
Show HN: I founded a company and a platform to fund open source developers - Aearnus
http://equalize.digital/immutable-coffee.html
======
glacials
I believe in your mission. The world needs a better way to fund open source
development.

At first glance, your product feels unrelated to this. It seems like a Stack
Overflow replacement that's worse for posterity (read: googlers) because chats
are private. It also feels like a side-gig for open source developers, asking
them to basically freelance to fund their open source projects, which I don't
think is how that should work.

I think you'd have more luck as a platform for paid support licenses for open
source software. Bootstrapping a support license program is a Big Deal for
independent open source developers who don't want more administrative work.
But this feels like a miss on that front. Happy to confer more.

> Minus server costs and wages, all of the money processed through Immutable
> Coffee will go directly back to the developers and experts answering
> questions for the community.

You might want to look into forming a nonprofit, as this is almost exactly
what it is (minus ownership stakes). If you're a nonprofit people don't have
to trust sentences like this, as it's baked into your existence.

~~~
Aearnus
Might not be a bad idea to form a nonprofit -- thanks for this!! This is my
first business venture so I was doing things very much "by the books" in the
way of establishing everything.

As far as Immutable Coffee being a Stack Overflow replacement, I don't think
that's accurate. Stack Overflow is already saturated enough that I don't think
that there's any need for another website to exist for posterity's sake. Being
able to google questions and answers doesn't feel like a very important goal,
especially considering how quickly answers get invalidated with how fast
programming moves anyway.

As far as it being a side-gig for open source developers, I think that's an
accurate assessment -- unfortunately. I did try very hard to do something that
sets this site apart from traditional freelancing, and that's in the quick
pace which a developer can answer questions. It doesn't take much time at all
to log onto IC and really quickly claim a few questions and start helping
people, in contrast with how long it takes to set up traditional freelance
gigs.

Thanks for believing in the mission! I have a few other ideas that are in the
works with regards to this as well, that I'm just as excited to show HN.

~~~
mch82
A nonprofit may be a great model for you and I love nonprofits.

It’s been traditionally difficult for open source software organizations to
get recognized as a 503c nonprofit (which allows people to make tax deductible
donations). Things may have changed, but the IRS has struggled to decide if
FOSS is truly volunteer work or is more of a tax shelter. A nonprofit can also
be more overhead in terms of structure (you need a board), record keeping &
accounting than an LLC (but not much more than a C-Corp).

Unless you’re operating model depends on donations, it might be worth staying
an LLC for a while.

Check with a lawyer, accountant, or Stripe Atlas for real guidance. It’s been
a while since I looked at firming a company.

------
jwildeboer
„open source developers work for pennies on the dollar. It is near impossible
to make a living contributing to open source“

Literally thousands of developers at Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, Intel, IBM,
Microsoft, working full time, fully paid on upstream projects, would slightly
disagree.

I’m not saying that every F/OSS developer makes a lot of money, but I oppose
the notion that it is “near impossible” to do so.

[disclaimer: I work at Red Hat since 14 years as EMEA Evangelist]

~~~
zaarn
Alright, so how do I get hired part-time or full-time to work on my own pet
FOSS projects?

~~~
vertex-four
Find a company that uses it and wants to see it continuing to be developed in
a way that works for them, and ask for them to employ you.

~~~
Crinus
So they get all the benefits of the project while i get a regular flat salary?

Why not just work as a regular programmer regardless of what i work on is FOSS
instead and keep my own projects under my control for myself?

~~~
vertex-four
Sure, you can do that! I was answering the person's question, in which they
wanted to get paid for developing their FOSS.

~~~
Crinus
The "i" in my comment doesn't refer to me specifically, it is like the "royal
you" but for a single person (not sure if there is a name for it).

------
gremlinsinc
Sounds to me like a scrappy clone of Codementor.

I think the real way to equalize OSS software is to make it partially OSS ...
maybe any company w/ < 10 mill profits it's FOSS, any company over that has to
pay in man-hours (contributions) or $$ to use the product.

Amazon/FB/Microsoft and other Faang's could easily reproduce any oss software
to meet their needs using their own staff...

Maybe even just have a github like site to host software and each organization
pays based on their value, w/ startups/small companies under 10 million annual
revenues essentially having free access.

Larger companies would pay a per employee fee, that fee would be divided up
among all FOSS software that company uses. They could get some refunds for any
contributions accepted to FOSS. It'd basically be like patreon for software in
a semi-walled garden.

Small members could also 'opt-in' to pay $x per month that would also be
divided up among other OSS projects. Either random, or they could pick by
grouped projects or just pick their favorites to receive a % of their monthly
donation.

