A New Free Software Donation Directory

Wolfgang Spraul writes: "CoSource and SourceXchange are closed. They became part of the history of Open Source Software Markets. However, I still need a place where I can find maintainers or core developers of existing Free Software packages that accept my feature request and payment, implement the feature within a reasonable timeframe and give me support if it doesn't work in my environment. Since no such place is in sight, I launched the Free Software Donation Directory as a first step. What do you think? How should the next Free Software market look like? Should there be one at all?" Right now, he's got around 20 projects listed, if you care to invest in some Free software.

Comments

Instead of donations

[Martin Marvinski]

Why don't you just make it a site where you can hire open source developers? Donations seem too much like charity, and I think it can be demeaning to those who write the features you want.

Re:Instead of donations

[ct.smith]

Actually, for hire type work isn't so bad an idea. There's no reason a contract has to be some byzantine legal trap that takes all the fun out of off-hours programming. Somthing as simple as "I'll pay $1000 when its done" can work. I've done a few of these myself, it's actually a common practice in our research group to hire students this way. Contracts do not need to be horrible binding things, they can still be simple.

Another sort of contract that can work is Mandrake's new model. If you buy a membership they take your feed-back into consideration. I think that this is not to be confused with a charity donation.

Could it ever have worked?

[Ed Avis]

Most free software developers are quite short of time because the project they work on is in their spare time and not their day job. Or if it is their day job, the time they have for 'cool features' is limited because the more boring and lucrative parts need doing first.

If you have to work on only a few features, wouldn't you do those which scratch your own itch rather than those you were paid for? If you wanted to change the developer's mind about what to implement, you'd probably have to bid a lot more than just a thousand dollars. I wonder what the hourly rate of pay was for the projects on SourceXchange or CoSource, and how that compared with what the developers could earn in the 'outside world'.

There are lots of small improvements to free software projects for which I'd be prepared to pay a $100 bounty, but that amount seems insultingly small for the work involved. If I work as a software developer myself, the time spent to earn $100 is probably about the same as the time that the $100 would buy for another developer. Okay, maybe I take three times as long to implement a feature for project X because I've never before seen the code for that project, but if you take into account tax (so I see only $70 of the money earned, and the other developer sees only $50 of that) and other overheads, it doesn't seem like a particularly good deal. Sites like CoSource might be useful for _users_ to find development, but it's the first rule of software that users don't know what they want. Unless they are really big users (like the Weather Channel funding Radeon 8500 drivers), and then they probably don't need someone else's website.

Re:Could it ever have worked?

[stevey]

If you have to work on only a few features, wouldn't you do those which scratch your own itch rather than those you were paid for?

I wrote and maintain GNUMP3d a streaming server for MP3's/OGG's. I originally wrote it because nothing was available which met my needs. After using it myself for a while I decided to make it available to others.

To be honest the last few releases have only happened because of the users. It does everything I set out to do. The features contained in the last few releases were almost exclusively requested by users.

Granted they didn't pay - but that's a good example of programming which wasn't explicitly scratching my itch.

OTOH I have had a couple of people buy stuff from my wishlist in exchange for features, or to persuade me to implement a feature before I'd planned to. So I can see it from both sides.

Personally I think a directory like this is a good idea - if there's somebody out there who wants to support OS work, but not donate to a faceless company like RedHat they can choose an application from the list there which they like and appreciate and easily find contact details.

SourceXchange

[AKAImBatman]

I think the biggest problem with the likes of SourceXchange (and others) was that they tended to request software that cost WAY more to develop than was being paid. (e.g. $100 to convert a J2EE server to use HPs proprietary RMI ripoff.) This just isn't good business for programmers. My free time is worth way more than the $.50/hr that it would end up as.

really necessary?

[hashhead]

While something like this or SourceXchange is great for advertising the fact that there can be a paying market for OSS (i.e. advocacy reasons), is it really neccesary from a practical standpoint?

Sometime last year a company I was working for needed a new feature added to a high-profile OSS app before we could use it in our office, so we just emailed one of the developers and negotiated a rate - the task was quickly done and everyone was happy.

Bottom line: unlike the myriad layers of corporate bullshit that sit on top of the average proprietary software developer, most OSS developers are directly reachable - just grab their address from the project's mailing list and ask if they want to earn some $$$ fufilling your feature request... No fancy 'marketplace' site needed - the whole internet is the marketplace.

Got a problem with software from M$ or Macromedia or Adobe, etc.? Try calling the main switchboard and asking for the developer who coded that particular feature, so you can ask him about it... Yah...

Re:Good idea..

[Artifex]

accepts your payment, for free software.... for free software....

Free as in, I need this done, I'm willing to pay for it, but you can give it away to anyone else out there, so that they don't have to reinvent the wheel.

It's kinda like a church. Generally, churches need some sort of place to hold worship services in, and buildings don't get built unless people give money. However, after they get built, they're free and open to all members and guests, including those who haven't given any money. (Yes, I know there are exceptions, but you get the point)

If you don't like that analogy, think of PBS. Certain foundations want shows made to deal with certain topics, and they pay for their production and later may subsidize their broadcast. That's how a lot of the shows get paid for. You don't have to pay to watch PBS, either.

I can see it working, but for priority-shifting

[Trepidity]

You're right, it'd take far more money than most people are willing to offer to actually pay for development at a reasonable rate. However, I could see it working as a way to encourage authors to continue working on their projects, while getting your pet features a bit higher up on the priority list. If I were a project manager and I had 5 or so features I was planning to implement in the near future, if someone paid $100 in favor of one of them, I might well not mind getting that one done first. Sure, for $100 few people will develop an entirely new feature that otherwise they wouldn't have done, but it might be enough to encourage them to shift priorities around a bit.

Re:the bug with this approach

[HiThere]

I'm not sure about that. It seems to me that support contracts are a quite reasonable way to go. Not only do you get bug reports, you get paid to fix them. Of course, you don't get to choose the order in which you fix them, but you wanted to fix the bugs anyway.

This would depend on the temperment of both the developer and the support requester, however, so YMMV.

I do this internally at a company, so I know that it's not necessarily an impossible approach. My problem is that management insists that I use MS Access, regardless of how bad I think it is (and, I'm forced to admit, it has a dialog builder that's better than Glade, and a report builder that's better then ... well, I'm not aware of an Open Source competitor). Still, given free choice, I'd search harder for an alternative. (I hear that The Kompany has a report writer.)