

Ask HN: Would you fund Open Source projects? - bontoJR

We have platforms to fund charity, creative projects, almost anything, but in most of these platforms, Open Source projects are not very welcomed, and in some others they will not gain the right momentum. So I started to think that maybe, a platform to support ONLY Open Source could be very useful. The platform&#x27;s goal is to fund long development cycles, it&#x27;s not meant to compete against bug-bounty programs, but to support design and implementation of long production cycles like from alpha to stable, new major version, big technology update or similar.<p>So the question is, would you or your company support Open Source projects that you use via a dedicated crowdfunding platform?
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jmolinaso
I speak for myself. I find a bit against the Open Source culture.

Normally the Open Source projects start from a personal itch, meaning that
nobody sits down and think I'll do this cool Open Source program that people
will use. On my eyes, it starts the other way around, someone developed
something that s/he needed on that moment, it gives him/her results and then
decide to share it. If this project is really needed on large scale it will
take off. (the Apache foundation got it right with the incubators).

In my case I will fund Open Source projects that gives me some benefit, so if
I use any of them and I manage to get some income thanks to it, I'll like to
give back some part of my benefit. But blindly fund an Open Source project if
I don't see any usefulness it will be hard, but I wouldn't mind to join an
organization that ask a fee and redistribute on Open Source projects.

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bontoJR
I truly liked your point. Just one tiny detail: you don't really look to be
against OS per se, but against the current movement that is basically pushing
to open everything and do stuff that nobody really need.

I was thinking about funding projects (f.e.) like Grails, recently left alone
by Pivotal and rescued by Apache. I am against funding blindly too, but my
point is to fund projects that already have defined a list of features,
milestones and delivery time.

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jmolinaso
Exactly, I'm in favor of open source, but I'm against of open sourcing
something useless and drain funds that might be useful in somewhere else. The
example I get in mind is the gnupg project, that guy almost got broke for such
an important tool.

Your idea is nice, and I won't discourage to pursue, those projects might need
some kind of air to survive until something/someone finds it back, and get
them back to the spotlight.

An Open Source project can be a bold idea, or it can be an advance scam
system, for the first possibility I'm not against as some good projects might
come from a bold idea, who am I to close that, but the second one, the
community has to protect itself.

Something I dislike from the current situation of the linux userland status is
the amount of programs or libraries that you might need and for the next
version, some parts of your code are incompatible, and no way to ask any fix
as it is open source you can get the sources to fix it, but not the time to do
it.

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M8
Company wouldn't: funding Open Source unlike charities doesn't buy you a good
generic PR.

I wouldn't: hate registering in 1000 places, Kickstarter is good enough.

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Samsara0
Yes, I'd even do so via an existing platform, like Patreon.

