
Funding Yourself as a Free Software Developer - mabynogy
https://tyil.nl/articles/funding-yourself-as-free-software-developer.html
======
Asparagirl
One of my favorite discoveries of the past few months is OpenCollective —
which is basically like Patreon for open source software and other semi-
informal techie projects:
[https://opencollective.com](https://opencollective.com)

They let any open source project with at least 100 stars on GitHub join under
their umbrella where they will act as a host organization so that you can
start collecting donations (both one-off and recurring) and paying expenses
without the headache of setting up a 501(c)(3) and a formal structure. You
just add a bunch of trusted admins and you can manage expenses and invoices.
Open Collective holds the money for you.

They’re built on open source code themselves and I’ve found then to be very
responsive to newbie questions in their open Slack channel.

~~~
Asparagirl
And as long as my comment is getting some eyeballs here, let me just
shamelessly pimp the link for Archive Team’s brand new Open Collective page:
[https://opencollective.com/archiveteam](https://opencollective.com/archiveteam)
If you like angry archivist nerds saving your shit for the Wayback Machine,
please consider throwing us a few? A couple of dollars a month will help us
bring new web crawl pipelines online and pay for developers to spend some
hours cleaning up accumulated technical debt and cruft.

(We qualified under Open Collective’s open source software umbrella because
the code for our ArchiveBot project has >100 stars on GitHub.)

~~~
alexbecker
Looks like your homepage (archiveteam dot org, not linking for obvious
reasons) has been hugged to death. I'm getting a "508 - Resource Limit Is
Reached" response.

~~~
Asparagirl
It’s back up now.

------
archagon
This is completely anecdotal and almost certainly doesn't scale, but in
proportion to its obscurity and especially the effort put in, I feel like I've
gotten a surprising number of donations for my recent side-mouse-button-fixing
OSS project[1]. I remember reading on HN that even the most popular and well-
maintained OSS software basically sees nothing from donation links. My humble
app nets about $5 every week. I'm pretty sure the reason is that I included a
Donorbox link, since it lets you pay by credit card without having to deal
with Paypal. It’s all been Donorbox so far — nothing from Paypal at all.

[1]: [http://sensible-side-buttons.archagon.net](http://sensible-side-
buttons.archagon.net)

~~~
voltagex_
$5/week would easily pay for my hosting and AWS experiments. $10/week would
let me pay for a proper Travis CI / AppVeyor plan (I mess around a lot with
buildroot but it takes too long on single / dual thread workers)

I've attracted a couple of one off donations, but never been able to get
anything consistent. I imagine it'd be terrifying to run a project with actual
expenses to cover.

~~~
archagon
Yeah, that’s why I host all my projects on Github Pages. Everything is “free”
(included in the Github service I already pay for) and I don’t have to worry
about server costs or maintenance.

------
ralmidani
I avoid proprietary software as much as I can, but if Free Software will ever
be truly vindicated, I have a feeling it will happen via business
applications.

Convincing a sizable portion of consumers to even try free software--much less
pay for it--is pretty much a lost cause. Consumers have made it abundantly
clear they value convenience and "free" (as in gratis) over freedom, privacy,
customizability, and any other ideal or benefit we can try to sell them on.

The best hope for consumers is for a set of profitable, high-quality, free
business software companies to rise, and for some of those companies to devote
money, dev time, ingenuity, and vision to solving consumer problems. You
cannot take on proprietary software with ideals alone; you need resources.

~~~
busterarm
I feel like the best and largest OSS projects are already this...at least a
sizable portion of them.

On the other hand, I don't quite know where I stand on accepting donations for
writing free software. I feel like it leads to perverse incentives for
maintainers and contributors alike.

My feeling here is that the best way to earn a living off of OSS is writing
books about it, selling support, speaking engagements, etc. Someday I would
like to earn a living from writing OSS, but I'm not super-inclined to do these
other things either. That really just leaves working for a company like
RedHat, and drawing a salary to write OSS. That just means your work isn't
self-directed anymore.

What I'd really like to see happen, if it hasn't happened already, is a
funding platform that only accepts donations from "qualified donors" and funds
a small, curated list of projects/people and anonymizes whose funding goes to
what projects/people. Projects/People are selected by a mix of donor votes,
community votes and some equivalent of PageRank. Funding allocation is split
up the same way, trying to divert the most money to the highest-impact people
& projects.

Not that I have the slightest inclination that anyone would want to use this
:(

~~~
ksk
What you're saying basically looks like a representative government. The
government collects taxes, and you don't control where the money specifically
goes. You elect representatives who control where the money goes, etc. We all
know how that turns out. :(

~~~
busterarm
Nope. The donors don't have control, only influence - a vote that contributes
to some algorithmic determination.