~~~
quantummkv
> I think the real way to equalize OSS software is to make it partially OSS
> ... maybe any company w/ < 10 mill profits it's FOSS, any company over that
> has to pay in man-hours (contributions) or $$ to use the product.

A friendly reminder that it is Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer. Doing
what you suggest is a good approach for Free Beer, not Freedom.

Qt has the perfect business model for OSS. Respect the LGPL license for Qt and
get it for free without any extra restrictions. Or go straight for a
commercial license. Plus they sell add-ons and other software and support
around Qt.

And considering all the places where Qt is used, I would say they are very
successful at it.

~~~
Crinus
> Qt has the perfect business model for OSS.

Except for that part where their business model incentivizes them to bloat the
library towards what is actually paying (car and smart fridge dashboard UIs)
instead of what most people would want Qt to focus on (desktop widgets - see
pretty much every thread whenever a Qt release or news is posted).

> And considering all the places where Qt is used, I would say they are very
> successful at it.

Since we're talking in the context of money instead of popularity, 1000000
projects using the LGPL version of Qt for free doesn't make Qt successful, it
only makes it popular.

~~~
quantummkv
>Except for that part where their business model incentivizes them to bloat
the library towards what is actually paying (car and smart fridge dashboard
UIs)

That will happen to any project that takes any form of sponsorship money.
People sponsoring will always want to prioritize their needs.

> instead of what most people would want Qt to focus on (desktop widgets - see
> pretty much every thread whenever a Qt release or news is posted).

KDE, with it's very successful suite of OSS, cross platform apps, Plasma
Desktop and Plasma Mobile would like to disagree. You should remember that Qt
is the only cross platform toolkit for desktops that is small, performant and
actually works without compromises.

> Since we're talking in the context of money instead of popularity, 1000000
> projects using the LGPL version of Qt for free doesn't make Qt successful,
> it only makes it popular.

Those 1000000 projects include Krita and Kdenlive, the successful and premiere
apps in their categories that even give proprietary tools a run for their
subscription money while being completely free and cross platform. KDE Plasma
is the only fully featured independent DE that runs across Linux and BSD's.

Qt and it's business model is a success by all terms.

~~~
Crinus
> That will happen to any project that takes any form of sponsorship money.
> People sponsoring will always want to prioritize their needs.

Right, this is exactly what i wrote.

> KDE, with it's very successful suite of OSS, cross platform apps, Plasma
> Desktop and Plasma Mobile would like to disagree.

Disagree on what? They wouldn't like Qt developers to focus on desktop
widgets?

Besides, KDE and its suite is only a small fraction of what Qt is used for. It
acts as a nice cheerleader but Qt is used by a LOT more than just KDE.

> You should remember that Qt is the only cross platform toolkit for desktops
> that is small, performant and actually works without compromises.

That sounds like marketing buzzwords.

> Those 1000000 projects include Krita and Kdenlive, the successful and
> premiere apps in their categories that even give proprietary tools a run for
> their subscription money while being completely free and cross platform. KDE
> Plasma is the only fully featured independent DE that runs across Linux and
> BSD's.

How much of that money goes to Qt's developers? I mean, how do you go from
what you wrote here to:

> Qt and it's business model is a success by all terms.

And last time i checked, the money Krita (i don't know about Kdenlive) gets is
a pittance.

------
mch82
Interesting idea.

It might be worth offering two pricing options: (1) Pay for private answers,
(2) free/bounty open source answers.

Your concept seems to have some overlap with StackOverflow. A problem with
StackOverflow is their content is licensed CC-BY-SA. That can make some
answers dicey for companies to use. Publicly visible answers on your site
might be more valuable than StackOverflow answers if you released them as CC0.
CC0 answers could also be merged into the docs of the FOSS projects. Having
those answers on your site should drive more search traffic to you, bringing
more leads for paid private Q&A.

On the expert side of what you’re doing... if you can streamline the payment
process & generate a 1099 for taxes (like Lyft-style companies do) that might
remove some overhead for experts & get them interested.

~~~
Aearnus
Payment process definitely isn't streamlined right now (the button to cash out
just sends me an email), but I am planning on paying through a 1099, if that
makes things any easier.

~~~
mch82
To me, what you’re sort of doing is flipping the StackOverflow model around so
that the authors share in the profits. That’s an interesting concept to
experiment with. I wonder if “Teachers Pay Teachers” might be a company for
you to benchmark?

Side note... It’s not often we see HN front page stories from Tucson, AZ &
that’s awesome!

~~~
Aearnus
I think that there's a large way that Immutable Coffee differs from Stack
Overflow, and that's in the fact that Immutable Coffee is:

* Private (answers don't circulate around the internet! that's important because of how quickly answers on stack overflow become invalidated)

and * Immediate & one-on-one (waiting for answers/responses in a comment chain
on Stack Overflow is a super frustrating experience!)

