaller providers. How in the world can
> Assembly hope to promise people revenue with that model?

It's challenging to compare Assembly products to traditional open source
projects & libraries. The Assembly community is building real products, they
just happen to have source code that is open source and participation is open,
transparent, and collaborative. To clarify, Assembly does not promise a
product will earn revenue...only that if any profit is generated, it will be
distributed to the contributors. Assembly is already distributing proceeds
from revenue producing products, some members are earning over $1000 a month
for previous contributions. This aligns Assembly's success with our community.

~~~
debacle
> Open bounties represent new ownership potential.

You didn't answer my question. The real answer is that the project contract
can create a situation where a project initiator could completely abandon a
project and still continue to earn shares in the project due to the
"obligatory service charge" nature of the bounty system for early adopters.

> This makes progress transparent and participation fair.

mdeiters receives 20% of all new bounties completed on the coderwall project.
In what way is that fair?

> Active products rarely have owners with anything close to 90%

Two of the top 8 projects on the projects page have over 90%, and three have
over 70%.

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mbesto
I just recently joined. I think this is a HUGE opportunity specifically for
people who are looking to get experience with building real software projects
and shipping code. (i.e. juniors) Good luck to you guys...I might be helping
out on some projects in the near future.

My only critique is if this things scales to become big, it means people will
increasingly try to game the system (i.e. figure out how maximize returns by
illegitimate means). Money motivations do funny things to people.

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debacle
Assembly's website has an incredibly beautiful design.

But it's atrocious to use. 50% of the page is wasted in whitespace, another
30-40% in boilerplate and the use of the site is not intuitive. My cursor will
change to a pointer when things aren't actually clickable and trying to use
the slider causes text on the page to be selected.

Onto the actual application, it's impossible to determine how value is
assigned, what a vote is, why I can vote if I'm logged out, what that means,
etc.

This is a tool designed to be primarily used by smart, relatively technical
people with copy and design directed towards your average Facebook user.

Edit: As a final note, your FAQ is 10 pages and almost 100 questions long.
This creates a huge barrier to entry for new users. Many of those questions
only exist due to inefficiencies in your UI. It's very daunting, and honestly
I would never use this product for its intended purpose at this point.

~~~
chrislloyd
Hey debacle! I'm a front-end engineer at Assembly. We've pushed out a bunch of
new features in the last couple of days and are still ironing out the edges.
Namely, we shift from Kickstarter-style "product" pages (with even more
boilerplate) to using feeds to help expose more content. The large header is
going to be revisited pretty quickly as we unify the different sections on a
product. I've created a Meta bounty with your feedback so you can follow our
progress addressing it:
[https://assembly.com/meta/bounties/834](https://assembly.com/meta/bounties/834)

~~~
debacle
I signed up (ack) and replied with some of the UI bugs/issues that I found.

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derekp7
Let's say I have an open source project. And people start contacting me about
purchasing paid support. Now I currently have a day job, and the total paid
support contracts wouldn't be enough to quit and support the project full
time. What I'm looking for is a company that I can contract with to provide
that support, with a portion of the proceeds going to the open source project
in return for making that company the primary support channel.

Would Assembly be able to provide this type of service, or is there another
one out there that does this already, that I'm not aware of?

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userbinator
The first thing I think of when I see the name is the demoparty (
[http://www.assembly.org](http://www.assembly.org) ). I suppose Compile would
be a good name too...

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ChaoticGood
I love this! I think in the future we will be focused more on bidding on a
plethora of tasks the market has to offer. Assembly so far is the closest
thing to that future. I also like
[https://worklist.net/](https://worklist.net/) The idea that I can fill my day
with a variety of new and compelling tasks sounds more awesome than getting
stuck in a routine. Sounds like a great way for a junior developer such as
myself to gain vital experience.

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notduncansmith
I think Assembly is a really cool idea - however, I've noticed a few things
that are driving me away from the platform.

#1. Lack of good ideas. Most of the ideas are rather unmotivational to me. I
realize that this could be an entirely personal hangup, so I don't hold this
against the platform.

#2. Lack of good leadership. After participating in discussions with a few of
the project leads, and reading the content posted by others, it looks like few
(if any) of the people starting projects there have any idea how building a
product works. See "Voices" for an example. It's tough to get behind some of
these people.

That said, Assembly could be a really powerful platform. Just waiting for the
right idea to come along I guess...

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jonaldomo
For each project listed, are 100% of profits distributed through app coins? Or
does the owner of the project decide what percent of profits to share with the
assembly community. It would be nice to see what this percentage is.

~~~
awwstn
Yes – 100% of profits are distributed to the community based on App Coins. The
person who initially submits the product has ownership just like everyone
else, and gets paid that way.

~~~
jonaldomo
I think its a cool idea, I am just thinking about how to prevent from getting
taken advantage of. Couldn't the project owner up his earning package as the
business gets successful which in turn decreases profit that would be paid
out?

(Thanks for the 689 coins just now!)

~~~
awwstn
Glad you think it's a cool idea!

A few things:

The product doesn't have an "owner", and nobody has an earning package.

So a user could create large bounties and award them to him/her self (thus
increasing his/her share of the profits), but that would make the community
less motivated to work with that person, and anyone in the community can weigh
in on what a bounty should be worth, so the community is able to protect
itself from bad behavior.

Also, most products end up with multiple core team members, so typically the
additional authority of the Core Team doesn't lie on one person.

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jj00
So what if the Open Source project doesn't make any money? Do they expect the
project to pay percentages based on donations or something?

~~~
fiatjaf
They will pay the percentages based on the money made, 50% of zero is zero.