Any stakeholder gets to participate, including the people/projects being
funded.

------
andrewaylett
Channelling my inner patio11: Also consider offering a support contract, or
selling licenses, rather than just soliciting donations. Especially if you're
already intending to offer access in return for said donations!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863939)

~~~
j1elo
Patio11 was ultimately asking for the owner of the free software project to
emit an invoice, which has its own financial bureaucratic burden in which the
owner most probably won't want to enter. Ie. it won't work because the typical
free software developer doesn't want to incur into the taxes that this could
imply.

For example, in Spain you aren't allowed to extend invoices if you aren't
first registered as an autonomous worker (freelancer), which most people
aren't because they already work for some company. But even if you did, then
you'd have to pay for the obligatory social security for freelancers, which is
around 260 Euro per month (so staying registered indefinitely as freelancer is
not financially sensible, if you are not really doing actual contract jobs).

I would think this is similar in most other European countries, which in other
words means that for the most common of the FOSS developers, writing a legally
valid invoice is a no-no.

Of course the matter changes if the company doing the donations doesn't really
care about the invoice being legally correct inside the country of the
developer. But I wouldn't advise the developer to do things like that... (s)he
would be risking a fine.

~~~
noahc
The company needs the invoice to make a payment. They typically don't care
about the legal correctness. Particularly if the developer is in another
country. Making the invoice look legal/official is more important than
anything else.

~~~
j1elo
That's what I meant in my last paragraph. There is some risk for the
developer: if they are in the same country than the company, when the company
declares the expenses the government can get to know that the developer is
having 'customers'.

Of course we could say that "this will never actually happen", but if the
company had to pass a tax inspection, they would have to prove all their
expenses by showing the corresponding invoices. And this would show that the
developer has been generating irregular invoices.

I don't know for bigger companies, but as a (proper) autonomous worker in
Spain, I had worked for just 1.5 years and already was asked once to prove
some expenses with the corresponding invoices.

------
GuiA
Patrick McKenzie had a great twitter thread on the topic recently:

 _" The single biggest piece of advice I have for you: if you have someone’s
email address (+ permission) you have an earned relationship. If you have to
beg a platform to contact them, the platform owns the relationship. Get the
email.

Youtube subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and all analogous
relationships are not defensible assets in the way that someone expecting mail
from you is. They’re dependent on the week-to-week policies and quarter-to-
quarter strategic imperatives of the platform.

The platforms offer incredible reach! Incredible! Reach! And the bargain they
offer is Faustian. Platforms need their creators to bake the cake; they then
propose allocating 60~80%+ to them as an opening bid, do not contractualize
that (for smaller creators), and smile.

“What do you mean they do not contractualize that?”

I mean that you have neither a contract nor even an understanding among equals
that the terms you currently enjoy are the ones you will have in the future.
Businesses sign contracts with vendors important to them.

Do you remember the contract negotiation? No, because doesn’t work at scale
but also because You Are Not One Of Their Important Accounts.

Any term you think you’re entitled to is going to be renegotiated by Darth
Vader: “I have altered the deal; pray I do not alter it further.”

So back to the question of building your own platform:

You want your own place on the Internet; I think that is, for most people, a
website.

You need, need, need an email list. Software for them is cheap to get started
with.

Above all things: “As an independent creator, I will comport all my conduct on
other people’s platforms with the intentional, strategic goal of enticing some
portion of the audience to join me on my platform, where the lion’s share of
value I produce is, and where I make meaningful money.”_

[https://mobile.twitter.com/i/status/939907045985107968](https://mobile.twitter.com/i/status/939907045985107968)

------
fundamental
I'm currently trying to condense notes from my own FLOSS funding work, but for
the moment I think it's helpful to see some of the great background research
that the people over at the (mostly dormant) snowdrift.coop project have done.

[https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-
crowdfundi...](https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding)
and [https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-
research/history/software](https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-
research/history/software) give you an idea on the other funding options out
there.

~~~
quadrangle
Snowdrift.coop is NOT quite "mostly dormant", it's just pushing ahead at the
unfortunately-slow-pace that is common for all-volunteer projects. Regular
activity happens every day moving toward full launch. See the activity links
at the top of [https://blog.snowdrift.coop/still-
here/](https://blog.snowdrift.coop/still-here/)

------
Joeboy
Just to put it out there, Ardour is a GPL2 project that also offers paid
binaries. They've always got an amount of hate from the self-righteous
freeloader community but they've apparently made $8815 so far this month and I
get the impression it's become less controversial over the years.

~~~
fundamental
While it is working currently it certainly hasn't been the most stable road in
the past. Don't forget about their funding issues
[https://community.ardour.org/node/8288](https://community.ardour.org/node/8288)
a few years back (not to mention how long it took to slowly build up a
consistent crowd of subscribers).

------
ukulele
On the off chance that OP is site owner: this text is borderline unreadable on
my phone. It's light light gray on a white background with thin font. I don't
normally even notice low contrast color palettes, so my guess is this is
pretty far beyond the threshold for comfortable reading.

Suggestion would be to darken the font some.

