[fefifofu]

The fundraising page is depressing. They're only asking for US$200,000 and they only have 19% at half way through the year. In other news... Instagram hits half a billion monthly active users... but not on Django's fundraising page.

I'm not knowledgeable about open-source issues, pros/cons, etc., but man... only 19% of $200K. Doesn't seem right given Python is one of the major languages and I believe Django is the most popular web framework in Python.

[sametmax]

That's the state of the entire Python community. To get money, you need to get hype, and Python is anti-hype. We are people prioritizing on robustness, clarity, documentation, etc. Proven useful things. But because it disregard what we consider superficial and frivolous, we cut ourself from the same enthousiam and energy you can see in other community like JS or Ruby. And from money.

Look at the PSF budget, it's so small it makes you cry.

[J0-onas]

You'd think that companies who profit from open source projects would support them financially. Considering how big django is there should be many other companies who profit from the projekt.

200k/year should be collected in no time...

[wrigby]

I've found that the engineers who build products on open source software very rarely have the authority to donate company money, and the businesspeople that do have the authority rarely understand the benefits of it.

I think a guide on how to get your company involved in donating to OSS projects would be beneficial. Has anyone come across any good advice, or have any experience in influencing your employer to donate?

[tomchristie]

My thoughts on this:

* Let's stop talking about 'Donations' and start talking about 'Investment' - the conversation needs to be about the pay-off that businesses will get, not some altruistic "give-back"

* Make the case that collaborative investment has a great cost-reward, as the cost is spread over a bunch of companies.

* Make it clear that ecosystems that are well invested will be more competitive that those that are not. If your company has $$$ worth of engineers experienced in Django, you'd be daft not to ensure that Django remains competitive vs other frameworks.

It's an atypical pitch to make, and as with all investments it's difficult for folks to judge, because the pay-off is at a distance. I still believe it's still possible for us to change how collaboratively funded OSS is seen, once companies start to recognize well-invested ecosystems as a competitive advantage.

And yeah, this is pretty much the pitch I'm making for funding Django REST framework, where I'm currently 1/3 of the way towards being able to focus on it 100% of the time, with a full-time salary... https://fund.django-rest-framework.org/topics/funding/