LWN: Comments on "GUADEC: New funding models for open source software"

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

Serge — 2013-02-14T01:50:35+00:00

These models are not new. For the last few years I suggested crowdfunding several times to different developers. The problem is not that there's no web site around. There're lots of crowdfunding sites.

The problem is that nobody knows about software crowdfunding. Kickstarter is the most popular crowdfunding site, and still many developers have never seen it.

Pledgie.com supports software funding since 2007, it even had some GitHub integration in 2008-2010.

Bountysource.com is there since 2005 and it was open-source-oriented from the very beginning. Still, nobody knows about it, and it's almost impossible to find it unless you know the site name.

To make crowdfunding popular it would be nice if major source hosting, SourceForge or Google Code included support for it. Google Code could be the best option, but they said they're not going to do that.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

n8willis — 2012-09-04T17:49:21+00:00

It sounds interesting; however, I would strongly suggest that you contact Adam at Yorba and mention it to him, instead. The story comment thread is not a great place for that sort of communication, considering how quickly it becomes "old news" and people stop looking back in search of additional comments.

Nate

vice versa approach

Tlb9 — 2012-09-03T17:18:17+00:00

It seems to me that this solution has a fundamental flaw - yes, there will be a 120M $(£ € whatever) budget, but there will also be a dictator in charge of this budget, and God help us if he will turn out to be not so benevolent. And with this big money any person, unless he's naturally saint - will become not benevolent, later or (more likely) sooner.

And lets think wider - it seems to me that outside of popular distros and their communities there is a dozen of other free and opensource software pieces that could benefit from regular donations, and it has enough fan users to provide good stream of donations if given a handy way to do this.

So, let's give all these people an option to choose what exactly they want to support, and option to select if they want to do a one time coin drop, or a regular check sending.

What do you think about such approach?

thanks,
Alex.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

whit537 — 2012-08-27T17:10:15+00:00

May I put Gittip.com on your radar? It's a crowd-funding site for *people*, and so far most of those people are open source programmers. More info:

https://www.gittip.com/about/

It's starting to take root somewhat in the Python community, and I would love to partner with other communities to help Gittip serve as many people as possible.

Something for nothing ?

nix — 2012-08-25T11:56:31+00:00

Sure. None of them fund their universal healthcare entirely (or even mostly) via charitable donations though. There just aren't enough of them, and even if there were they aren't predictable enough. Healthcare capital investments are often huge and take years: you need to know the money *will* be there, before you start.

Something for nothing ?

rahulsundaram — 2012-08-24T02:47:28+00:00

US is kind of a exception among advanced western countries. Lots of them provide universal health care and it does scale.

Something for nothing ?

Tester — 2012-08-23T18:21:28+00:00

I mean it does not work as in, it does not scale. You can not provide healthcare or education for everyone as charity, see how loads of people just don't get healthcare in the US as an example.

Here's a counterexample

oldtomas — 2012-08-23T07:03:11+00:00

Yeah, I know: data is (not) the plural of anecdote and all that. Still, here it goes:

<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assis...>

Of course, the really interesting part is to ask why this project had such a resounding success (funded with 24K out of a 3K pledge -- that's a factor of eight!). I propose (non-exhaustive):

* Joey is well-known in his circles. No one had a doubt he'd follow through.

* He had already git-annex, i.e. something usable to show around

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

n8willis — 2012-08-20T17:17:53+00:00

Adam discussed Ardour in the talk, and it is mentioned in paragraph ten above. Specifically, it uses the post-funding model.

Nate

Feature bounties

alex — 2012-08-19T16:37:59+00:00

Well obviously I'd also be using the Flattr buttons myself! It's not as though my side projects are done as a revenue raising measure, I have a day job which pays the bills.

I'd love to work full-time in the FLOSS eco-system but currently there are few organisations with the funds and I do have to support a family so I can't do it full time for free.

Feature bounties

giraffedata — 2012-08-18T19:15:04+00:00

the sites that I've seen do that offer such pitiful bounties for features that massively underestimate the amount of work that would need to be done

Maybe it's just erroneous wording, but I don't think that's what you see. Those bounties don't estimate what it would cost to implement - they estimate what the feature would be worth to the offeror, and therefore simply tell us that implementing features is a waste of resources.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

nettings — 2012-08-18T06:39:06+00:00

A few people have tried to streamline the online donation process, he said, including Flattr. But although Flattr is helpful, Dingle said, "I don't know of any open source project sustaining itself via Flattr — or via donations, period."

The digital audio recording and editing suite Ardour has been running on donations and subscriptions for quite a while, and I think the authors consider the model quite successful. Maybe a look into how it works for them could make a nice LWN article?

