The authors are mistaken about the impact of employer-paid open source. It is orders of magnitude bigger than anything else, and it has a decades-long history of success in projects like Linux.
Companies aren’t doing it out of charity and don’t see it as such. They see (correctly) that it’s easier to get what they want by paying some people to work on an open source project than to start from scratch and pay for 100% of the cost.
I’m all in favor of more models, but until you’re channeling many tens of millions of dollars per year, your impact is much smaller than employer sponsored open source.
Full disclosure: I'm a long time sponsor (https://rollbar.com/) and supporter of Code Sponsor. It's a fantastic resource for the Open Source community, notably the smaller, independent projects. Supporting OS sustainability while generating awareness for Rollbar was a total no-brainer decision. The transparency in the system between sponsor and project owner is exceptional. They've built an interesting, novel solution to help ease any burden felt, maintaining and growing a project. Bravo!
Maybe I'm missing something, but I couldn't find a source for their claim that "Two-thirds of the top OSS projects are maintained by one or two people".
How many projects? How are they rated "top"? When you make such a bold claim, you should be able to back it up with verifiable sources IMHO.
Also, being a Red Hatter that has welcomed thousands of people in our New Hire Orientations, I dare say that we actually do employ quite some developers that continue their good work in a lot of communities. Describing that as "the 1% approach" feels a bit wrong.
Nadia left her job in venture capital last May and started work on a thesis. What is not venture backable in tech right now, that tech absolutely cannot do without?
Projects that had present, not future, value. Were actively used by Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix, even governments. Directly responsible for tech’s rapid rise, as Mark Suster once explained but they hadn’t captured the financial value they deserved.
Capturing of financial value for these projects is extremely important yet isn't realised and can have devastating effects. Remember heartbleed?
I encourage you to speak with a maintainer heart to heart of any moderately successful opensource project to tell it like it is. Here's a 4min clip from the PythonAU keynote delivered by Russell Keith Magee that does exactly that.
It's a never ending stream of notifications that contain abuse and demands for unpaid work with occasional moments of the highest of highs (ie someone sending you a thankyou postcard via snail mail or asking how they can help you out)
Open-source keeps burning out brilliant software engineers. For the longest time opensource has been talked about user freedoms but has been mums the word to "at what cost"? Production is still expensive and the cost is too high.
> "... while part goes to maintaining Code Sponsor itself."
If their intentions are "pure" and their primary purpose really is to help open-source developers, they should either be a non-profit and/or completely open and honest and publish the sizes of each "part". Preferably, that would look (at minimum) something like:
October 2017
Income from sponsors: $ x
Paid to developers: $ y
-----
Kept by CodeSponsor: $ z
I've been using Code Sponsor for a month or two now.
The best way to describe it is something between a generic Google Ads network and a invite-only Carbon Ads network. And it's really meant to go in your README.md file.
So this results in a few things:
1. Broker. Sponsors can select which repos/languages/tech/etc they want to advertise to and developers can select which sponsors are relevant to them.
2. Transparent. Developers can see which ads a sponsor will display and how much they pay per click (usually $0.40). The ads are usually just text with a couple emoji that fit well into the README.md design and are loaded as an svg.
3. Limited. Sponsors pay a fixed amount so if a repo is really popular and displaying ads, it may stop displaying after the money is paid out to the developers. This means you may just get a generic ad that recommends using Code Sponsor near the end of the month, like this repo: https://github.com/styfle/geoslack
Caveats: it seems the Code Sponsor is not open source :(
After reading the article, I _think_ this is an advertising network for oss project owners. Not a bad idea except why aren’t existing ad networks meeting this need? And...if most of the pages displaying these ads are served by GitHub, isn’t this stealing money GitHub has deliberately left on the table, and won’t they be upset by that and hence take action? Perhaps the plan is to succeed so quickly that GitHub buys them?
> why aren’t existing ad networks meeting this need
Because most ad networks are data-gathering scum, and developers know this, thus avoid them at all costs.
This company is at least _promising_ not to track the ads, and only provide basic and relevant conversion data to advertisers. This is a big difference that would mean at least I would be willing to give them a try.
I don’t believe Github would ever want to buy Code Sponsor. The goal from the beginning was to provide scalable sources of funding. This has not existed prior.
We do not consider ourselves an advertising network. Here's why:
* We do not display sponsors based on a bid system.
* We only present sponsors that the developers choose.
* Sponsors can select which projects they want to support and which they do not.
I'm a big fan of Code Sponsor! Eric who created Code Sponsor is passionate about his project and surely at your disposal for any query.
If you have a project with more than 100 stars, try it, you'll really appreciate the transparency and the personalization of the ads you can have. Long life to Code Sponsor!
Does anybody know what the click / view ratio is like on small projects? I know it depends on a lot of things but I really have no idea at all... Would it be below one percent or more around five, or something different?
