Slashdot Mirror
Funding Open Source?
An Open Investment...
Luke asks: "Open Investment is a concept whereby Open Source principles are applied to making money. Open Investment is inspired by recent articles and diary entries, on Advogato, lamenting the lack of funding of strategic projects. Eric S. Raymond's 'Cathedral and the Bazaar' papers describe how Open Source projects get off the ground by starting as a programmer's itch turning into something useful to other people.
What if there are strategically important projects that just take too long to ever get off the ground, such as
an Open Exchange replacement? With the Economist's recent news on how users expect more and more from IT, how is the Open Source community ever going to keep up? Who is going to pay for it?
The principle behind the Open Investment Initiative is to
encourage the Open Source Community to take matters into
their own hands, by getting smarter about money. If that
happens to mean that programmers become part-time wheeler-dealers and happen to _like_ it better than programming, then good for them! Open source developers (or anybody else for that matter) could even band together to form investment syndicates, with the aim of gaining financial independence.
For the most part, the expectation is that several smart people willing to learn about investing, negotiating and making money get together, and succeed where they would be unable or unwilling to do anything on their own.
Who wants to give it a shot?"
...for a Common Situation?
Yaztromo asks: "I'm the project administrator and lead developer for an Open Source project that brings PalmOS handheld synchronization to Java-enabled platforms, called the jSyncManager.
I started the project back in 1997 for personal use (the full history of the project as available here), and in November of 2002 decided to make it Open Source under the GPL (although parts have since had their license changed to the LGPL to make using our API (especially our plugin APIs) easier for all kinds of developers). After about 8 months we're getting pretty close to final releases of the project for public consumption.
So I've been at this for 8 months, with some success, but am getting to the point where two things concern me:
- How do I best market my project?
- How can I raise funds to help continue the project?
How have you raised your Open Source projects public profile (particularly if it isn't something that is of general use), and how have you gone about obtaining funding to help take care of those annoying little costs that creep up along the way?"
Hi Luke,
Are you seriously asking us to "invest" by giving you money, with no assurance of getting anything in return?
I've got nothing against panhandling, but you should at least be honest about what you're doing.
I thought it was called OSDN. Or IBM. Or Red Hat, Suse, and Mandrake. Oh, and don't forget Paypal!
What's this Submit thingy do?
Open Investment equals Free Money, right ?
---- ---- --- -- --- ------ Keep Cool But Do Not Freeze
some god damn kiddie does the same thing it took you 4 years to do, in two months and gives it aways for free. Nope. Hobbists always win.
My $2.
...for some cool open source!
So people will make investment decisions based on BSD mailing list flames, sourceforge bugs, and slashdot first posts? Yeah, that will be a big hit on Wall Street.
The article's idea of "Open Investment" doesn't seem to be about finding ways to fund open-source projects directly, but rather on educating developers on how to become personally wealthy so that they can donate their time to open-source. Or did I misunderstand it?
Anyway, I think Yaztromo just solved his problem #1 - by getting his question posted on Slashdot, I don't think he'll have any trouble marketing his project now, assuming it's any good. I'm interested in #2 as well, though - raising funds to accelerate development. I'm the lead developer of Audacity, and I've been thinking recently of various ways we might be able to raise money to pay a full-time developer:
1. Lots of small donations, targeted at specific features. Simple to set up, but how likely is it that any one particular feature would get enough funding to really pay for its development?
2. Corporate sponsorship - anyone out there successfully gotten a corporate sponsor for an open-source project before? How did you approach them? How much will they try to control how the money is used?
3. Non-profit grant - we could write a proposal to add a large, significant, but specialized feature, such as making Audacity optimized for blind users, or creating a version for kids, and then find an appropriate charityto fund it.
Anyone had luck with any of these approaches? Other ideas?
Here's another question. Is donating to an open source project tax deductible?
If you have a site with lots of content, say a knowledge base, or multiple language installation guides for your software, or a big forum.. then using Google Adsense might help bring some money into the coffers. I know quite a few people who get four figures a month rolling in.
The benefit of this is it doesn't infringe on any ethical issues.. such as.. this company gave me $1000 and asked for 'X feature' which might harm the program's reputation.. should I add it? should I not?
Some of the open source projects deal directly with hardware. One of the things that we as OSS users can do is to contribute money and/or hardware to the developers, so that they can afford the equipment that they need in order to develop modules.
.11a was the goal, then the a/b chipsets were released. Then the b/g chipsets, and now the a/b/g chipsets. We still don't have an open .11a implementation, not to mention the others. Some of the projects, like the atheros chipset project, aren't terribly far off from .11a, but without more hardware, the variants won't be completed.
An example of this is the various 802.11* projects for different chipsets. Originally
Get together on your mailing lists, and buy the developer some hardware. That way, they have more of what they need to work with in order to make use of their programming skills.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Dang, all these years I thought it was "Have compiler, will sit in basement."
Give them a percentage of the enterprise
Give them whatever support they need to raise money regardless of how stupid or irrelevant you personally think it may be
Don't confuse ownership with control
Focus on being rich, not on being king
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
A lot of things like
- A commercial free based spin off
- form company for services etc, or total solution provider
- consultant
- books
I'm in a open source project, and nearly tried them all. While true that they are possible, they only tend to work for very high profile projects.
Moreover, you'll need several manyears worth of polishing to even qualify.
the only truely necessary cost I can think of is bandwidth. doesn't sourceforge etc. provide this free?
All Open Source developers eat at soup kitchens and sleep at the YMCA between welfare cheques. Well.. not all; Theo de Raadt is too cool for that.
Trolling is a art,
Services and niche-specific funding are probably your best bets. Or, go the way of so many other people who write software and then give it away - set up a Paypal account and ask for tips or something.
I started the project back in 1997 for personal use, and in November of 2002 decided to make it Open Source under the GPL (although parts have since had their license changed to the LGPL to make using our API (especially our plugin APIs) easier for all kinds of developers). After about 8 months we're getting pretty close to final releases of the project for public consumption.
So I'd been at this for 8 months, with some success, but got to the point where two things concern me:
- How do I best market my project?
- How can I raise funds to help continue the project?
That's when I discovered the Open Investment Initiative.The principle behind the Open Investment Initiative is to encourage the Open Source Community to take matters into their own hands, by getting smarter about money. If that happens to mean that programmers become part-time wheeler-dealers and happen to _like_ it better than programming, then good for them! Open source developers (or anybody else for that matter) could even band together to form investment syndicates, with the aim of gaining financial independence.
For the most part, the expectation is that several smart people willing to learn about investing, negotiating and making money get together, and succeed where they would be unable or unwilling to do anything on their own.
Hopefully, that'll help out your situation, too.
Consensual sex is boring.
That is, information about where to donate must be included with the package, and anything derived from the package.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Several Open Source projects are nicely funded doing the same thing. Take for instance the OSS telephone project Asterisk. The software is made available to enable more people to buy and use a particular telephone line interface card. Other cards are supported in the software, but the sponsoring company's is obviously supported first.
So, one avenue is to partner with a hardware maker, in the case of the PC to PDA sync, partner with an up-and-coming desktop hardware manufacturer, or a similar PDA maker.
"How can I raise funds to help continue the project?"
One word: sponsorships.
No, I'm not talking about T-shirts with your project's name on them... although if you think that will help, go for it. I'm talking about finding companies that will actively sponsor your development.
For instance, my company has been in talks with both the PHP project and the PostgreSQL project about sponsorship. (We haven't officially contacted the Postgres team, but we will for our August advertising budget.) We're happy to sponsor open-source projects for two reasons: one, we use these projects to make money, and two, because people who are interested in a particular project are often looking for a company that offers support for that particular project.
