News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself by WJW on Monday May 18, 2020 @04:48AM (#23219979)
How would the developers still be independent if they are supported by a big company? If they use the money in lieu of a day job they become de facto employed by the company, only with even less job security. If they don't use the money, why do they need it in the first place?

In fact, from the perspective of the bigco, there seems to be a thriving ecosystems for leftpad-style packages already even without additional money pouring in. Why subsidize it to become even bigger?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself by Melting_Harps on Monday May 18, 2020 @06:00AM (#23220443)
> How would the developers still be independent if they are supported by a big company?

Jack Dorsey has Devs he pays in BTC whose sole job is to contribute to Bitcoin Core development and nothing else [1], they have no affiliation to his companies other than that.

Also, he's an investor in LN labs who are technically their own thing led by Starkbot (Elizabeth Stark) [2].

So, it can and has been done.

Personally speaking, a lot of the 'how would it ever work...' questions that come up here that are thought to be seemingly impossible to solve have often been pilot-tested inside the cryptocurrency space to one degree or another, so if nothing else I hope most of you can find value in that 'us crazy people' are actually pushing the envelope in the edge-cases of innovation.

For example, because many of us have been proponents of UBI (from various source points, mind you) from either a pragmatic or an ideological standpoint, we've tried to see what verifiable widescale UBI deployment (in Iceland) would entail back in 2014; it failed, as many of us expected it would, but we tested hypothesis whose data could ultimately be used later to iterate and improve a system.

1: https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-jack-dorsey-square-crypto/

2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/02/05/j...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself by qu83rt on Monday May 18, 2020 @05:17AM (#23220166)
Developers don't need to work for a company for the company to sponsor or donate to an open source project. Yes there would be less financial security but it's better than no financial support at all, perhaps sponsors etc. would be open to making commitments about donating $x/month or whatever for 12-24 months etc., not too different to governments promising funding for specific projects for y period of time. I'd take more companies supporting up and coming open source projects as a first step though!

Everyone has costs for things like shelter, power, food, water and other necessities, there is a need for some form of income.

I certainly think they should fund projects based on quality, as your reputation for quality increases I would hope that your ability to bring in sponsorship would be higher, though it's also a shame that people need years of their own funding to break in to open source software development properly full time. In many ways, open source development is only for the privileged/rich.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself by falcor84 on Monday May 18, 2020 @08:49AM (#23221648)
If a dev is supported by just 1 company, then you're right, but if they're supported by many, a-la the Patreon model, then that can give them a lot of power.

I have no idea how a small developer could ramp this up, but for a larger project, the approach appears to be to form a foundation, and to give contributing companies a chair that's closer to the table.

[ Parent | on HN ]