
Tidelift wants open-source developers to get paid - jonbaer
https://www.wired.com/story/netflix-open-source-wants-developers-get-paid/
======
anarcat
Tidelift was previously discussed here in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17957744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17957744)

------
briandoll
Tidelift is insanely exciting and I can't wait for this to be the primary way
open source software is built, sustained, and matured.

Funding for open source is a crucial topic for everyone here. Nadia Eghbal's
lemonade-stand [1] - A handy guide to financial support for open source -
shows the myriad of solutions that have existed over the years, and none have
really stood out.

Unlike foundations who spend significant portions of their funding on
executives and other services for a narrow subset of the OSS ecosystem,
Tidelift is doing something novel by doing something simple. Make it easy for
companies to buy a subscription to open source software that carries added
commercial benefits [2] and then take that money and pay the maintainers.
That's it.

For companies and maintainers alike, this seems ideal.

[1] [https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-
stand](https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand) [2]
[https://tidelift.com/subscription](https://tidelift.com/subscription)

~~~
sleepychu
They're proposing to guarantee 50% of the money in to be paid back out.

They've not answered other questions I asked a while back...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17957901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17957901)

~~~
hp
Apologies, I didn't see that comment before. The target customer is large
organizations and the pricing is typical for that. We'll be getting a pricing
page up that explains the details. There are conditions and commitments for
maintainers, see:

* [https://tidelift.com/about/lifter](https://tidelift.com/about/lifter) * [https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/tasks-overview](https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/tasks-overview) * [https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/agreement](https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/agreement)

This is a commercial transaction; subscribers are paying for value, and we are
paying maintainers to help us provide the value. It is not a donation model.
We think it is a favorable transaction for maintainers because it is royalty-
style rather than hourly-consulting-style. The same amount of work can be sold
N times.

For donations there are a number of existing solutions and we would encourage
people to use them also!

~~~
sleepychu
> This is a commercial transaction; subscribers are paying for value, and we
> are paying maintainers to help us provide the value.

That's just not what your branding/advertising is telling me. I understand
that's what's happening but the way you're billing it comes across like you're
Patreon for open source.

------
toddsby
I needed a good laugh. Thanks for that Wired! “How can I make money off all
the hard work that developers do for free via open source.” I got it, let’s
sell the free software back to large corporations, and take a 90% commission
all the while making empty promises and giving the actual developers pocket
change for the privilege. Thanks but no thanks.

~~~
Radim
I couldn't find any numbers (incl. your "90%"), more clarity would be
appreciated, though I understand Tidelift is still an experiment. But this
explanation [0] caught my eye:

 _> How we compute how much to pay_

 _> A weight. …based primarily on code size with some adjustments…_

So, payments based off a clear (and clearly silly) metric that's easy to game.
What could possibly go wrong?

[0]
[https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/paying](https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/paying)

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da_murvel
"That was risky, because Babel is open source—meaning it is freely available
online, and users don’t have to pay for it."

I don't get why many seem to think that Open Source = No cost for the user.
Now I haven't read up that much on the OS philosophy so that might be why, but
I have read a bit about free software, like Free Software, Free Society:
Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman[0] for example, how anyone could
mistake free software as software at no cost is beyond me. You can of course
make it available at no cost, but then, it's your problem if you're not
getting paid. Free software basically means that you're free to review and
edit the software as you wish, (with some other implications as well if you
read up on the GPL-3.0 license) and as far as I know, that's basically the
purpose of open source as well. I thought companies, or developers, made their
code available to get feedback, find bugs and issues more quickly, show the
rest of the world that they have nothing fishy to hide etc. But I had no idea
that it also meant that code automatically became gratis for everyone.

[0][https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-
essays.pdf](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf)

~~~
xenomachina
You can try to sell open source software. The problem is you can easily be
undercut, because anyone else can sell it too, or even give it away. As the
original developer, you're actually somewhat at a disadvantage, as you have to
pay for the expenses of development, while your competitors do not.

It's pretty rare for anyone to make money directly from selling their open
source software. Most open source business models involve selling something
else, like support or hardware.

~~~
s3cur3
The elephant in the room here is the WordPress add-on market. There are
thousands of devs doing a thriving business selling themes & plugins, all of
which have to be GPL licensed, with basically no trouble. If you want a model
for successful open source commercial development, that’s it.

~~~
pjmlp
How many of them are able to actually do stuff like paying a mortgage from
selling plugins?

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doubleorseven
"When a customer signs up with Tidelift, the company analyzes the customer's
code to see what open source software it depends on, and what open source
projects those programs depend on. Tidelift then charges a subscription fee
based on the number of participating projects a customer relies on."

Sure, just run `npm install` and try to come up with a reasonable number that
will look like something i'll be willing to pay for.