There are lots of open-source projects out there that have referral links or sponsorships from companies that use that project to make money. For us, sponsorship is huge, since we want to become well-known in "niche" markets like PostgreSQL web hosting, as opposed to the generic and overblown "virtual web hosting" category.
So approach companies that make products that depend on your project and ask them to sponsor it. You may find a company that uses your project to make money is more than a little happy to kick back $50/month for a banner ad or text link on your project's website. Don't be afraid to ask!
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
If it is a successful open source project, then it will have high visibility and should consequently have ample means of distribution from many sites. That seems to be the very definition of success in open source.
You can still be profitable if you have some value added service provided with the product. You can't really have any benefits within the product itself as it is open source, but you may be able to offer support for your item.
Red Hat capitalized on something similar, as early versions of linux were difficult for newcomers to find, install, and use. RH's packaging, support, and distribution are what made it a success.
So basically, since the supply is limitless and readily available, there is little room to make money off the product itself.
Or you could:
1. Create killer open source app
2. Get tons of developer to make it great
3. Close source
4. Piss a lot of people off
5. ???
6. Profit!
I had found this excellent article a few days ago:
0 OPBZCY--
http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/200104120062
It is about Open Source Economics, money from open source, and what are some economics-related myths about open source.
Though it is not "exactly" relevant to this topic, it talks about related issues.
I have found a solution to Riemann's Hypothesis, but have run out of spac
If you can offer service contracts on free software, you can really bring in the money. Sure it might not be a lot of money each time, but if you have 50 people, say, who need forum maintenance, and you provide free forum software.. even ten bucks a month from each of them adds up big time, giving you time to get on with more coding.
The real money is in recurring charges, not one offs. So offer consultancy and service contracts. Free software has the allure of being a low up-front cost, and this means you can actually sell them recurring costs which probably would have cost more than then buying decent proprietary software anyway!
Still, it's a good money maker.. just offer support on your systems/code/application.. and cash in on your hard work.
However, as projects grow in size, they will soon face financial stumbling blocks, not to mention a need for increased visibility. How does one best market an Open Source project?
You don't. If the project truly is different and worth checking out it will market itself.
All you need is one individual to notice your project, check it out, and realize: Hey! This is really good. Then he will tell his friends who'll tell their friends and so the stone gets rolling.
I think the problem today is that there already is established projects in most areas. So people will just think "Noo! Not another mail client..."
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
How long until this guy gets thrown in prison, I wonder?
1. Write the code. Demonstrate it to people. Maybe distribute it as free beer software in binary-only form.
2. Offer to sell it for $XXXX to a buyer under any Open Source license they both agree upon.
3. Profit!
(Uh oh, something's wrong, where should the "???" go?)
This is actual big problem in certain area since programming skill is almost everywhere.
However the kiddie cannot go on site to install things, the kiddie cannot offer service contract, the kiddie cannot talk to the user professionally, the kiddie cannot document system properly...
If you show professionalism in your 'free' work you can turn it into money and not worry about the 'kiddies'.
-- Dr. Fu Ling-Yu, Internal Technology Consult; Tongji University, People Republic of China.
You may say Duh!
But it is a fact of the industry.
As noted in the story, the OSS projects usually start because a developer had an itch. The reason to start a project may be "just because I can", doing something different and innovative, this feature is not available in current applictions or I want it in a different way. If what you are developing is not available already then there may be a market for it. So once you get over the itch, try developing something that has demand in the market. Its same as developing commercially. You either need a VC or some kind of funding but requirement for getting it is same for both. Once the project grows, you have to provide commercially viable features, you have to give them what they want. It may be done your way but its what they want. Once the need of such a product is realized you may apply for grants to the organizations(like DARPA) who are known to provide grants to OSS projects. You may approach the leaders of other OSS projects and ask them how they managed to get funding. One another way is to open a service and support company for you project. If you manage to get enough clients then it will fund your project. You may customize it for them or add new features that they request - whatever brings in money. You may have to sacrifice some of your desires of what should and should not be there in your project but thats the way of life...
- Jalil Vaidya
The problem with open source is that you can get the code for free. The great thing about open source is you can get the code for free!
Our company looked at developing and releasing open source products based on the "Tall Emu" public licence (for want of a better name).
The concept was basically to sell the product as a non-free solution until such time as milestones were met (revenue, units sold, whatever).
These terms were to be included in the licence.. something along the lines of "This licence will terminate and be replaced by the GPL licence once we have sold xyz units and you can see current sales at www.tallemu.com."
By thinking carefully about the licence, it is possible to "guarantee" that the company wouldn't be able to weasel out of it's obligations to release the source at some point, but also it could make money for a period of time.
The second part of the problem is to figure out a way that people just don't wait until your product becomes open source, so you wear all of the costs and non of the (financial) upside, or even worse, try and find a loophole in your licence.
I guess it also depends on your product. The Exchange Killer (TM) was the product that I wanted to write and use with the licence I describe above.
The main problem is that most investors are not savvy enough to understand that Open Source does not mean no-cost software, it is free as in speach not as in free beer. Many Open Sourced based companies make their money by charging for a tech support contract like Red Hat, MySQL, and others do. Red Hat also sells their CD-ROMs and Manuals for money in retail stores. There is money to be made with Open Source, but not every investor can see that.
The question then, is how much money can be made? In that case, you'd better have a good business plan that runs the numbers on how you charge the customer and where every dollar goes. Like say $35 for a CD-ROM pressed with the latest software and a small user manual. $10 of that goes to employee salaries, $10 goes to paying off bills and other expenses, and $10 goes to tech support issues, and $5 is profit that can be shared by the investors. So you would make a profit of $5 a sale based on this example. If you charged extra for tech support, you could cut out that other $10 and move it to profits, or savings.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
But seriously, All i've seen in most of the responses is "Get donations! corporate sponsorship!". This is the problem w/ OSS, you can't get something for nothing. I'd like to read some more responses that don't involve begging for money. This isn't a career, it's more of a hobby if you get down to those depths.
How have you raised your Open Source projects public profile (particularly if it isn't something that is of general use), and how have you gone about obtaining funding to help take care of those annoying little costs that creep up along the way?
:-)
Okay, I have a tiny open source project that no one's ever heard of, but I've been working on it for a few years and have tried various things.
Two parts to this, I guess. One, starting out, requiring a link back (or just asking for one) ends up with a bunch of sites promoting your work. This can raise the public profile of your project, because all the people who see the link and think the app is cool come running over to your project page. There are other ways to do it, of course. (submit to Slashdot anyone?) There's also Freshmeat and other free software directories to get the word out.
I'm really sad to say that the problem with funding, as I see it, is that a lot of the time, the funding just isn't out there unless you have something big and in wide use, like an O/S, or a popular server (Apache, Sendmail, MySQL), or something that is tending toward apps that would be used in a business environment. Also, a really really useful app where an equivalent doesn't exist has the potential to attract funding as well.
You can solicit donations, but my experience is, most of the people who are going to use the application in a serious commercial environment or to help them make a profit donate zip. People who will be using it for personal use and can't afford to donate often donate a couple of bucks. People who demand free technical support because they don't wanna read the manual RIGHT NOW DAMMIT don't generally donate anything either.
Donations aren't generally a good business model.
(Unless you can get tax exempt status...but I digress.)
Really, it seems that one needs a sales manager or an evangelist -- someone who really enjoys going out and *selling* the project. Not in the sense of "buy this software," but in the sense of, "Hey, Mr. Corporation/Investment entity -- if you invest in this it'll be really cool and people will love you and your stock will go up to the heavens! Yay!"
