Funding and sustainability

[afeld]

Just read an awesome post by @nayafia on sustainability and funding of open source:

https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet-s-biggest-blind-spot-b9aa23618c58#.ykeuyzwsn

Curious to hear people's reactions.

[tute]

The first thought that pops to mind is sidekiq's dual license that @mperham explains in: http://www.mikeperham.com/2015/11/23/how-to-charge-for-your-open-source/.

The article triggered two concrete questions for me:

• Should I start new projects as dual licensed rather than using only MIT?
• Should I discuss relicensing projects I help maintain?

[andrew]

I stumbled across NumFOCUS the other day that seems to be setup to help solve this exact problem focused on scientific software:

The mission of NumFOCUS is to promote sustainable high-level programming languages, open code development, and reproducible scientific research. We accomplish this mission through our educational programs and events as well as through fiscal sponsorship of open source data science projects. We aim to increase collaboration and communication within the scientific computing community.

I wonder what it would take to provide something like that for all of open source?

[nayafia]

NumFOCUS is awesome, I really wish there were something like that for all of open source as well! I think they've been able to pull together money because it's relatively focused around academia/data science, so funders understand the benefit in a thematic way.

[kytrinyx]

I was contacted randomly by two different VCs about exercism.io. This was maybe 18 months ago, before Exercism was featured in wired.com. They both were like "we fund open source!", and they mentioned names, all of which were open source infrastructure projects :) (No surprise, having read @nayafia's post!)

Lately I've even been considering doing 80/20 -- working a "job" 20% of the time, to fund Exercism 80% of the time. I can't see how that's going to end well, though. It's only fairly recently that it dawned on me how completely and utterly unsustainable it is to pour myself into an open source project for free, no matter how important I think it is.

I get about $1k a year in donations, but it would take at least $50k/year to make this sustainable. It seems like some of the bootcamps could get together and sponsor Exercism (they all seem to use it), but I just don't see how that could happen.

Several people have recently said to me "you don't owe anyone anything". Technically, maybe. But thousands of people use the project and hundreds of people have contributed to it, so I feel like I do owe them something. I can't just kill it. And besides, I still think Exercism is important, so I don't really want to kill it.

[kytrinyx]

I've reread @nayafia's post (and read the follow-ups) and I realized that my use of the term "infrastructure" in the previous comment is probably wrong. The funded open source projects were definitely stuff that companies use to build products that earn money. I suppose I am not seeing the distinction between infrastructure (not being funded) and the things that are open source that do get funded.

[tute]

Should I start new projects as dual licensed rather than using only MIT?

In her followup @nayafia's describes why dual licensing is not as good as it should: https://medium.com/@nayafia/why-can-t-we-just-charge-for-open-source-infrastructure-371037965b45

[nayafia]

@kytrinyx it's a tough distinction! I've been struggling to find the right vocabulary. I think where I'm starting to converge is programming languages themselves, and the tools needed to make them work (esp around packaging). I think that's pure infrastructure. But there are plenty of other things in open source that are fundable and/or monetizable, and if they do have a business model that works for the maintainer, I think that's great.

Exercism looks awesome btw, thank you for making it. :) have you explored a sponsorship model at all with bootcamps or companies? what were those conversations like?

@tute yeah I think dual licensing can work when there is a business to be had. But some things can't be charged for (IMO) and then it doesn't seem like dual licensing will address the problem.

[kytrinyx]

@nayafia I only just started thinking about looking at sponsorship, and will be talking to a few people over the next couple of weeks to see if I can figure out how to approach bootcamps/companies about it). I simply have no idea how sponsorship works, so it's all a bit mysterious to me at the moment.

I am chatting with Travis Foundation about the possibility that they could help support Exercism with a 3-month grant, which would be very exciting. They've done these types of grants before (Michal Papis from RVM was given a 3 month grant last year, I think), and they also fund women who are new to development/open source to work on open source projects for three months during the summer with their RailsGirls Summer of Code effort.

[nayafia]

wow I didn't know there was a Travis Foundation! That's awesome. Looks like they're already advertising Exercism on their foundation homepage ;)

[kytrinyx]

Apparently they're announcing it "f'realz" tomorrow :)