~~~
tyil
OP is not the site owner.

I haven't had any people saying they had any issues with the looks of the
site, but I have updated the main font color to be black. I'll look into more
improvements after I get the article updated.

------
nemild
Nadia Eghbal from Github also has a great guide:

Lemonade Stand: A handy guide to financial support for open source
[https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-
stand](https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand)

~~~
tyil
I'll read through this, and see if there's anything I can add to my article.

------
ravenstine
I've been meaning to start giving more money to free software projects I've
benefitted from. Sadly, a lot of them don't take donations or they use some
convoluted payment processor. I would totally be willing to support a project
through something like Patreon and pay something like $3 per minor release and
$7 for a major release. This should be a no brainer for smaller companies that
can only afford free software but also want that software to be well
supported.

Even as an individual, I don't know why I haven't set up donations on my
github projects. Some of them have several stars, and you never know who will
buy you a beer or a coffee.

~~~
beisner
Hmm the idea of a Patreon donation per minor version is actually very
interesting....

~~~
djsumdog
You can currently do that with Patreon. They support money per month or money
per thing. David Firth does money per thing (video, music album, etc.) and you
could easily do that with releases (although I'm not sure if you could do
separate donation amounts per minor or major release).

------
jankotek
Too complicated, yet another bunch of websites to register at. What works for
me:

\- Consulting. You need clear message what you offer and how you can help.
Also clear way how consulting process works. Companies are happy to pay extra,
if they get author.

\- Paypal donations, put 'Donate!' button on website, prefil some amount and
offer recuring payments. Paypal even handles credit card.

\- Crypto coin donations. Setup wallets and put addresses on web.

\- T-Shirts or books for premium price.

~~~
dboreham
I was wondering the same thing : why do you need a 3rd party site/service to
do this? If you're a software developer then setting up something to get
donations via PayPal or Stripe is easy.

~~~
fundamental
The network effect can make a reasonable case. Similar to how many open source
projects benefit from centralized hosting options (e.g. github), projects can
in theory benefit from more centralized funding platforms.

------
open-source-ux
Why don't more open source projects simply state that if you are a business
using their software you are required to purchase a license for X amount of
money.

The source code is still available for anyone to freely download and use.
Businesses are free to install and evaluate the software for as long as they
like (there are no onerous checks to verify you have purchased a license).
While some businesses won't pay, many will.

In fact, a self-hosted solution would probably appeal to many businesses over
a SaaS-style per-employee pricing model.

What's stopping open source projects from trying this approach?

~~~
alien_
This already exists, check out LicenseZero and Faircode.

The problem is this is against one of the criteria for a license to be
approved by the Open Source Initiative, which states that the users are all
treated equal regardless of the purpose for which they use the software, so
you can't claim to be Open Source if you discriminate against businesses like
this.

I was actually contemplating to use LicenseZero for AutoSpotting, my largest
and most successful project that can save companies a lot of money, but I'm
afraid this will discourage users and would slow down contributions.

So far I am playing with a dual license model somewhat similar to the way
Redhat handles RHEL and Fedora. The software is open source under the MIT
license, and anyone can use it from source if they are willing to compile it
themselves.

In addition I am now offering evaluation nightly builds that expire after two
months, and I am selling for a relatively small fee stable and well tested
builds that I verified to be working well. I am also only actively offering
support and trying to fix issues for these stable builds, the other builds are
supported by the community on a best effort basis.

So far very few people were interested in the official builds, but the first
evaluation builds will start to expire within a few days so I expect the
number to grow.

------
cavneb
Over the past handful of months, I've built up the company Code Sponsor
([https://codesponsor.io](https://codesponsor.io)). In December, I had to shut
it down due to the inability to continue on GitHub.

Here's an article I published on why funding open source is difficult:
[https://medium.com/@codesponsor/why-funding-open-source-
is-h...](https://medium.com/@codesponsor/why-funding-open-source-is-
hard-652b7055569d)

~~~
moeamaya
When I saw this topic pop up on HN, I instinctively went to check my
CodeSponsor dashboard and saw no activity.

Didn't think too much of it and came back here and saw the news :( That's too
bad Github decided against continuing the service, it's such a great way for
developers to maintain their roles and still provide a bit of funding. Good
luck on your next version!

------
minimaxir
> _You have to solve a Google reCaptcha in order to register a new account._

Even in the world of the free uber-cyberpunk hacker, why is reCaptcha
considered a warning sign?