But most of us just want to sit around and code -- the sales thing just isn't attractive. One option I've explored is finding a salesy kind of person I can trust, and asking them to take on that kind of thing for a split of the "take." That has worked pretty well on a small scale, so I'm pursuing it more. If you're a coder who is also salesy, so are extremely lucky and talented. If not, find a buddy and make them do the evangelization.
In the meantime, get a day job and work on your project in your off hours. That's all the funding I've needed so far.
As trollish as this will sound, how does open source survive in this day-in-age where everything costs something? Or is Open Source != Free?
I don't see the difference between writing software that's given away with code publicly available and communism. Communism doesn't work because it assumes people will work for no payoff. Why would I devote my time to a project (such as Linux) where I have no financial reimbursement unless developing for a company (such as IBM) and I won't own what I write, since it will be in the hands of the public domain?
Once again, not trying to troll - it's just that money and open source don't seem to be compatible.
when I already 0WN Lunix!?
The Great Firewall of China is not a problem??
Errm... http://www.linuxfund.org/.
What about mixed licensing? Main project becomes a commercial project (with expected enhancments, gui, stability) and feeds back into the pool after so long.
Or the club. Mandrake or WineX style. Members get to vote on what features get more focus.
I've been thinking about this more and more from the other side of the coin, as a young OSS user who would like to support developers *and* would like to see more polished projects.
Audacity is a great example of a really cool open source project that could also use a little shine. One way or the other its a terrific project (if you haven't guessed, I'm a user).
Quack, quack.
Not in academic-military-govmental situation..
Large gifts must be reported to the IRS by the giver.
This is the best post I've read on Slashdot ever.
The FSF groupies keep saying it's free speech not free beer. They keep saying that the GPL doesn't prevent you from selling the software. They keep saying Free Software can be commercial software.
So just sell the software! You'll go broke, but at least you can hang out with the FSF groupies in the unemployment line.
p.s. The FSF itself does NOT say this, only those who think RMS is their savior, but never bothered to read any of his writings.
p.p.s. And of course, if you're the typical slashdot reader, you still won't get it. So let me spell it out: you can't make a living selling Free Software by itself.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I might let my lack of knowledge show through here, but what exactly are these "annoying little costs that creep up along the way?" It seems to me that coding requires 2 things:
(1) Hard Work
(2) Free Time
I have a slight issue with funding Open Source because it's kind of like Why don't I just buy a license instead? How is donating any different?
As for getting your name out there, make sure your product fulfils a needed gap. If it's a "free" alternative to an expensive product, make sure people who need to use the product are aware of it.
But most of all, if your project was originally merely because you need it, don't let it get out of hand in size and scope. Keep that goal in your mind, and remember that that is your purpose.
As an example, I'm working with a group right now that started out fulfiling a needed gap in the education at my college. But now they're trying to move to being a non-profit company, and raising "investment capital." Don't ask about the how some people on the project think those entities can co-exist. The truth is, it's tough for them to. And the project is starting to grow exponentially before it's ready, and the original goal of fulfilling the gap in the education is now second priority to making money.
Public projects are the de facto R&D lab of commercial free software vendors.
Unlike a "high on a hill" lab owned by some big company, our R&D is cheaper/faster/better -- but it ain't free. In my case, and many others, the funding is falls below the costs.
We need two things: _Will_ (self interested one could argue) from the vendors to pay the bills. _Mechanism_, to arrange that payment (not merely "paypal buttons" -- higher level mechanism, so that the vendors are assured technology transfer and have a legitimate claim to R&D tax credits).
Just my little experience from the POPFile project.
1. Money
All the money I get from POPFile is through donations made through Amazon.com or PayPal. This brings in enough money to keep me *very* interested in the project, although it does not cover the rent at this point. However as POPFile's user base grew I saw donations grow with I would estimate around 10% of users donating an average of $20.
2. Marketing
I spend no money on marketing, but I am *very* nice to any press that want information on POPFile. They are your friend since they will advertise your product for free if you can get them to write about it. The key to getting them to write about it is to think of the "hook" that they will use. All writers have a "hook" or key idea in the story that they are writing about. If you can relate your product to a hook then you can get them to write about it. In the case of POPFile the hook is spam. Although POPFile is designed for generic email processing it's good at fighting spam too and so I work with writers who deal with the spam problem and they in turn mention POPFile.
On a related note I'd say that the free (as in beer) nature of free (as in speech) software is also a big plus for journalists. There's nothing like recommending a product to their readers that is free.
3. Be Nice To People
Word of mouth is very important to any product (commercial or not) and that means answering every single email you get. I read every message in the POPFile forums and answer every email sent directly to me. This is vital because people then realize that the community around POPFile is welcoming and they feel more comfortable using the tool.
John.
I've opened a new paypal account and will donate all funds donated evenly between deserving open source projects. Trust me, I'm a philanthropist.
Bill G.
The trouble (also one of the strengths) with open source software is the number of overlapping or, even, competing projects that divide funds and programmers into small groups - less effective than they could be if they were united and managed a bit better.
Almost makes you want a centralised open source funding agency to direct the money at a one or two of the strongest candidates in each field - it'd be helluva tough to make those choices though.
Divided we fall,
Stem
I am working on the specification for a suite of programs called "OpenDemocracy" consisten for now of "OpenPolicy" and "OpenVote"...these programs will allow for the distributed discovery of policy and for Internet based voting.
I am certain slashdotters see the future of democracy is the net...and that open source software is the key to increasing the amount and quality of democracy [I posted an article about the first use of Internet voting in an election in North America which will take place in Markham, Ontario - just north of Toronto - in November, in my slashdot blog - the software is from Elections Systems and Software which raises very serious concerns as this is a private, for-profit company and the source code is unavailable for scrutany]].
I am also certain that the high-tech companies who create and maintain the infrastructure that is the Internt would be interested in supporting such an effort. Here's my plan so far [read my blog here to get the latest updates.]
1. A white paper describing OpenDemocracy.
I am working on this now, and I will table it at the next slashdot meetup here in Toronto at the end of this month.
2. Start a sourceforge project.
I will do this after I have gotten initial feedback about the white paper.
3. Start speaking about the project.
I will contact all the high-tech groups here in Toronto [there are more than 30] and ask to speak to them about Internet democracy.
4. Speak to potential sponsors.
I will contact all the high-tech firms with offices in Toronto, and give them the same presentation and ask for money. Money to form a non-profit corporation and to pay a small core of programers to work on the project fulltime.
5. Seek government money.
Same as #4, but government instead of industry.
Also, by the time you have become 'independently wealthy', you will probably be old, decrepit and be only be able to use the money to pay for a better funeral (or leave it to a bunch of spoilt brats who will spend the rest of their lives fighting each other over the inheritance).
Forget about all this crap. Just get on and live the life you want to live *NOW*. If you want to put more time into developing opensource stuff, just get on and do it, even if it means compromising in other, less important, parts of your life (like being enslaved to becoming financially independent). While you figure out all those complicated plans, your body is busy dying.
3.) bandwidth
4.) domain names
5.) server hardware
For some people, $50+ per month can be quite a pinch.
Frequently, the need for money comes when some developer has a financial crunch and is faced with the need to work more paid hours. He can either resign from the project or ask for money.
Another common case is that the user and developer base grows and bottlenecks appear. Examples include mailing list moderation, design lead, and software repository moderation. Sometimes, these bottlenecks require someone to commit a significant chunk of time to the project. When this happens, the developers as a whole fish around for both money and someone gullible enough to drop their real job and work on the project full time.
In the end, its a developer's dream to nurture his project that leads to the desire to let it grow and the consequent need for more funding.