Another upvote for Code Sponsor! Been using it for almost a month or so, and it's pretty awesome.
Styfle already describes it very well, so I'm just gonna add that although I'm seeing a very shaky impression/click rate, and my clicks are below what I expected to receive, the payout is quite big for an ad/sponsor network like this. Also, it's much better than ad networks - no detailed tracking and more (listed below by cavneb)!
[+] [-] ef4|8 years ago|reply
Companies aren’t doing it out of charity and don’t see it as such. They see (correctly) that it’s easier to get what they want by paying some people to work on an open source project than to start from scratch and pay for 100% of the cost.
I’m all in favor of more models, but until you’re channeling many tens of millions of dollars per year, your impact is much smaller than employer sponsored open source.
[+] [-] cavneb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themlsmith|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwildeboer|8 years ago|reply
How many projects? How are they rated "top"? When you make such a bold claim, you should be able to back it up with verifiable sources IMHO.
Also, being a Red Hatter that has welcomed thousands of people in our New Hire Orientations, I dare say that we actually do employ quite some developers that continue their good work in a lot of communities. Describing that as "the 1% approach" feels a bit wrong.
[+] [-] cavneb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghuntley|8 years ago|reply
Projects that had present, not future, value. Were actively used by Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix, even governments. Directly responsible for tech’s rapid rise, as Mark Suster once explained but they hadn’t captured the financial value they deserved.
Capturing of financial value for these projects is extremely important yet isn't realised and can have devastating effects. Remember heartbleed?
I encourage you to speak with a maintainer heart to heart of any moderately successful opensource project to tell it like it is. Here's a 4min clip from the PythonAU keynote delivered by Russell Keith Magee that does exactly that.
https://youtu.be/0t85TyH-h04
It's a never ending stream of notifications that contain abuse and demands for unpaid work with occasional moments of the highest of highs (ie someone sending you a thankyou postcard via snail mail or asking how they can help you out)
Open-source keeps burning out brilliant software engineers. For the longest time opensource has been talked about user freedoms but has been mums the word to "at what cost"? Production is still expensive and the cost is too high.
0) https://youtu.be/VS6IpvTWwkQ
1) https://www.fordfoundation.org/library/reports-and-studies/r...
2) https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet...
3) http://nadiaeghbal.com/oss
[+] [-] jlgaddis|8 years ago|reply
If their intentions are "pure" and their primary purpose really is to help open-source developers, they should either be a non-profit and/or completely open and honest and publish the sizes of each "part". Preferably, that would look (at minimum) something like:
Where z == x - y, of course.[+] [-] cavneb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] styfle|8 years ago|reply
The best way to describe it is something between a generic Google Ads network and a invite-only Carbon Ads network. And it's really meant to go in your README.md file.
So this results in a few things:
1. Broker. Sponsors can select which repos/languages/tech/etc they want to advertise to and developers can select which sponsors are relevant to them.
2. Transparent. Developers can see which ads a sponsor will display and how much they pay per click (usually $0.40). The ads are usually just text with a couple emoji that fit well into the README.md design and are loaded as an svg.
3. Limited. Sponsors pay a fixed amount so if a repo is really popular and displaying ads, it may stop displaying after the money is paid out to the developers. This means you may just get a generic ad that recommends using Code Sponsor near the end of the month, like this repo: https://github.com/styfle/geoslack
Caveats: it seems the Code Sponsor is not open source :(
[+] [-] dboreham|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] princekolt|8 years ago|reply
Because most ad networks are data-gathering scum, and developers know this, thus avoid them at all costs.
This company is at least _promising_ not to track the ads, and only provide basic and relevant conversion data to advertisers. This is a big difference that would mean at least I would be willing to give them a try.
[+] [-] cavneb|8 years ago|reply
I don’t believe Github would ever want to buy Code Sponsor. The goal from the beginning was to provide scalable sources of funding. This has not existed prior.
We do not consider ourselves an advertising network. Here's why:
[+] [-] daviddiasfront|8 years ago|reply
If you have a project with more than 100 stars, try it, you'll really appreciate the transparency and the personalization of the ads you can have. Long life to Code Sponsor!
[+] [-] Siilwyn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] styfle|8 years ago|reply
I have another project[2] with 3% CTR.
[1]: https://github.com/styfle/copee
[2]: https://github.com/styfle/magnemite
Both have less than 200 impressions total.
[+] [-] cavneb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justdotJS|8 years ago|reply
Styfle already describes it very well, so I'm just gonna add that although I'm seeing a very shaky impression/click rate, and my clicks are below what I expected to receive, the payout is quite big for an ad/sponsor network like this. Also, it's much better than ad networks - no detailed tracking and more (listed below by cavneb)!
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thenickperson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justdotJS|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kentcdodds|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cavneb|8 years ago|reply