And thank you! Lots of love for Tuscon. Bear down!

------
ezekg
I feel like the easiest way to fund open source is to offer dual licensing and
somehow charge businesses. There have been many that have done this and it
seems to work well, most notably IMO is mperham with Sidekiq, but there are
many others. Open source developers are too timid of charging for their code.

Relying on donations seems like a bad move, business-wise, because I'd guess
(no data to back this up, just gut feeling) that most donations will come from
individuals and not busineses, yet the businesses are the ones making money
off of your code.

~~~
cavneb
I recommend visiting [http://oss.fund](http://oss.fund)

------
jdorfman
Looks awesome. If CodeFund could be of any help ping me Justin at codefund.io

~~~
Aearnus
Never seen CodeFund before, but I love what y'all are offering. I'll be in
contact.

------
ganzuul
Bountysource is another interesting platform in this vein.

~~~
Aearnus
+1 to that -- that seems like a really cool project!

~~~
klaustopher
From what you are posting here it sounds like you have not done much market
research on the field you are entering.

------
vinayms
You should consider redesigning the website colors to spare visitors' eyes. I
mean, the posted link opens a page with white text on black background, but
clicking on the "immutable coffee" link takes to a page with black text on
white background. I was viewing in a brightly lit room yet was severely
jolted, can only imagine the fate of those viewing in dimly lit room or in the
dark.

------
kfk
I am also taking a look at this problem from an analytics point of view
(python, pandas, jupyter, dask, etc). My thinking so far is that it would make
a lot of sense to offer 1:1 support but also services around a reference
architecture made of those components. Then I would pay a cut like 10-20% to
Numfocus which seems to be backing a lot of this ecosystem.

~~~
Aearnus
Not sure I understand what you're saying -- are you suggesting that Immutable
Coffee should expand the topics that it's currently offering? Ideally, I'd
like to, but we currently just don't have the manpower to do that.

~~~
kfk
Thanks for your reply. Open source is great but most of the time you need to
put together a solution which requires the orchestration of multiple open
source libraries and solutions. For instance, with analytics you need Python,
Pandas, Dask, SQLAlchemy, Jupyter etc.. So packaging a solution (i.e. a docker
image) and then selling certification, support and training should be valuable
and a % of the money could go to no profit organizations that maintain those
libraries. This is only my personal experience and I am open to discuss it
more via email if it helps. I could definitely see the value of a service like
yours to get to know companies that need consulting in the analytics space,
but I think for now you are not focusing into any specific open source
industry.

~~~
mch82
One way to test whether people will buy consulting in analytics might be to
sign up as an “analytics expert” on Instant Coffee and get leads from the OP.

Then Instant Coffee is covering a chunk of the payment & client acquisition
overhead you’d otherwise need to duplicate.

~~~
Aearnus
Definitely wouldn't mind adding analytics as a topic on the website.

------
faxel
Interesting idea, and seemingly not dissimilar to
[https://lyfevest.io](https://lyfevest.io), although Lyfevest has an all-you-
can-eat subscription for asking questions, and the platform seemingly vets the
experts automatically in some way (e.g. looking at the expert's public
contributions).

~~~
Aearnus
Lyfevest seems more geared towards enterprises, and the subscription will have
to be EXPENSIVE to justify all-you-can-post questions. I don't think that's
friendly to hobbyists and students -- which both groups that I want Immutable
Coffee to be open for.

~~~
faxel
Good point.

------
hactually
Sent you an email, very curious about an idea I had for flipping FOSS on its
head a little

------
xrd
I'm excited to check it out. I wish there was an easy login with GitHub or
Google instead of creating yet another password.

~~~
Aearnus
Sorry about that! Wasn't the first time I've heard this suggestion -- I'll
definitely look into supporting this.

~~~
mch82
Your site says it’s written in Ruby. Check out the OmniAuth gem for adding
login providers. It’s probably worth a quick look at similar gems before
choosing this one.

[https://github.com/omniauth/omniauth](https://github.com/omniauth/omniauth)

------
pnako
How do you plan to vet experts?

~~~
Aearnus
I've been doing it manually: looking at resumes, code samples, and asking
sample questions to judge for myself. Not sure there's any automated way to do
that that will work any better.

~~~
pnako
My understanding was that you would vet open source contributors so they can
support their own stuff. So looking at GitHub, commits, etc.

Otherwise your platform is really a way for random people to get money
(nothing wrong with that) while the actual maintainers are busy writing code,
reviewing tickets, etc.

I know monetizing open source is terribly difficult so I don't want to sound
too negative.

~~~
Aearnus
> My understanding was that you would vet open source contributors so they can
> support their own stuff. So looking at GitHub, commits, etc

Ideally, this is the plan.