Another way that you can make money off open source is by leveraging the reputation you get from being an open source developer. In my own case I created POPFile an open source email filtering/sorting tool which some people use for spam fighting.
Because the project is open source many people are using it and my knowledge of spam went up, because of that I got invited to the MIT Spam Conference. Because of that I'm now a paid consultant for ActiveState on their Anti-spam Task Force. I never would have been given that job or money if it weren't for the credibility of the open source tool I created.
In fact it's clear that ActiveState *likes* the open source part of the equation because having me there buys them credibility. (No they are not paying me to write this entry).
In addition to ActiveState I got other offers to consult for people on spam and email. This is a good way to make money without affecting the open source project. Nothing in POPFile has even been done for cash.
John.
I wrote and now maintain a little GPLed project. Been doing it for about a year. We've got a mailing list with about two dozen subscribers and it's been great fun. One day, a fellow wrote in with a support question. He mentioned in the bottom of the mail that he could "get compensation sent" from his company if he got good support. "Money for GPL'ed code!? Wow!", I thought. With heart pounding, I provided that support and got him all squared away. To my surprise, he even wrote me a personal email requesting my mailing address so he could send money. I gave him my Paypal address. Well, it's been several months and I haven't heard anything.
The point of this lame story is that people just won't volunteer money, even if your project rocks (not that mine does). Even when they volunteer money, it still probably won't come. You will have to go out and make a job of procuring sponsorship for your project. I recommend finding someone with some business sense and a little smarts to do the job for you. It'll take at least as much time as does your coding to get good funding.
One final rule of thumb: It is very rare for smaller projects (like mine) to procure funding. My project is the kind that a software company could put out in a matter of weeks, but it has taken me a matter of months. Unless you find yourself working 20+ hours per week to manage patches, attend to bug reports, and write new code, I doubt that the project would get outside funding (not to say that it doesn't deserve it).
I guess I will add the to troll and take another karma hit.
The very nature of an investment means that you are buying an asset that has a positive financial return.
A software project magically becomes a good investment when it starts returning money. The idea of asking for investment before you have a financial plan is guaranteed loss. It is no different than asking for alms.
I hate it, but those stupid affiliate web sites that clutter cyberspace have investment value, even though they really don't add much value to the net, while good OSS projects don't have investment value. This happens even despite the fact that the OSS project is adding a great deal of value to the planet.
Unfortunately, the economic thing is too often hidden from the IT staff. Yet, the whole investment thingy has driven software and IT development since its inception. The IT jobs existed because we were all building a capital asset, not because we were making interesting things happen on a screen.
The last tech boom, where people no longer had to show a return on investment messed up our minds, and we have to get the financial end back intact to thrive. That means programs that actually produce financial transactions.
I am a troll because I believe the value of OSS is in its being open, and not in its being free.
I believe with all my heart that software should be creating a capital asset.
When programming, I ask myself both about what I am adding to the technology as well as the financial assets of my employer.
This does not necessarily mean that we need to work for the productization of all computer code, but I really wish the OSS community would spend a little more time thinking about getting cash piped through its pipes.
As such, I found the shareware ideal much more appealing than pure OSS. The shareware concept essentially lets people learn from software, but demands payment when the software is used in a business setting.
I always felt proud when I managed to convince a company to buy a shareware program, because I was contributing to the software economy.
The Oracle approach has been quite successful. Students and schools can get the software for free, but businesses must pay for it.
In some ways, my ideal would be that the code is open for review and tweaking, but there is a license to use the material.
One possible mechanism for funding technology would to include a licensing layer in the technology. Basically each object in a build would record its source. Imagine a database filled with the names of individuals that contributed objects to a code. The company could then pay a license through a mechanism that distributes cash to the object owners.
With such a mechanism, OSS developers would have a cash flow. They would then find that they could invest in more code to increase that cash flow.
It really seems to me that the goal of a community should be the enrichment of the people in the community. It's never bothered me when a company has to pay for a computer license as that money goes into the community.
I have been thinking on this problem quite a bit lately.
.. ad infinitum (until we cannot split anymore [1 penny] or dependencies run out).
Consider the following:
Company XYZ launches an OSDN like websight that maintains a dependency graph of open-source projects (e.g. FOO project depends on code from X,Y,Z and libraries V,W).
The community can vote on and manage those dependencies and their relative importance. Any entry in the project database only lists it's direct dependencies (which themselves may have others). The system will self-organize and may require some interesting checks and balances but could be done.
The system perhaps begins as a donation website to "donate" to projects that you want to support, but could very quickly mobilize marketing to lobby companies that use projects to donate to those projects, etc...
The company running the website takes a commission from every "donation" or payment. We want this. This incents that company to continue and keeps it in business.
The balance after the commission is split 50% / 50% between the project principals and the dependencies. The 50% going to the dependencies is split according to the voted importance of those dependencies on the project. For each dependency, 50% is taken for that project and the other 50% split amongst it's dependencies,
All proceeds that go to project principals are really just numbers in accounts on the website associated with open-source projects, and while eventually it may make sense to do further breakdowns according to project members, in the beginning, the company running the website could just issue a check on a periodic basis to whomever the agreed-upon organization or person is that is associated with that project.
If you allow this model to evolve over time and provide the company running the website with enough financial motivation (e.g. good commissions), it is highly likely that it would become a mobilizing force for raising funds for projects.
But the best part would be that open-source authors could collect royalty checks for many years for their work, much like book-authors do.
This model may not be perfect, but I think with the right company and a willingness to evolve this basic model into something that fits with community needs, it could become a powerful force for rewarding and compensating open-source contributors.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
The biggest source of funding I see for Open Source development is companies who will contribute developer time in order to make an Open Source project suitable for their use. If your project is nearly good enough for something that some company wants to do, it's more cost-effective for them to pay someone to add the remaining features than to reimplement it in-house from scratch or to try to make a proprietary product work for their purposes.
Of course, this isn't useful for Palm-syncing software, since I doubt there are many companies out there with slightly odd needs with respect to Palm-syncing. It may help for Audigy, though; I bet there are some small labels out there whose needs are not well met by proprietary applications and who would be willing to spend some money to get Audigy to to point where they could use it more effective than what they're now paying to use.
As far as making your project tempting, what matters most is a clear explanation of what it does, how it works, how to use it, and how the internals are arranged; anyone who pays for development of the project has to consider the possibility that they'll end up maintaining the project themselves.
As for whether this model works: I've personally been paid by my company to add a feature to an LGPL package, and we went this route because we could evaluate the Open Source package more effectively and more conveniently than proprietary alternatives, and we could determine that only a small amount of our own effort would be necessary to make this package do everything we needed, while it would take an indeterminate amount of effort by people with different agendae to make other packages suitable, and a lot of our effort to implement the whole thing from scratch.
- Is it commercial.
- Does it offer support.
- How long are upgrades included.
- Does it do what I need.
"Its free!" is not the right answer here.That said they love Mozilla.
Quack, quack.
Word of mouth advertising is the only real way for an independent project to get off the ground. If you have a good product, then people will use it. You can add lots of momentum by getting hosted by an organization like Apache or Tigris.org.
What it comes down to is having a stable product with a good user-interface, if applicable, good support, good distribution (not just makefiles, but rpms or installer software), good logging, etc.
The perfect book to describe all of this is Luke Hohmann's latest book Beyond Software Architecture, which I would highly recommend. It goes into great detail to explain how to develop software that people will want to use, open source or not.
Anyway, the quality of the product is first and foremost in open-source because advertising money is just not there. Most IT management are not tech-savvy and pay more attention to colorful ads than what the gurus are saying-- which makes it even harder to get the product used. The products that do get used in businesses are typically only the 'standards' like Apache or Sendmail, which have gained industry-wide acceptance.