~~~
mpolichette
Yeah cause our companies love to let third parties “analyze” our code.

~~~
hp
It's analogous to something like Code Climate, Coveralls, TravisCI, etc. Some
companies require an on-premise version or want to run the scan themselves and
only call an "upload my dependencies as JSON" API, which is fine. The scan is
only to get the list of deps and their versions, it doesn't care about the
actual source code.

------
anonymous_i
I am oblivious to some or many aspects of Tech. business. It is probably going
to cringe a lot of people, but the question in my mind is, Why cant Dell or
other OEM's pay for developing or customizing Linux to their specs, so it is
more reliable. That way they don't have to depend on Microsoft for OS and can
optimize their hardware performance, just like Apple does with OSX? I know it
sounds like a dumb question, but I don't know any other place on internet that
provides a better answer than here.

~~~
cthulhuology
They do already and have been for a couple decades. Dell in particular has had
a long history of doing so. Personally, I have worked for a couple companies
that have done just that. Now when you look at certain classes of machines for
specific workloads you will see engineering specifically for Linux. But when
most people look at MSFT & Apple they are thinking about the desktop. And if
you look in certain corporate environments, you will find Linux thin clients,
but those tend to be very specific highly regulated environments.

------
therealmarv
Percentage cut? I think the better title would be Patreon for Open Source
(which is also itself used for Open Source, e.g. Vue.js). Seems like a huge
win for Tidelift.

~~~
aequitas
The one thing I dislike about Patreon (which I notified them about as well) is
that I need a subscription for everything. Say I have a few dollar of
disposable income I just want to donate to opensource indiscriminately I need
to make a choice of which. And there are only so many levels (each with a
baseline) in Patreon that a lot of smaller projects get left out.

I would like to have just one amount per month that gets withdrawn that I
don't have to think about any further. And that just gets distributed over
projects. With the idea that a lot of micro payments make more than a few big
payments.

~~~
icebraining
I preferred Flattr's model - you just donated a fixed amount per month, and
they divided it by project. But it wasn't indiscriminate - you had to click on
a button for each project. Now it seems they use a "smart, privacy-friendly
algorithm [which] measures attention on websites", which is a no-go for me.

The problem with indiscriminate is that there are many, many, many OS projects
out there. You need _some_ curation, and that opens a can of worms. Maybe they
could allow people to share and use lists?

~~~
trextrex
Flattr's model seems really well suited for conveniently contribution back to
open source. Does Flattr not work for software anymore? I'm trying to figure
out why it's not more popular as a way to contribute to open source software.

------
Aeolun
While this sounds like a great idea in theory, I think there’s a fuckton of
traps to run into here.

------
Derbasti
Let me fix that: Tidelift wants high-profile JavaScript developers to get
payed.

Their scanning process does not even think of anything non-web. Boohoo for us
Pythonistas and Emacsens and Lunatics.

~~~
hp
Our ideal is that if a subscriber is using it, we can sign up its maintainer.
The Tidelift platform is built on an OSS project called libraries.io which
supports many package managers:
[https://libraries.io/platforms](https://libraries.io/platforms) Here's what's
involved in adding more:
[https://github.com/librariesio/libraries.io/blob/master/docs...](https://github.com/librariesio/libraries.io/blob/master/docs/add-
a-package-manager.md)

~~~
0xcde4c3db
I work on a product that uses Buildroot, which doesn't really act like a
"package manager" in the sense that libraries.io seems to want. We also have a
handful of FOSS projects that are just copied into our tree and applied on top
of the base system. Is there any anticipation of support for that kind of
situation?

~~~
hp
I think there's a clear mapping of the Tidelift model to this, and there's
also some customer demand from people building embedded systems.

As a practical matter it's a bit different from what we built first, both in
terms of what customers are looking for / who the customers are, and in terms
of the technical details of how we'd analyze dependencies. So we don't have
support for it yet. But I would like to figure it out when we have enough team
bandwidth.

------
empath75
A lot of open source software is written by company employees on company time.
I suspect most projects that are most useful to most companies are built and
maintained that way.

~~~
greglindahl
This is very true, and somehow I'm not that surprised to find this comment
near the bottom of the discussion... seems that many people don't realize it,
including HN readers!

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ndnxhs
I'll put this on the list of things to keep an eye on. I have dedicated a fair
bit of time to an open source project I started a few months ago. I have no
idea if it will ever make me money but I'm hoping to at least be able to pay
for server fees through donations. My current plan is to go with patreon and
I'll see how that will work out.