~~~
mcbits
He mentions about JavaScript libraries and reCaptcha, "As I have set up
uMatrix in my browser, this cost me some extra time to finish registration."
So basically, prepare to be annoyed.

Considering reCaptcha has some tasks that look suspiciously like "help train
who-knows-whose neural net to identify the bombing targets in this satellite
image," it could also be an ethical choice for some people.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
I've seen almost entirely just what appear to be building addresses. What kind
of images have others seen that they thought were potential bombing targets?

~~~
mcbits
Just stuff I've seen on Twitter, so it could all be fake, but things like
military helicopters and convoys of humvee-style trucks.

------
jahbrewski
Hmm. I was hoping for a list of strategies, rather than a list of software
platforms. To me, this seems more like a business problem than a software
problem.

~~~
tyil
If you have any strategic advise or know sources for such kind of information,
I'd gladly read more about it and add more to the article.

------
lukego
I am developing a LuaJIT fork nowadays (RaptorJIT) and I would love ideas
about the best way to fund that!

I have experience with commercial open source but I am not sure how well that
translates to development tools like compilers/debuggers/profilers.

~~~
sudouser
Big co wants support or bug fix? equals $ paid support

------
DoreenMichele
A couple of thoughts:

If you are trying to get money from people for your labor, stop using the word
_donations._ People see that as _charity,_ not as money for services rendered.

Second, you can create a tip jar with Pay Pal. That has performed better for
me than Pay Pal donate buttons. Info:

[http://independentdigitalworkers.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-
to...](http://independentdigitalworkers.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-to-hack-pay-
pal-create-payment.html)

~~~
tyil
How would you describe it if not using the word "donations" then?

~~~
DoreenMichele
I have a _tip_ jar. You can _become a patron_ via Patreon. In some cases, you
can also _support_ my work via whitelisting the site on your ad blocker, in
cases where the site has ads.

There are lots of different ways to talk about this.

~~~
tyil
Hmm. I personally find the "tip jar" less inviting, but I can talk about using
different wording in the article if others agree that a different wording
would be beneficial.

~~~
DoreenMichele
You need to talk about _monetization_ , not donations. And what, you,
personally find inviting isn't that important. What's important is what works.

I straight up had someone tell me I was "panhandling the internet" to have
donate buttons on my site when I was homeless. At that time, people would give
me money and leave notes "Here, have something to eat." They very clearly did
not see it as paying me for the value of my work. It was charity in their
eyes.

All that stopped when I switched to a tip jar and my take went up.

YMMV, of course. But it ended up being an informative experiment.

I like having Patreon plus a tip jar. Patreon is for on going support. A tip
jar lets people leave a one time payment.

------
enzo1982
What worked great for me is to simply show a dialog with PayPal donation
buttons after my app has been started 10 times.

With the 10 starts threshold only regular users get the dialog and if they
don't like it, they can uncheck a box and never see it again.

On average, I get one donation for every 1000 downloads which appears to be a
relatively good rate.

[1]: [https://github.com/enzo1982/freac](https://github.com/enzo1982/freac)

------
Jack000
I have a few open source projects that I consider "complete" ie not something
I'm actively working on, eg. [http://svgnest.com](http://svgnest.com)

does liberapay/patreon makes sense? I've never bothered with a donate button
because people have said they don't work, but do people specifically donate
because of the patreon brand?

------
tyil
Thanks everyone for your comments, both here and via email! I'll work through
the comments here and start working on updating the article with your
feedback.

------
diyseguy
Someone should invent GitCoin. A system in which developers who contribute to
open source software are paid for their contributions. The users of the free
software would agree to let it mine GitCoin for a few moments before the
program launches. Or somesuch

~~~
diyseguy
uhhh. wow, maybe they did. [https://gitcoin.co/](https://gitcoin.co/) Great
minds

------
staticelf
Or just start a company and make money from your code. The code can still be
open source and if you really want to write free software then just do it when
you have enough money.

~~~
JofArnold
At time of writing the above comment is getting down votes. Why? Is it the
“just” bit people are having issues with?

~~~
tenkabuto
I suspect that it's the "just", for reasons that sibling commenters have
discussed.

But the original comment might also wrongly come from the perspective that a
given developer ought to tie themselves to a particular project by creating a
business around it. Many projects are created and/or maintained by developers
working on a broad number of projects, so total productivity might decrease if
developers were settle down with only one or two projects which they're able
to build a business around.

------
bringtheaction
Tokenize your project and do an ICO. Get millions. $$$

