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Method for Distributing Earnings from an Open Source Project?

Posted by Cliff on from the getting-your-fair-share dept.

mindlace23 asks: "Assuming you had some mechanism by which an open source project generated revenue, how would you fairly distribute those earnings amongst the contributors to the software? Rules that most clearly avoid bias would be preferable; Some sort of automated heuristic would be ideal if it's not gameable."

3 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. It Depends by miyako · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think it depends alot on the size of the project. If you are talking 5 or 6 people on a project, then it is pretty easy to decide who should get what, and/or divide it up equally. On the other hand, if you have a project with >20 or so people, contributing various amounts of code, documentation, etc, then it becomes a bit more difficult.
    I would say divide it up based on how much each person contributed, and give divide a percent of the earnings equally among the people in that group. for example if you have a project with 25 people contributing, 5 of whom did very little, 15 of whom contributed a moderate amount of work, 10 who contributed a signifigant amount, and 5 who were above and beyond, then you could say for example, 10% of the profit will be divided among the bottom 5, 25% will be divided among the lower middle 15, 15% will be divided among the upper middle 10, and the last 50% to be divided among the top 5. keep in mind these percentages are completely arbitrary.
    alternately you could pay per line of code, so if there was x lines of code, and $y profit, and a person contributed n lines of code, they would get n(y/x) dollars.

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  2. charitable foundation - grants by ikeleib · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You make a charitable foundation that "owns" the software by either copyright or just trademark. Developers submit grants to be funded. This can include grants to develop new features. This can also be grants to aquire new equipment to work on the project. The charitable foundation's money allows them to hire programmers to make certain features happen, even if no volunteer can/wants to code it.

  3. Maybe think in a different way by 91degrees · · Score: 2, Interesting

    rather than paying for the work that they have already done, what happens if you pay them for work that you may expect from them in the future?

    This is just a thought experiment rather than a serious proposal, but it does mean that you are effectively reinvesting in the project, and those who feel it is unfair have a means of retaliation (refusing to work on the sequel)