~~~
_frkl
Maybe also look into [https://licensezero.com](https://licensezero.com). Even
if you don't like the licenses (I think they are good), there are lots of
interested articles in the blog.

------
VirenM
> the company analyzes the customer's code to see what open source software it
> depends on, and what open source projects those programs depend on.

I'm sure fortune 500 companies will be alright with Tidelift analyzing their
proprietary code.

~~~
justincormack
People already do to make sure they are complying with licenses and not using
licenses they dont approve.

------
jkingsbery
I'm honestly confused, would love someone to explain:

From Wired: "Tidelift doesn't offer technical support" From Tidelift site:
"The professional support you need."

So, which is it?

From Wired: "[Tidelift] doesn't employ the developers who maintain open source
projects." From Wired: "[D]evelopers can focus on code instead of sales and
marketing."

If they aren't employees, what are they? Contractors? I can see how it
simplifies things to have to deal with 1 party instead of N, but if they
aren't paying you a full salary it seems like a developer would still need to
deal with sales and marketing.

~~~
dx87
From what I've gathered, the developers don't work for Tidelift in any
capacity, Tidelift just collects money on their behalf whether they want it or
not. If you agree to Tidelift's terms, you get a portion of the money they
collected. I still don't see how they're helping open-source developers
though. They keep saying that it'll be easier for big corporations to have a
single place to pay, but they're going to take a huge chunk of the money for
themselves instead of giving it to the developers, and the amount the
developers get is based on some secret formula. I really don't see how this
benefits anyone except themselves and big corporations wanting to say that
they're helping OSS, but not really caring where the money goes.

~~~
hp
I would say that we collect money on behalf of the companies who buy an
enterprise maintenance subscription from us, and we agree to provide those
maintenance services. So far this is what many OSS businesses do.

But while existing OSS businesses hire 100% their own staff to then provide
the service, we split our revenue with interested maintainers who want to help
provide the service. We are creating an opportunity for upstream projects to
participate directly _if they want to_. If they don't want to, then no
problem!

The beneficiaries are: subscribing companies get an enterprise maintenance
service for their dependencies; participating maintainers get paid a revenue
share (royalty-style model) for doing work on their project.

Tidelift's share of revenue mostly is not profit. It's analogous to what any
software vendor would pay for the nontechnical roles at the company.
[https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/paying](https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/paying)
goes into more detail on that.

It is worth spending money on sales, because even though it lowers the
_percentage_ of revenue going to engineering, it increases the _amount_ of
revenue going to engineering. Businesses spend money on
sales/marketing/finance/ops because it results in more money overall. The same
math applies to Tidelift.

All other open source vendors give maintainers a 0% cut, though the best ones
do add a lot of "in kind" value in the form of contributions, those
contributions often actually create more work for the primary maintainers, and
everyone ends up bottlenecking on those overworked maintainers.

Tidelift is not a money transfer or donation system. It's a commercial service
provided in cooperation with interested upstream projects.

------
therealmarv
Would be cooler to have an open source/license framework for handling payment
processing, easy industry wide contract templates: why not make a X,Y,Z (like
MIT, BSD for licenses) thing for contracts with open source vendors AND then
if the open source developer does not want to handle all this stuff himself
give him the opportunity to choose a service like tidelift with a certain
percentage cut.

~~~
hp
For large companies to buy something, there's considerable overhead: legal
review, finance review, management, budget, etc.

That's _after_ someone at the company has figured out what the product is and
that it makes sense to buy.

We wouldn't want all of this overhead involved every time a developer adds a
new package to an app. And if it were involved for all the thousands of deps
most teams have these days, there would be a whole second team just managing
the purchases.

As a practical matter, software teams need to buy dozens rather than thousands
of products.

By grouping a lot of packages together, Tidelift lets those thousand
transitive dependencies benefit, while previously only the largest high-
profile projects had a chance.

This reality (that buying stuff has a lot of friction) also explains why
Tidelift builds "fund a sales team" into the model.

Here's an interesting article from patio11 on enterprise sales and purchasing:
[https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterprise_sales)

------
dustinmoris
Why should I as OSS maintainer give a cut to Tidelift and even let my revenue
be solely dependent on their algorithm when I could just put a onliner in my
project stating that usage for other OSS is free and commercial users need to
buy a license with a link to an online payment page where I control price,
duration, etc.?

~~~
greglindahl
This "charge for commercial use" model was tried -- shareware -- and was an
economic failure. It's advocated against by most organizations, like FSF and
Creative Commons.

At most you see a "this is GPL but I wrote it so I'll give you a license to
not follow the GPL for my code". Which is a quite different thing.

