
Fighting for Open Source Sustainability: Introducing Code Sponsor - cavneb
https://medium.com/@codesponsor/fighting-for-open-source-sustainability-introducing-code-sponsor-577e0ccca025
======
ef4
The authors are mistaken about the impact of employer-paid open source. It is
orders of magnitude bigger than anything else, and it has a decades-long
history of success in projects like Linux.

Companies aren’t doing it out of charity and don’t see it as such. They see
(correctly) that it’s easier to get what they want by paying some people to
work on an open source project than to start from scratch and pay for 100% of
the cost.

I’m all in favor of more models, but until you’re channeling many tens of
millions of dollars per year, your impact is much smaller than employer
sponsored open source.

~~~
cavneb
This is great feedback. Thank you.

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themlsmith
Full disclosure: I'm a long time sponsor
([https://rollbar.com/](https://rollbar.com/)) and supporter of Code Sponsor.
It's a fantastic resource for the Open Source community, notably the smaller,
independent projects. Supporting OS sustainability while generating awareness
for Rollbar was a total no-brainer decision. The transparency in the system
between sponsor and project owner is exceptional. They've built an
interesting, novel solution to help ease any burden felt, maintaining and
growing a project. Bravo!

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jwildeboer
Maybe I'm missing something, but I couldn't find a source for their claim that
"Two-thirds of the top OSS projects are maintained by one or two people".

How many projects? How are they rated "top"? When you make such a bold claim,
you should be able to back it up with verifiable sources IMHO.

Also, being a Red Hatter that has welcomed thousands of people in our New Hire
Orientations, I dare say that we actually do employ quite some developers that
continue their good work in a lot of communities. Describing that as "the 1%
approach" feels a bit wrong.

~~~
cavneb
This data comes from a talk given by Nadia Engbhal entitled “Consider the
Maintainer”. This data originally comes from here: [https://github.com/aserg-
ufmg/Truck-Factor/blob/master/READM...](https://github.com/aserg-ufmg/Truck-
Factor/blob/master/README.md)

~~~
jwildeboer
Thanks. Found the slides. But they also don’t give any link to rating criteria
or a list of projects.

[https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-
maintain...](https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintainer)

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jlgaddis
> _"... while part goes to maintaining Code Sponsor itself."_

If their intentions are "pure" and their primary purpose really is to help
open-source developers, they should either be a non-profit and/or completely
open and honest and publish the sizes of each "part". Preferably, that would
look (at minimum) something like:

    
    
      October 2017
    
      Income from sponsors:  $ x
      Paid to developers:    $ y
                             -----
      Kept by CodeSponsor:   $ z
    

Where z == x - y, of course.

~~~
cavneb

      October 2017
    
      Income from sponsors:  $ 7,437.20
      Paid to developers:    $ 3,413.20
                             -----
      Kept by CodeSponsor:   $ 4,024.00
    

This does not take into account the $6,000 we spent to become a sponsor for
Github Universe.

~~~
Deimorz
With those numbers, you kept about 54% of October's income.

So how is that split determined? That is, is it a fairly flat overhead so if
the income had been $100,000, you still would have kept ~$4000? Or are you
taking a percentage and it would have been ~$54,000?

~~~
cavneb
For example, the sponsor pays $1,000 for 1 month of sponsorship. The
developers gets 40% of that ($400). The remainder ($600) goes into building
Code Sponsor.

Understand that this has been a side project since day one. I have not taken
any distributions at all.

The split used to be 50/50, however I could not sustain myself with that split
and still keep the CPA low for our sponsors. We are now setting a minimum CPC
for all new sponsors to $1.50+. This means that the developer will get
$0.60/click.

Finally, part of the 60% goes into the server costs and fraud prevention. We
run every click through vigorous fraud detection prior to marking it as
“payable”. By doing so, we provide much higher quality clicks to the sponsors.
This makes them scale their funds. Remember, we are working with marketing
funds, not sponsorship funds.

~~~
Deimorz
Thank you for answering. I think it's perfectly reasonable at the current
income level, since if that's a typical month's income it would mean that
you're still only taking in about $50k/year, which is difficult to do much
with.

However, if you're intending to keep that split as revenue increases, I think
it conflicts with the way you're framing the company in places like the linked
post and the Code Sponsor homepage. Stating a mission like "fighting for open
source sustainability" and remarks like "Why do we do it? Basically, we want
to help" don't mesh with the fact that your company alone keeps more of the
money than you pass on to _all of the projects combined_.

I recognize that Code Sponsor isn't a charity/nonprofit, but it feels like
you're trying to give the impression that it's a similar sort of
values/mission-based organization. So it's not a fair comparison, but as a
point of reference, Charity Navigator would give a financial score of zero to
an organization that only used 40% of their funds for their "purpose", and
they'd be solidly in the bottom 10%
([https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&...](https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=48#PerformanceMetricOne)).

Overall, your take doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary for advertising. The
World Advertising Federation says that 60% of advertising cost is taken by
various companies that an ad passes through before it's actually displayed
([https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AkjTy8a6FJ8/WGqb2nGR0pI/AAAAAAAAF...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AkjTy8a6FJ8/WGqb2nGR0pI/AAAAAAAAFrw/SONAI8rbvxc5RnJPasRzfSIp8_5IpCpOwCLcB/s1600/Chart.png)),
but those companies certainly don't try to describe themselves as
philanthropic ones.

I hope I don't come off as too negative. I think it's great that you're
working on improving the current situation of open-source sustainability,
which really is a major issue. But I hope that if your income reaches the
point where Code Sponsor is sustainable (which certainly includes paying
yourself), you consider adjusting the split so that more funds are given to
the projects you want to help, instead of just keeping it as profit.

