
Show HN: KickStarter for open source projects and LinkedIn for OSS contributors - hbadgery
https://openteams.com/
======
hbadgery
After 20 years of working in open source, Travis Oliphant, the co-creator of
Numpy, Scipy & Numba and the founder of PyData, NumFOCUS, & Anaconda, decided
the economics of open source needed to change.

Organizations are disconnected from the communities and lack support and
maintenance from the open source projects they depend on. Open source teams
are burned out, underpaid, underrepresented. These problems have made open
source software difficult to maintain.

This is the reason Travis started OpenTeams, a marketplace to connect open
source communities with organizations. On one side of the marketplace, we
connect companies with teams to help fund project development and maintenance.
On the other side, we create a way for open source contributors to showcase
their work, help them get recognized for their work and hired to work on
projects they care about. Put simply, it’s like a KickStarter for open source
projects and a LinkedIn for open source contributors.

Please give us feedback to help make open source software sustainable.

Thank you!

~~~
throwGuardian
This is a two sided marketplace - which side are you focusing on first?
Developers or sponsors?

~~~
hbadgery
Great question!

We focused on building out the contributor side of the marketplace first.
However, we are now focusing on building out both sides of the marketplace in
parallel.

------
lemming
One of the subtitles for this is "a KickStarter for open source projects". I
looked at their landing page and utterly failed to understand if this
description is accurate for the funding part of this product.

However, if it is, I think it's a terrible model for OSS development, or for
funding development in general. I develop Cursive ([https://cursive-
ide.com](https://cursive-ide.com)), an IDE for Clojure code. When I was
starting out and deciding how to fund it, lots of people told me I should do a
Kickstarter like Light Table, another popular Clojure IDE. I decided not to
and instead did the old-school thing of actually charging for the value I
create. 4 years later, Cursive is going great and Light Table has been dead
for years, despite obtaining $315k (IIRC) in Kickstarter funding.

So what went wrong with Light Table? The problem is that that funding is not
ongoing, it's a one-off thing. $315k sounds like a lot of money, but if you
have a couple of people living in San Francisco, you burn through it very
quickly. When that money runs out, what do you do? It's really hard to go back
and ask for more, and even if you do you're only kicking the can down the road
- a year later or whatever you have the same problem again.

Obviously Cursive is not directly comparable to OSS development since it's
closed-source and commercial. But the principle remains the same - development
needs ongoing funding, not lump sums. As distasteful as it is to many
developers, the model that best matches the actual requirements of funding
software development is subscription pricing. When I was discussing possible
licensing models on my mailing list, one of my users made this point more
eloquently than I could:

 _Software is never delivered as a complete static product, it evolves over
time to meet the needs of its users. Perpetual licensing leaves developers in
the awkward position of deciding to support that product forever for free, or
releasing new paid-for versions regularly and stepping onto the feature
treadmill where you have to keep delivering 'value' to attract users away from
your old versions. Perpetual licensing is bad for developers and bad for
users._

As I said above, I couldn't work out whether OpenTeams is actually more
similar to Kickstarter or something like Patreon. I really hope they're aiming
for ongoing funding and not one-off lump sums.

~~~
hbadgery
Thank you for your detailed comment. We really do appreciate your feedback -
it will help us to get better!

Our KickStarter style funding events are called Initiatives. Please visit our
early Initiatives page and you will find two projects we are already helping
to get funding. We say it is a KickStarter for open source projects because it
is a marketplace where companies that use open source software can connect
with companies/individuals that will commit on a commercial basis to advance
project roadmaps and maintenance. This is similar to KickStarter in the sense
that the public (one side of the market place) is funding the project (other
side of the marketplace) in return for a promise to use a product/service in
the future when it is available.

Unlike Closjure, the projects that start an Initiative will be open source.
Additionally, the feature/maintenance that the project releases as a result of
the Initiative will also be open source.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and many other large companies donate to open
source software for a number of reasons. Typically, it is to fund a new
feature or to help maintain the project. We are creating a platform for these
companies to better fund the projects they rely on (and already fund).

These projects aren't restricted to one Initiative. They can start as many
Initiatives as they desire. Of course, the success of the Initiative is
dependent on the supply of funding.

With regards to ongoing funding, projects can create an Initiative for
maintaining the project which, while it is a lump sum, can be distributed to
the maintainers over time (under contract). In this sense, it is similar to
the world of startup funding: when you've run out of money, you ask for more
and continue to grow.