Feature bounties

neilbrown — 2012-08-17T21:29:41+00:00

> I must get round to joining and seeing if any of my projects attract any donations that way.

Somehow I feel that is the wrong starting point, though it seems like an obvious one.

I think it would be more effective to think "I must get round to joining and seeing if I can direct some funds to some useful projects".

If everyone does the former, nothing much happens. If everyone does the latter.....

Feature bounties

dashesy — 2012-08-17T21:01:21+00:00

As an idea I think there should be also some sort of motivation, it can be seen as a game with trophies. A Linux.com email is a respected trophy that adds to the other values that Linux Foundation membership brings. Similarly a badge with one or more numbers that show how much a person/company cares about freedom and open source would be a good thing to brag about. Same badge can be displayed on bugzilla when reporting a bug or requesting a feature, and other places if a common API is used (linking with OpenID maybe).

Personally I would not mind paying for software if it is well written, open source is like science and is capable of achieving the higher quality because of real peer review.

Feature bounties

alex — 2012-08-17T15:37:58+00:00

Another option was bounties for features. However generally the sites that I've seen do that offer such pitiful bounties for features that massively underestimate the amount of work that would need to be done to implement them.

I've been interested in Flattr for a while - I must get round to joining and seeing if any of my projects attract any donations that way.

Cups and Berkeley DB

man_ls — 2012-08-17T12:04:29+00:00

Like it or not, the thing is that Apple and Oracle do some outstanding work for us GNU/Linux users, and it is Free software. Think about the developers there, not the megacorp that builds closed phones or databases. Sending a fraction of a dollar per donating user may not make a difference in their profits, but it might make a difference.

Then again these donations might convert a licensing issue into a cost/benefit decision ("Cups for Linux costs us xxx and we only get xx from them, so away they go"). Who knows. Anyway a grant evaluation process is nice.

Something for nothing ?

dlang — 2012-08-16T23:11:28+00:00

There are a lot of hospitals, schools, and poor being helped as a result of Charity. Saying that it "does not work" requires a very specific definition of that phrase

Something for nothing ?

Tester — 2012-08-16T23:06:58+00:00

I was at their talk and the impression I had was that the big problem with the donation "business model" is that you expect me to pay in return for nothing. Charity only works to a certain level. Charity does not work for hospitals, schools, helping the poor, etc. Users are compelled to pay directly or everyone through taxation. All of these endeavors that are much more important than software, why would you expect it to work for software?

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

Tester — 2012-08-16T23:02:44+00:00

Big commercial distributors (like Red Hat) already fund a lot of upstream development by hiring people to work on them. Although this is annoying if you're an entrepreneur, it is much more efficient (more man-hour of software work per $) than giving money to countless small organisations (like Yorba) as you don't duplicate all of the overhead (HR, payroll, etc). And it has been highly successful for the projects that have benefited, like GNOME, KVM or the new fashionable cloud stuff.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

tx — 2012-08-16T16:45:16+00:00

I think the other question is exactly who should be paid. The developer(s), obviously, but what about package maintainers, for example? They certainly do work and add value for users but it's unclear to me exactly how much of the pie that makes up.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

arafel — 2012-08-16T13:59:35+00:00

There's also BountyOSS (https://bountyoss.com/); it was created in June this year.

No idea if it'll work any better than the others - it only has a few projects, and the visual side of things could be better - but it explicitly aims to be a crowdfunding source for software.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

pj — 2012-08-16T13:56:00+00:00

Flattr and gittip are good starts, but I agree that integrating this into a distro somehow would be a good idea.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

wazoox — 2012-08-16T13:31:08+00:00

Several years ago, the FreeBSD organization asked for donations to keep its non-profit status. Though I'm not even a FreeBSD user, I sent them some money. Ditto, I donated money to Ardour though I don't use it. So making people aware of your needs is essential.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

mathstuf — 2012-08-16T12:44:09+00:00

> One potential problem is that some packages are small, but very popular. They might need less funding that larger, less frequently used packages (e.g. compare util-linux with Shotwell).

There could be a field for "After what point is money better spent elsewhere?" possibly due to few full-time volunteers versus $DAYJOB developers.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

mathstuf — 2012-08-16T12:42:00+00:00

> Do you mean X.org, coreutils, libc et al.?

I think the question was referring to things like Koji or Bodhi (for Fedora). Every user needs those things, but they're rarely installed.

The stats would also have to be exposed so that RPMFusion could do something similar for its packages (I imagine Fedora would do this anyway (assuming something akin were implemented) in the spirit of transparency).