It's quite a bit different. You never *have* to donate. If you choose to, you can do so after using the software for years, so you know how valuable the software is to you, and can take that into account when donating. You can also donate as little as you want. On well known projects, even a $1 donation by each user could fund several full time developers. You (or more likely a company) might choose to sponsor a specific feature, as has happened with MySQL.
As mentioned in previous posts, you can't write a driver without hardware, and some of that hardware is expensive.
As a poor college student, I can't say I've donated money to projects, but I have donated time. In a perfect world I'd be able to donate to projects that I find really useful. Perhaps I'll go send my $1 now.
It's as simple as that. Flip burgers by day if you have to, and code at night. You say you're tired? We don't care, that's not OUR problem. You're supposed to be doing this because you ENJOY coding, not to become a millionaire. Don't start acting like a capitalist now. Remember how we all talk how Bill Gates is greedy for charging for code? You don't want to be a hypocrite now, eh? You also say you wont have time to go out? Well you don't need to being doing that anyway. All you'd be doing is handing over your little remaining money to greedy businessmen. That money could be better served getting better tools for OSS.
Have a family? Get rid of them! Divorce the bitch, hand the brats over to Human Services. All they are doing is taking away focus from the important thing, which is to provide us with free software.
Remember, OSS is supposed to help us get rid of the the Microsoft tax. Asking US to fund it is just imposing an OSS tax.
Why cant we set up something like Transgaming, or the EFF, where people pay $5 a month or something, and then we vote to set up bounties to fund development. Whoever develops it wins the money.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Have people vote on a specific feature. Set your rate which you expect people to pay for that feature, and then have people pay.
The other way is via membership, like what the EFF does.
But in my opinion there should be some centralized open source funding group which everyone can join, instead of divide evverything.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
We need a group to setup a site. I should be able to click on a link and then click join OpenSource or whatever. Then I pay $5 a month and I fund open source development. I pay for votes transgaming style.
Me and the other paying users vote on where the money goes, programmers can sign up and get money to develop certain applications or services, and we can set up bounties, where programmers can accept.
When the code reaches beta we review it to make sure it works, and when its finished they get paid.
Transgaming currently does this, but we need a general open source transgaming style setup.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Computer science as a scientific discipline hasn't exactly been underfunded or anything. This question is a bit naive in that regard. All this boils down to is private and public funding of basic software research and development. As such the usual sources are government entities and large corporate interests. DARPA anyone? IBM, sun, apple, etc all have financial stakes in "open source". Probably what is needed is a streamlined mechanism for applying and receiving these funds but isn't that what CollabNet(sp?) was supposed to be doing? A recent look at their web site reveals them to be nothing more than shills for offshoring/outsourcing though.......
Hi Everyone:
I'll probably try to get around to replying to many of your posts directly (will, the really useful ones at least :) ), but I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for their input thus far, and reply to some of the recurring ideas and themes.
The jSyncManager has, in fact, been around for quite a while. I started working on it back in 1997. It eventually became my thesis project. Shortly after graduating from Brock University, I joined up with IBM, working at their Toronto Software Lab.
At this time, the project was closed source (a bit of a mistake on my part). As with many big software firms, I had to sing the restrictive "IBM owns everything you develop" employment contract, which made continued work on the jSyncManager difficult (this was at a time when IBM was still formulating its rules for employees participating in Open Source projects).
As an in-between solution, I entered into an agreement with my local legal department to offer the jSyncManager through IBM in a co-copyrighted manner, where I retained the copyright to everything as it existed prior to joining IBM. Due to some problems IBM had with the name, it was changed to IBM ManplatoSync for Java. My original agreement was that the project was to be released as Open Source under the IBM Public License -- but while I kept working on the project (in my own time mind you, and for no money), the IBM lawyers kept passing the buck, and permission to actually release the project source to the public was never granted.
After leaving IBM early last year, I decided to dig up the pre-IBM source, fix it up somewhat, and make the jSyncManager Open Source myself.
In the time I've been working on the project, we've had several mentions in the press (Chapter 11 of O'Reilly's "Java Cookbook" mentions the jSyncManager in passing, the May 2000 issue of Java Pro reviewed us against Palm's own CDK for Java (very favourably I might add :) ), and we got a mention in "Assistants", an Australian publication for Chartered Accountants), and I've spoke about the jSyncManager at a few conferences (Wrox Wireless 2001 in Amsterdam, WarpStock 2001 in Toronto, and CASCON 2001 (sponsored by IBM and the National Research council of Canada), also in Toronto). Unfortunately, all of these happened before I released the jSyncManager as Open Source. Things since have been pretty dry (even though IMO we have a much better product now!).
So, we're in a good position to attract attention and funding -- we're a mature project that is rock-solid (we do have to work on our initial setup a bit, as getting end-users to grab all of the necessary third-party libraries we rely upon is curruntly an issue, but it's something we'll work on by creating installer versions that include the necessary libraries once we get closer to our next GA release), and has been received favourably in several communities.
(I do want to note that when I wrote up my story submission, I was quite aware of the potential marketing implications of getting such a story on Slashdot, as some readers here have observed. This wasn't really my intention, which is why I'm trying to ask generic questions to see what ideas every has -- I'm hoping other projects can benifit from this discussion as well. Getting our website /.'ed is an unintended side benifit :) ).
Something I've learned in the six years I've been developing the jSyncManager is that while I'm an excellent coder (well, at least I think so ;) ), and a good project administrator, and while I don't mind blowing my own horn somewhat, I know that I am _not_ a sales/m
If the entire Perl and Python communities can't manage a few hundred thousand dollars a year, or the languages are just too unimportant to merit sponsorship, what hope for open-source funding?
Maybe micropayments. Or ARPA under a better director. But anything soon?
With the Economist's recent news on how users expect more and more from IT, how is the Open Source community ever going to keep up? Who is going to pay for it?
Is grounded in this kind of faulty logic. You have heard it before as, "free software can never produce a working kernel" or "free software will never produce an easy to use interface."
First things first, free software is miles ahead of comercial software. The development tools are second to none and the quality of the most basic utilities is hard to beat. On top of this, many people and many companies have added many fine and easy to use desktop managers, productivty suits, browsers, email clients, databases and games. Well, OK, it's hard to match the good people at ID Software, but the rest is simply there.
Every single one of the devlopers of that software are finacially stable. How do I know that? It's easy, you can't really contribute to a project when you are not finacially stable. Trust me, you spend most of your time looking for a job when you don't have one you like. Commitments to software projects are generally too large to make under circumstances like that. There are as many ways of earning your keep as there are free software developers.
Two further things should be considered, that comercial software won't support you any better and just what kind of reward is deserved. If the statistical improbability of working directly for a closed source software develpment firm is not humbling enough, consider the fate of those who made Netscape, Word Perfect, Lotus and all the other firms destroyed like SCO. RMS made his living in part by developing modules for emacs that other people wanted. They paid him, he made it and gave it away. I doubt that any of us should expect more from our software. Yet many do manage to get more though CD sales, grants, and all the rest. A rubish old relative has a great phrase for this, "Take what it gives."
The power of free software is that so much of it's available. The free software developer can now meet just about any client needs. There's plenty of money to be made with it, and while you are making money off other people's labor why would you ever want to hoard your own? Only bad laws can stop free software from filling every software need there is. Enjoy it, take what you need and give what you can. Ideas work that way.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There's no need for odd schemes to get money from free software. :)
:)
The problem is usually sales. Since it's easier to begin a IT start-up using FOSS, sales-persons are not directly part of the company, and that's where start-ups whose goal it is to make money go wrong. Just sitting in the attic writing brilliant software will not automatically sell it.