~~~
lemming
Thanks for the detailed reply.

One suggestion I have is to use plainer language when describing what this
actually _is_ , especially on your landing page. Here in the comments, when
describing the project you've repeatedly described it as a marketplace, which
makes sense to me. However that word or description doesn't appear at all on
your landing page, and after reading the whole page I'm really none the wiser
about how it works.

The way you describe all this, it _sounds_ very complicated, but I'm wondering
if it really is that complicated in practice. I'd suggest trying to have a
"How does the funding work?" section on your landing page, and try to get that
section under (say) 100 words. If you can't describe it that briefly, I'd
gently suggest that you should try to make the way it works simpler.

 _In this sense, it is similar to the world of startup funding: when you 've
run out of money, you ask for more and continue to grow._

I think that's fair enough, especially once it's understood that it's mostly
companies who are putting up the money, not individuals. Personally, I'd stay
clear of the Kickstarter analogy because Kickstarter doesn't have this ability
to go back for more money, and that's a killer for software funding.

~~~
hbadgery
I really appreciate the suggestions. They are very insightful and I'll make
sure I discuss them all with the team - thank you so much.

In practice, a project needs funding. They create an Initiative on our
platform with a product roadmap and outline of what they are going to do
(maintenance or a new feature). Companies/individuals that use the project go
to the website and provide funding. A contract is formed by the OpenPartner
(similar to a general contractor) whereby the project only gets the money once
certain requirements are fulfilled. The OpenPartner hires contributors to work
on the project and those contributors get to work and are paid as they provide
deliverables. Everyone then gets to use the updated software.

We will be working on our messaging so thank you for the feedback.

------
AdrienLemaire
I searched for OpenTeams' OSS license, but all I'm seeing is

* © 2019 OpenTeams. All rights reserved.

* [https://openteams.com/terms-of-service](https://openteams.com/terms-of-service)

Why isn't a project who wants to change the economics of open source, open-
source itself? Can you reconsider your licensing choices?

~~~
echelon
An organization collecting funds for open source should itself be open source
and not earn margin for anything other than upkeep and paying engineers'
salaries.

I kind of feel like Patreon and Kickstarter are in the same vein: rent seeking
marketplaces that would be better if they were replaced with entirely open
source alternatives that belonged to their respective communities. Patreon
should be funded via patreon.

If Wikipedia were started today, I worry that it would have ads or be for-
profit.

~~~
numtel
As someone working on a crowdfunding platform that I would like to be able to
release the source code as an open consumer union implementation, I have
concerns about enabling unmoderated crowdfunding.

The power of a collective wallet is not something to be taken lightly. Whether
it's environmental destruction or divisive politics, I have yet to decide that
setting something like this free is for the best interest.

I would like to see an open source license like the GPL that has enforceable,
well-defined provisions for environmental protection and human rights.

It seems like to go all the way, a smart contract would need to be used to
ensure the transparency that a standard webserver-based infrastructure cannot
provide. But credit cards are the standard for online payments so this would
put a project in a further category from the start.

~~~
hbadgery
Thank you for sharing your concerns. We will not be an unmoderated platform
and I will look into the GPL license, thank you.

We are at the very beginning of our journey and so there are many features to
come.

~~~
numtel
Sorry if there was any confusion. I was wondering just in a general sense. I
did not mean to imply anything about the moderation of OpenTeams.

------
mch82
Could be cool to use Mattermost instead of Slack, given the concept is
supporting open source.

Along those lines, I appreciated login with GitLab!