~~~
cavneb
Hi Diemorz,

I’m very glad for your comment. This is something that I can honestly say I
have not considered. My biggest fears were 1) making sure that the whole idea
isn’t rejected by the developer community and 2) making sure I have enough
money in place to give to developers.

I started off initially by doing a 50/50 split with developers. I also started
by charging $1/click to sponsors. I quickly realized that it would take a very
long time before I could get enough sponsors and developers to support myself
full time. Because of this, I dropped the distributions to 60/40\. It still is
not making much money at all. Code Sponsor may take 60%, but I take 0%.

Now in the future, if it does continue to grow at a healthy rate and if Github
will allow us to sustain OSS through README’s, then I would definitely
consider a more developer-sided split.

All I want is to help sustain OSS and do it as a living.

~~~
takluyver
Thanks for your openness about the finances, and thanks for building something
to address this issue, whatever the difficulties and drawbacks are.

------
styfle
I've been using Code Sponsor for a month or two now.

The best way to describe it is something between a generic Google Ads network
and a invite-only Carbon Ads network. And it's really meant to go in your
README.md file.

So this results in a few things:

1\. Broker. Sponsors can select which repos/languages/tech/etc they want to
advertise to and developers can select which sponsors are relevant to them.

2\. Transparent. Developers can see which ads a sponsor will display and how
much they pay per click (usually $0.40). The ads are usually just text with a
couple emoji that fit well into the README.md design and are loaded as an svg.

3\. Limited. Sponsors pay a fixed amount so if a repo is really popular and
displaying ads, it may stop displaying after the money is paid out to the
developers. This means you may just get a generic ad that recommends using
Code Sponsor near the end of the month, like this repo:
[https://github.com/styfle/geoslack](https://github.com/styfle/geoslack)

Caveats: it seems the Code Sponsor is not open source :(

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dboreham
After reading the article, I _think_ this is an advertising network for oss
project owners. Not a bad idea except why aren’t existing ad networks meeting
this need? And...if most of the pages displaying these ads are served by
GitHub, isn’t this stealing money GitHub has deliberately left on the table,
and won’t they be upset by that and hence take action? Perhaps the plan is to
succeed so quickly that GitHub buys them?

~~~
princekolt
> why aren’t existing ad networks meeting this need

Because most ad networks are data-gathering scum, and developers know this,
thus avoid them at all costs.

This company is at least _promising_ not to track the ads, and only provide
basic and relevant conversion data to advertisers. This is a big difference
that would mean at least I would be willing to give them a try.

~~~
cavneb
Owner here. I agree 100%. From day one I have been promised to never do any
tracking or remarketing. I don’t sell data. I have followed the Ethically
advertising guidelines established by Read the Docs. If you are a developer on
the platform, you know to the second what your payout is. If you are a
sponsor, you know to the second how much you owe.

------
daviddiasfront
I'm a big fan of Code Sponsor! Eric who created Code Sponsor is passionate
about his project and surely at your disposal for any query.

If you have a project with more than 100 stars, try it, you'll really
appreciate the transparency and the personalization of the ads you can have.
Long life to Code Sponsor!

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Siilwyn
Does anybody know what the click / view ratio is like on small projects? I
know it depends on a lot of things but I really have no idea at all... Would
it be below one percent or more around five, or something different?

~~~
cavneb
Depending on the project, we have seen between 0.4 - 1.2% click rate on
average.

~~~
Siilwyn
Thank you both for your replies!

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justdotJS
Another upvote for Code Sponsor! Been using it for almost a month or so, and
it's pretty awesome.

Styfle already describes it very well, so I'm just gonna add that although I'm
seeing a very shaky impression/click rate, and my clicks are below what I
expected to receive, the payout is quite big for an ad/sponsor network like
this. Also, it's much better than ad networks - no detailed tracking and more
(listed below by cavneb)!

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thenickperson
Unfortunately, it's limited to projects with 100+ stars. Cool idea though.

~~~
justdotJS
It didn't used to be limited, but I believe it's because of frauds and scams.
Maybe if you contact cavneb he can work something out?

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kentcdodds
I totally love code sponsor ️

~~~
cavneb
Thank you, Kent! Your OSS efforts deserve to be funded!