There are a lot of tales going around that OSS cannot generate money, but in truth, NO software company can make money without having people who sell the stuff, even if they would have the best closed software ever created.
There is a reason Microsoft and other large software houses have a huge salesdepartment, even with all their cash and power they're depending on it badly.
And frankly selling OSS is a huge salesboon,w hat is a better sales argument then "costs... hah, it's free, the implementation however...". It is the best salesargument ever devised. MS used it to get their product wide spread and accepted (well, you know what I mean). If OSS was a large company they would be in trouble for "unfair competition".
Really, the only hurdle is sales, and therefore to find a sales representative to make a prosperous company. Where to find this mythical "honest" salesman, that knows about "free"ness and fair play, I don't know. But once you find him.... how hard can it be to sell something for FREE
And on the subject of job-security, and day-jobs to sustain your OSS ambitions.
If you have a job programming closed software, chances are your job will go away. It will be out sourced, you're too expensive.
If you have a job configuring free operating systems, running free software (especially software you've contributed to or wrote yourself), you will be needed on-spot most of the time, your job cannot be easily outsourced.
Times are tight because free software is not a large market yet. This is because closed-source programmers are STEALING YOUR JOBS, keeping unsatisfied customers who might want to change locked in.
How that for a turn-around, open source nor stealing closed source jobs but the other way around
If all large companies started migrating tomorrow, there would be plenty of work (even after the migration is done) for all foss programmers.
Yes, the not so tech-savvy suits might find a cut in the pay-check, but who likes them anyway.
And think again about what I just said seemingly jesting.
Proprietary software costs FOSS programming jobs.
I think you'll find more truth in it then you thought at first.
I was recently able to gather a number of people from the ColdFusion community together in order to pay a programmer to do a port for us of an open source application. The application was the Visual Regular Expressions editor from KDE and it was ported to a standalone windows application. Still open source but paid for by a group. I'll be releasing it as soon as my crashed computer is back up. :)
Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com
I thought OSS was supposed to rid us of the Microsoft tax. Sounds like you just want impose a different tax, an OSS tax. Remember all those diatribes against Bill Gates just because he charges for his product?
No, OSS should be free. To demand money would be hypocritical. You might as well change your name to Bill Gates the second you ask for money.
Cliff wrote, "Have the financially minded people of the Free Software community thought out the possibility of an Open Investment firm?"
This story is predicated upon the idea that "money" is a key issue in opensource/free software development and that developers depend on creating software for their income.
This couldn't be further from the truth. I co-founded a large project with three other prople. One is in the computer related field, one is a very talented high school student, one is an office manager in a contruction company, and I am a registered nurse. We do not depend on our projects development or any other software development for our personal income.
Marketing for our project is basically "word-of-mouth" and, with a total of about 9500 members since September of 2002 on our English speaking support site alone, I would argue that our marketing strategy works.
Perhaps the persuit of money is the downfall of many opensource/free software projects. "Funding" is much more than simple dollars and cents. "Funding" can also be contributions of time and attention. Spend more time soliciting that kind of funding and the money issues become mute.
Zoom
Integrity is what you are when nobody is looking.
It's pretty funny that the people bitching because they can't get anyone to pay them to write code will turn right around and download some guy's .mp3 and sneer about "greedy artists" and not feel a tinge of hypocrisy.
I see several ways.
0) If you build it, they will come.
Get a day job and give the open source world another gift. Prove that your ideas and coding are worth something with a working example. Better yet, write the code for your Senior Thesis, Masters, PhD or post-doc work. That way you get real academic credentials for your code.
1) Ask for donations
Many people have asked for simple gifts from Amazon, Amazon Honor System and Paypal to earn something.
2) Attract Hardware Makers self interest.
Hardware manufacturers and distributers have many times provided test hardware, internal specs and sometimes even sample drive code to get linux and open source support for their hardware. Some times hardware corps won't help due to Intelletual Property concerns and fear of Microsoft.
3) Corporate Support of pure Open Source software projects.
Company support is much less common with pure software projects than hardware driver projects. Companies that sell support services, e.g. IBM, have been very generious. Distrobution providers such as RedHat, Mandrake, and others, have also support key projects.
4) Sell expansion customizations and features
This requires planning when you start the project. If the project frame work handles plug ins easily, this model may be much easier to work with. Webmin is a good example of a project like this.
5) Dual track licenses
Ghostscript, the opensource PostScript language interpreter, used for printing and viewing PDF files, has a dual track license, where GPL version is released months after the restricted version of software. Non-commercial use of the restricted software is free, but the commercial users must pay a license to require and/or redistribute the restricted newest version. If they wait, they can use the GPL version as per normal.
6) Pay for Book or Documentation
Many developers have written the definative guide to their software. Printing a book ensures they get some money for the work. Enlightened publishers such as OReilly have let projects such as SAMBA redistribute free PDF copies for all users of the project, letting readers see the value, and then buy this critical refence book. But remember, few projects have the depth or significance to require a full book.
7) Contract Work
Your client, a School, Business, local gevernment, hires you to solve their problem, write several key requirements into the contract, such as, "Coder owns the rights to code, this is not a work for hire. Coder delivers GPL version of final deliverable to the Client." This allows Client to fix code should you be hit by a bus, and the GPL project to get started. This allows the coder to assign the right to Free Software Foundation, and fork licenses like GhostScript.
8) Non-Profit Foundation Grant
Grant writing produces bigger blocks of money than paypal donations, for short periods of time (1 to 3 years), and are almost never renewed. Grants are complex business. Also foundation generally do NOT understand software, which could create havoc with developers and foundations, trying to figure out how to guage a successful grant. Open Source coders need to record copies downloaded, bugs squashed, features added, and estimate user community attained with such financial support. This is not stuff open source people normally spend much time on. Once the grant expires, its back to rice and beans, or mana from heav^H^H^H^H err... IBM.
9) Hotmail business model
Pay for development because it helps your bottom line, and open source tools let you scale your business faster. Give back what you write, cause all those open source tools you are using are saving you a pile on licenses.
10) Create an honor system license
Ask corprate IT chiefs to buy fig leaf GPL license that will make it past their accountants, an
The only other thing remaining is to find muses for all the developers. That could be a tough one!
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
The fact that you just can't turn a pretty penny on the production of Free Software, like you can with proprietary software, does not make it an economist's nightmare.
The way some people seem to perceive the threat of Free Software reminds me very much of a passage in Robert Heilbroner's book "The Worldly Philosophers" on Frédéric Bastiat. In Chapter 7, "The Victorian World and the Economic Underworld", Hielbroner reproduces Bastiat's satire of a manufacturers petition to make an ordinance against the unfair competition candle makers face. Not only could Bastiat work for the the Onion, the writers of the Simpsons episode "Who shot Mr. Burns", must have been inspired by this.
Almost immediately after reading the above quote this scene from the Simpsons plays in my mind:I make the analogy: proprietary software is like a candle, Free Software aims to be the sun.
The important thing to think about is that once an effective Free Software aplication has been created their is value, in the terms of cost of production, labor, in the code. It is hard to figure ROI or TCO in something that has intrinsic value.
If everyone can get access to tools that make their lives easier and grants them access to information, it goes to say they may lead happier and more productive lives.
These are exactly the sorts of little costs that have currently cropped up -- internet costs.
We've done well for some of these things -- we're using the webspace SourceForge provides for our project, for example. But domain registration still costs, as does our mailmap system.