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

ssam — 2012-08-16T12:41:54+00:00

sounds good, but i think figuring how to divide it up would need to be smarter. popcon keeps track of what you have installed, and whether it has been used recently.

but:
i have plenty of things installed that I never use.
i have gnome-terminal(actually mate-terminal) open all the time, but i consider it feature complete, and not in any real need of funding.
some things are split into several packages, and some arn't

maybe there could be a set of sliders to adjust, with a suggestion based on your installed apps and usage. and system packages bundled together, eg
* Ubuntu infrestucture (hosting, servers)
* Linux kernel
* Core system software (compilers, libraries)
* Mozilla
* GNOME
* KDE
* gimp
* inkscape
...

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

ewan — 2012-08-16T11:24:48+00:00

I think there'd probably need to be some sort of bidding-for-grants type process mixed in to decide how the money is distributed - some projects just aren't going to be in a position to make use of donations, and I'm not sure I'm wild about the idea of sending donations to (e.g.) Apple and Oracle based simply on the ubiquity of Cups and Berkeley DB.

Other than that, I think I'd be on board with the general idea - it'd be a similar experience to buying a boxed set of Red Hat or Mandrake years ago rather than just downloading the ISOs.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

danieldk — 2012-08-16T08:49:21+00:00

> How to you want to measure what packages are used?

Something akin to Debian's popcon.

> What about infrastructure packages, most users are not aware of?

Do you mean X.org, coreutils, libc et al.? They get a (big) share of the pie too, since in this setup, what counts is packages that are installed.

http://popcon.debian.org/ gives an impression of how donations are distributed in such a setup.

One potential problem is that some packages are small, but very popular. They might need less funding that larger, less frequently used packages (e.g. compare util-linux with Shotwell).

But I think the upside is that it guarantees a steady, predictable, income for the software projects that are the most fundamental to the free software ecosystem.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

dd9jn — 2012-08-16T08:33:57+00:00

How to you want to measure what packages are used? What about infrastructure packages, most users are not aware of?

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

danieldk — 2012-08-16T06:59:09+00:00

I've proposed this before: the distributions are in the best position to provide funding for upstream projects, since they provide the website and package manager that most of the users see.

What I'd love to have is the following: I give 10 Euros monthly to my favorite distribution (Ubuntu or Debian). They distribute my monthly donation uniformly among the projects associated with the packages that I use.

This has many advantages:

- I don't need to remind myself about donating (it's like a monthly subscription).
- I don't need to put time into finding out where to donate next, what the payment method is, etc.
- Projects that we'd rarely consider donating to, but are vital to every system, e.g. coreutils, would also receive regular donations.
- Although my donation is distributed uniformly, popular applications have more users, and thus get a larger share of the pie.

Say that you could convince one million Linux users to donate ten Euros monthly, the pie is 120 million Euros per year, this would imply that major projects suddenly have a budget to address boring development tasks (polishing, bugfixing), and even smaller projects may have the budget to hire a developer one or two months full-time per year.

Of course, the downside is that you'd need infrastructure for projects to register themselves, etc. But it is a whole lot easier, and probably fairer than the current methods for getting funding.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

ian00 — 2012-08-16T05:53:20+00:00

My mom donates money to public radio simply because she listens to it in the car, and they ask. She is not technical at all, but she uses free software, and she would donate to it, but she has literally no idea that donations exist, much less an idea of how, to who, when, how much, etc.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

ian00 — 2012-08-16T05:46:04+00:00

I've always felt baffled that Free Software has been so bad about this issue. I think there are so many millions of dollars that would be happily donated and would be put to great use. I can just think of so many ways the current situation could be so much better.

Idea: A distribution adds a payment system that would allow easy donations, to individual non-profits, or the distro itself, or a mix. Throw in something to the distro installation ui, the package manager ui which connects non-profits to the packages they work on. Allow people to opt-out, or opt-in to everything.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

ian00 — 2012-08-16T05:45:45+00:00

^ this was meant to be a top level comment

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

ian00 — 2012-08-16T05:45:01+00:00

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

ian00 — 2012-08-16T05:23:06+00:00

I disagree. Failure is not significantly more likely for kickstarter software projects than other kickstarter projects. Remember, the vast majority of small businesses fail.

GUADEC: New funding models for open source software

cmccabe — 2012-08-16T04:25:40+00:00

Yeah, Kickstarter doesn't really work for software. It's far too difficult to predict ahead of time how successful any given project will be. Your donation could end up going to a program which ends up being a turkey. I'm sure we can all point to "grand rewrites" by experienced and respected companies that ended up going nowhere. Also, even if a project is good, it may fail to develop a community around it, and so fizzle after a year or two.