~~~
hbadgery
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll be bringing this up with the team.

------
xvilka
How is this compared to OpenCollective [1][2]?

[1] [https://opencollective.com](https://opencollective.com)

[2] [https://github.com/opencollective](https://github.com/opencollective)

~~~
hbadgery
Great question! Thank you.

OpenTeams' vision is to become THE platform for open source innovation.

OpenCollective uses a donation-based model. On the other hand, OpenTeams is
creating a marketplace that connects open source software consuming companies
to open source consulting and development companies who are proposing fundable
roadmaps for new features and maintenance of critical open source software.

------
vintermann
As I recall, there was an attempt at "Kickstarter for open source" before.
Only, it might even have been before Kickstarter (in which case I guess it was
a "Fundable for open source").

I never heard of it again. I like the idea, but it might not be the easiest to
get off the ground. Why not just use Kickstarter? (Except that they're doing
union busting, I know).

~~~
indigochill
There's Bountysource. Dunno if that's what you had in mind, but it seems like
a similar principle. People put "bounties" on features in open source
projects. Someone closes a PR for that feature, they get the bounty. Someone
wants to encourage work on a feature, they contribute to the feature's bounty.

In my view this is a natural next step for open source as it closes the loop
on users who don't contribute code but do use the software. Now they can
contribute financially, in theory fueling more code contributors (in practice,
most bounties I've seen are not worth the work, but I've only had my eye on
one obscure little open source game, so this may not be representative).

I think Kickstarter is not great for this model simply because it has a fixed
end date for fundraising and there is less of a direct tie to specific
features in a particular codebase.

~~~
hbadgery
We agree that a KickStarter style of funding is the best way to succesfully
fund a project as it has many benefits. For example, funding companies
mitigate risk by sharing the burden of cost.

Check out our early Initiatives page and you'll find two early projects we are
currently working with to get funding.

Thanks for your awesome comment!

------
stanislavb
Apart from KickStarter and LinkedIn, what other projects/companies do you
think would be considered as competitors?

~~~
hbadgery
Our competition is companies that help open source contributors to be hired or
paid in one way or another. Additionally, any companies that help open source
projects get funding would be considered competition.

Competition includes: * Bounty-based companies like Gitcoin, BountySource, and
IssueHunt * Donation-based companies like Github Sponsors, Liberapay, and
Patreon * Subscription-based companies like Tidelift

However, there is no direct competitor creating a marketplace that connects
open source stakeholders with organizations to facilitate funding for new
development and maintenance.

------
brylie
Right sidebar and popover message obscures the page and is hard to click away.

~~~
hbadgery
Thank you for this feedback. I'll be sending this info back to the dev team.
We really appreciate it!

~~~
brylie
Cool. It is worth testing on mobile since many readers are using our phones.

------
xwowsersx
The voice-over voice in the video on the landing page is terrible. Sorry :(

~~~
hbadgery
Don't apologize! We really do appreciate the feedback, so thank you.

------
ANDY1997
Fascinating idea and I look forward to seeing where it goes!

------
pabs3
Some comments from some friends:

The website needs to be open source too.

You being able to revise the terms of service with no notice is a deal
breaker.

The privacy policy might not be GDPR compliant due to changes being effective
immediately instead of being consented to.

Why are you using Slack instead of something more open (like self-hosted
Mattermost)?

~~~
hbadgery
Thank you for this fantastic feedback. We will discuss all of these points as
a team.

Really appreciate it!

~~~
pabs3
Another comment:

You need to be super transparent about what sort of cut you are taking from
funders and how you are funding the OpenTeams project itself and what expenses
that funding is paying for (salaries, development, servers etc).

~~~
hbadgery
We will be taking a 10% cut on the funding which will go to further
development of the platform.

The OpenPartner's are responsible for creating the product roadmap in liaison
with the development team. This includes a clear budget for where the money is
going, just as you described.