And the project has become big enough that I can quite easily spend an entire 8+ hour day working on it, and I frequently do. As the lead developer and the project administrator and the primary project evangelist and primary technical support person, I spend my days replying to e-mails, providing end-user technical support, writing press releases, writing code, debugging code, trying to advertise our project, writing documentation -- etc.
It's all a big job. Thankfully, I have a good team of developers that has helped take some of the pressure off. Our build manager does a fantastic job, as does our webmaster (my efforts at both of these jobs in the earlier days was terrible :) ). My backup project administrator has done a fantastic job of managing bug and feature requests, and one of our testers/plug-in developers who knows CVS better than anyone else has been invaluable in helping me whenever I run into something odd with CVS (and has been a huge influence in how our CVS tree is currently organized, with more to be done after our next GA release).
But that still leaves a ton of work to do. And we're at that jumping-off stage where we're building up more and more "true believer"-type users, who are using the project in some serious projects of their own, and I'd hate to be forced to _decrease_ my participation (at least before our next GA release) because of finances.
Yaz.
My suggestion for funding Open Source is to stick a huge PayPal "donate to this project" button at the top of each sourceforge page, and beg. I've seen it work soooo many times, it's amazing. [b]Dan Grossman[/b] http://www.websitegoodies.com
Forget Google. Better Web Stats.
SPI is a well run non-profit with tax exempt sttus from the IRS that supports several projects including Debian and the Open Source Initiative.
Read, L
Yes. If you fund your project through the Public Software Fund, anyone who donates money can take a tax writeoff on their US taxes.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The Public Software Fund already has tax exempt status. As long as you assign the copyright to the funded improvements to a non-profit, the donor can get a break on their US federal taxes.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
OMG, they killed Google. You bastards!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You do not. If you are stewarding for money go for foundations and make sure it is ONLY for a long standing ENDERING project, Otherwise live off your endowment.
There is no 'marketing' of the the type of OS project your describe. A Palm-Java synchronization either works or it doesn't. If it works people pick up your code and make use of it. If it doesn't work, well....
"Marketable" OS projects are ones like JBoss and MySQL that have an element of complexity that requires a skilled professional. Not to belittle the work you are doing, I'm sure it was no small task for you to develop, but as it stand now, the binaires and some Javadoc API and most Java hackers could pick up the slack.
What's in in for a company to write you a check? By releasing your code OS, they don't jave to.
All your base are belong to us!
Every kid and their little sister is writting games these days and the big companies certainly aren't sweating it.
I think the OP was being drastic about "script kiddies" but I often find myself looking for Open Source solutions to replace expensive alternatives.
I think the point he was trying to make was that:
We complain about the lack of jobs available and then go on and on about how great FREE software is. Hypothetical situation Linux takes the desktop by storm, Windows goes down the tubes. Thousands of workers are out of jobs at Microsoft. Not only did thousands of job positions disappear but now you have thousands of people looking for new jobs.
1000+ more people out of work 1000+ less job positions to be filled.
Open Source replaces paid jobs that are covered by the profits created by the product with jobs that need some other way to cover the bills.
Here's the trade-off:
Closed source = few developers but cost of production is distributed over many customers
Open source = many developers but cost of production is distributed over a few wealthy friends
There's plenty of free software floating around but there's not much free money.
If the Open Source model isn't supporting your costs, then you need to start charging the customers. Companies tend to make investments, not give grants. And both are very difficult to get.
Open Source software needs to plan in advance for the possibility that they will need to charge for their product to cover costs. Going out whinning that nobody donated isn't going to fix things.
I liked having a totally free huge web-site that many many people utilized but there was no way I was promising it would stay that way. And of course it didn't. Free is nice but free don't pay the bills.
Project needs money? Charge for the download. Problem solved. If someone else wants to host it and not charge the fee, great. The idea of the charge is to cover bandwidth. If it's not costing you bandwidth then you don't need to get a return on it.
If the problem is more than the cost of bandwidth then you need to find a job that pays real money and work on the project that doesn't pay you on the side.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Someone should shoot that girl's parents - as far as names go that one is worse than 'Astral'.
Beep beep.
Before you go through all the effort of implementing Google Adsense on your site, take a look through their pages and calculate how much revenue it will bring in. Having trouble? That is because Google refuses to disclose the formula they use to pay webmasters, or even all the factors involved! You run the ads on your site, and THEN they decide how much to pay you based on whatever secret formula they are using that day. How arrogant can they get? Now I am a big Google fan, but I am not going to put up with this! It would be like taking a job at a store that refuses to tell you how your commission is calculated. Google should tell us the payout ratios BEFORE we implement their system and we should be notified when the formula changes.
Sure, some of your friends may be doing reasonably well now. Perhaps Google has goosed the system during this initial rollout period so that pay is decent. But what do you think will happen to pay rates once they reach critical mass? If your payment is down one month, how will you know whether it is a normal clickthrough fluctuation that could go back next month, or whether Google has changed the rules? You won't know!
Note that Adsense has garnered many other complaints as well. I would recommend boycotting this service until Google is honest enough to detail the revenue share arrangement.
Here is an idea: do a search on keywords that relate to your site and note who is advertising. Send them a mail offering 50% off Google rates if they wish to advertise on your site. That is probably a far higher percentage than Google pays you, and it puts you back in control over your web site earnings. And then let Google know about it by sending email to adsense-support@google.com . I am not trying to screw Google here - I just believe that need to be more open about the process. Refusing to tell webmasters how their pay is calculated in exploitative and reeks of arrogance.
I have been wondering about it as well, and I have talked to a few colleagues in various companies about it. One solution to the sponsorship problem might be to let a comany get your code with BSD style license, though it is easier said than done, considering so many people contribute to any given project. But I am sure that most of them will agree if they know that they will get moeny in return to carry on the project. The biggest problem corporations have is with so called viral nature of GPL, in my personal experience. There are many companies which will like to use open source software because it reduces development costs but don't because they don't want to make their firmwares opensource, because almost always they modify the software they got. So in case a company is given the option to keep the modifications, the likelihood of getting sponsorship will increase surely.
What's under yellowstone?
I think that a non-profit organization that has the specific goal of raising money to support the Open Source community would do a great service. It would collect money and pay for expenses of certain projects. Companies could donate money and get tax write-offs for it. The non-profit could also allow companies to earmark a certain percentage of the funds to go to a certain project. If the company wants to switch entirely to open source, they could donate to the project(s) they need the most for the switch. The companies would be more willing to contribute to open source as they are getting tax write-offs along with something useful to the company.
IANAL, but this seems like a viable plan to me.
-hoch
2*31*37*263
Yes. Switch to the shareware model.
I did that with my software. It works.
- The escrow balance provides a clear marker as to where the donations are, and can have a positive effect on contributions. Consider the Blender situation.
- Contributors can give what they think it's worth to them to have a project (or project milestone) completed, without doing a calculus as to how their donation fits into the overall picture of getting work done.
- Contributors are assured that they will receive their cash back from the escrow account if the project is not completed.
- Developers are relieved from the burden of managing contributions
- Talented developers in developing countries with a spotty track record wrt respect for contract law are not impeded by this reputaton.
- Developers see a concrete pile of cash in an escrow account just waiting for them if they complete the project. There's no ambiguity about getting paid or not.
Funding for Open Source projects is a very interesting subject, IMO. As Free/Open Source software continues its inexorable march into the mainstream, I think it will be crucial to find GRASS-ROOTS methods of funding so that development is not overly influenced by corporate interests and "IP" issues.pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Crossing the chasm, whilst it's intended audience is proprietory IT firms, makes the point that consultancy is often *the* cash generator in the early market.