~~~
teddyh
> _At most you see a "this is GPL but I wrote it so I'll give you a license to
> not follow the GPL for my code". Which is a quite different thing. _

The usual name for that is “Selling Exceptions”:

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-
exceptions.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.en.html)

------
ognarb
Idelift doesn't seem to be open source.

~~~
hp
The open source part of our implementation is here:
[https://github.com/librariesio/libraries.io](https://github.com/librariesio/libraries.io)
[https://github.com/librariesio/bibliothecary](https://github.com/librariesio/bibliothecary)

------
buboard
> Unlike Red Hat, Tidelift doesn't offer technical support,

And that s why it is probably a failed model. On the other hand, they could
offer open source tech support, or pay people to do tech support gigs, or
perhaps give developers a way to make money by tech supporting their own open
source product.

------
_pmf_
Read: they want a cut of the meagre income of FOSS developers.

~~~
pwang
False.

They're trying to create a new marketplace where commercial users of OSS can
actually give money back to FOSS devs.

Many FOSS devs live a life of poverty because they have no idea how to
actually sell things of value _around_ their free artifacts and free labor. It
turns out that selling stuff is hard, in general, and feels almost nothing
like coding. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
aportnoy
What are the incentives on the user side to pay the fees to Tidelift? How
would Tidelift prevent free riding?

~~~
xienze
It sounds like the developers make some sort of “promise” to maintain the
software. Not really sure how that’s enforced or what even constitutes regular
maintenance. I doubt anyone is committing to an SLA for fixes for the
relatively paltry sums mentioned in the article (at least $10K over two
years).

It’s an interesting idea but it sounds like it lacks anything that really
binds the developer to a level of service. Plus the pay isn’t “quit your day
job”-good so ya know, that day job is gonna take priority. My gut reaction is
that it sounds like an easy way for companies to pay a sum that lets them feel
less guilty about freeloading off someone else’s work, and if the developer is
more responsive to their requests, hey, bonus.

~~~
usrusr
Correction: I appear to have misread some of sales copy to potential
subscribers, there is no promise of individual support involved, just
continued maintenance.

\--

Even that "far from quitting your dayjob" amount of money could in theory
impact a lot of "do I keep maintaining that lib a younger version of myself
once built?" decisions. If that was the only thing tidelift promised paying
companies, protects that get donations are less likely to get abandoned, it
would kind of make sense. But in their sales copy, they are actually _selling_
services (no: see correction above) provided by "lifted" maintainers, and
that's where it stops being funny, for all sides involved (except tidelift). I
wonder if the terminolocal proximity to "shoplift" ever occurred in their
investor talks...

If they ever make it to the point of regular payouts, there will likely be
some hidden scene of opportunists rushing to get recognised as the maintainer
of as many abandoned - or just stabilized to the point of nondevelopment -
packages as possible. Kind of like the alleged scooter-charging fights (no
idea wether those are real or just news-fiction), perhaps something good could
come out of that nonetheless? (maintainership-hoarders actually ending up
doing some maintenance)

------
tomcooks
You cannot put a bazaar in a cathedral.

~~~
ant6n
I think you're conflating two meanings of the word 'bazaar' in this context.

~~~
bulditand
I think (s)he is referring to "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" book
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar).

~~~
ant6n
That's the one meaning of bazaar I meant. The other would be bazaar=market.

------
xiconfjs
The title made me think tidelift is an alternative to plex or kodi...

------
franzwong
Many paid users will think they have the "right" to request non-sense features
or trivial supports.

How about asking Apache to fund those projects?

~~~
manmal
Who defines what non-sense is? The dev? Tidelift? You?

~~~
thecatspaw
the devs. its their project, they own it.

------
cheeze
I can't help but feel that "Netflix for X" is an incredibly trite and poorly
chosen phrase. Nobody is the Netflix of Open Source... maybe Netflix is?

A subscription model doesn't make one "the Netflix of $industry". A p2p
'sharing' model doesn't make "the Uber of $industry" either.

/rant

~~~
stingraycharles
I agree with you, it took me a while to understand this was not about videos
at all. Nor about Netflix-like opensource efforts.

~~~
cheeze
At least "Uber for X" is obvious. But Netflix is just a subscription
service...

The {Amazon Prime, Netflix, New York Times, Adobe Cloud, Cable Television,
Electricity, MoviePass, Leggings of the Month Club} of X!