A viable Open Source project will almost *always* require consultancy at the firms who choose to use it. If there's a better marriage between the commercial sector and Open Source projects I couldn't think of it. The challenge is to make sure there are 'no strings' and that each side thinks the share is fair. It strikes me that the 'best' Open Source projects are alread doing this (think MySQL, apache, etc).
As a further example, the company I work for sets aside a percentage of its turnover for project funding, our most recent being joining the FSF corporate sponsor programme (try and encourage your own companies to do this - they need waaaaaaaaaaay more than they've picked up so far - companies who use Open Souce *should* fund it!).
Implementors in the 'trenches' at Open Souce 'early adopters' should make the ideal funding partners for coders who, let's face it, made all this possible in the first place...
Just my £0.02
I think we should write an application that people can use to get an idea of what applications they use. A program that tracks what is most important to them. Then, payment information follows each application, and each month, a list is brought up to allow the user to select who he wants to send money to. A click or two, and the money is on the way to the developer.
The trick is to make the payment simple enough for Joe Average to actually do it now and then.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Just write and sell documentation and you'll make good money for the project. If you don't know how to do it, ask these guys.
A fair number of people using open source are doing it because we are control freaks, in a useful sense. We want our software to do things that are, at best, a niche market. The advantage of open source in these cases is that we can take existing tools that do 90% of what we need and add the missing 10%. In my case, I do a lot of custom hacks with Emacs Lisp. I get the full editing capabilities of an extremely powerful text editor with a built-in extension language. Yes, I could write some of this stuff in other languages, and in fact, I have rewritten some of the non-interactive stuff in Perl for speed. But a lot of this code exists solely because it extends the capabilities of a text editor that already provides me with most of what I need.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I've been a long time Open Source fan and I have noticed one trend that the movement lacked and still continues to lack on a major scale (although its improving); that is quality assurance. There are many great ideas and excellent programs that I would use, like KOffice, unfortunately it seems that there are very little resources invested in quality assurance. As far as I know, most of the Open Source projects rely on user who submit bug notifications; then these bugs are fixed in future realeases. What about dedicated quality assurance teams that treat any Open Source project like if it were a commercial program? Also, I think that the movement needs more release engineers and testers to ensure less painful installations for people who have very little or no experience with Linux. Do that and watch the numbers of potential users grow.
Most Slashdot readers are not the same target audience as actual players of a game or users of software. You are high quality folks as far as grey matter, but by being such high end folks - you just are not the common person. When you go home at night - if you don't already do it during the day, you figure how to work in the payall world of Microsoft XP, MAC, and RedHat (yes RH) because you want your product to work there. You want seemless. Rebel in your mind if you want - it won't help. So Opensource, yes I agree - greatest thing since sliced bread. Check out my product on Yahoo Group "Starshiptraders" or slashdot the crud out of my "free" website www.geocities.com/kirellii or go play the free game in "closed source" webmode or telnet mode. Dare you to slashdot that again. The bottom line, people like and trust closed source more - oh not you - you are here because you have the high end vision - but people like Joe or Jane - the normal folks. They don't want opensource - they want sealed and safe and preferably marked as such. (*Note - I am not the owner of www.starshiptraders.com - I am just a person making an Open Source graphical client front end. Also, the game existed before Evercrack and others so anything that looks similar is purely random as Open Source takes much longer to write in the dark corners in spare time.) (People who use or play for free are hardly the ones to shell out money for t-shirts or the software when they don't have to do it.)
You're welcome.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
If a company contributes software to open source there should be a tax break. This will encourage companies to donate products they plan to withdraw as well as fund people in the company to work on open source.
The big sticky for Open Source (and for capitalism, for that matter) is in creating a system to distribute the financial returns of the enterprise that is equitable in the eyes of all the contributors to the process. If the distribution system is too inequitable, then participation will drop or never occur. In other words, open source coders, marketing people, and financiers will refuse to contribute to a project that seems to be unfair in doling out the money made from their labors. If a bunch of people contribute labor in the form of various lines of code, bug fixes, architectural enhancements, etc. , then they might expect soem financial remuneration if the project becomes a financial success. But how is a project to judge the contributory percentage of each coder? One possibility is a contractual approach -- coder X agrees to develop/fix feature Y in exchange for percentage Z. A second possibility is a post hoc, evaluative approach -- the project community awards points to the participants. I suspect that a successful large project would require some combination of the two -- the contract provides motivation to coder to start work and the post-evaluation provides motivation to do a good job in finishing the work. If the project consists of a bunch of like-minded hackers, then distributing the profits is not too difficult. The stickier problem arises when the resource contributors are heterogenous. Consider the case in which a developer provides the code, a marketing person provides the customers, and a financier provides the cash. What is the relative value of code, customers, and cash? How should the profits be divided? Each of these different types of contributors feels their contribution is "essential" and each has a hard time evaluating the merits of the other's contributions. Don't forget that the decision to award percentages creates a recursive problem in that the project needs to decide on the voting rights percentages for the different participants. It would seem that all of this would drive Open Source projects to a model that resembles a modern corporation with workers of various types, investors, and managers. Different contributors would join the project for different combinations of pre-agreed work-for-hire and work-for-equity. Evaluative processes would lead to bonuses or firings. Anybody know of an open sourceproject that has made the transition from loose conferation of coders to formal goverance structures?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
These are problems they would not wish on their fiercest competitors, so there is no desire to keep it proprietary. In general, when a company's primary business is not computers, the computer is just a tool. And they are willing to contribute to projects to improve the tool for everyone.
These investments are always going to be small and short term. However, sometimes you can go around to many businesses in a trade, and convince them to pool contributions for a project that benefits them all. They are competitors, so there is suspicion to overcome, but if you are a neutral third party (e.g. you are a computer consultant) it can be done.
It was only a few weeks ago, that the linux router project died through lack of funding - it was reported here.
Try not to find yourself in that hole.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
If you want funding or just som extra cash simply follow these steps:
;)
1) set aside 1 hour a day for excersise
2) whenever you code, wear a rubber band around your dick (to make it grow)
3) spend friday afternoons in your local Red light district
Not only will you make a lot of money, but you will also get laid (somteimes even by women
ps. If your into the 'Dark Side' of gigoloing buy one of those 10$ spy-cameras and blackmail your customers for some extra cash.
ps2. 4) pray to God they come up with a cure for AIDS soon.
Open source is the art of letting other people write your bad code.
But I think value *can* be added. I agree if you put a price on something that you can already get for free you've got a tuff sell, but thats not what I'm talking about.
WineX gives you voting, nicely packaged releases and propreitary extentions. Basically you end up with a very proffesional package at a reasonable price.
Of course you can get it for free, but only some of it and you have to compile and install it yourself.
I think OSS is growing beyond its original roots and projects are becoming more complicated *and* more neccisary then ever before. There is a market there and I think the principals of OSS can be maintained while creating a marketplace that can support its development.
I mean we can't keep asking these projects give more without being willing to give a little ourselves. Proffesional graphics require artists, which in turn require finances. I like well designed, well thought out interfaces and I'd pay a little extra for those kind of features in a heartbeat (Mandrake Club member!).
Quack, quack.
... is like winning a lottery. There's no easy way to do this.
My company has released on Sourceforge a very nice piece of software for managing projects called Outreach Project Tool, which is used by hundreds of companies around the world. Not one of them has even sent a postcard we requested to acknowledge their use, let alone any money.
Today, we also released another great tool for documenting IT infrastructure called DMO, and we don't expect to earn a single Euro in revenue from it, despite spending thousands of Euros on its development.
Why are we doing this? Because we make money out of selling solutions and consulting based around open source, and we want to give back to the community. If you're a developer, and want to write and release open source software, go ahead, but don't expect it to pay for lunch.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
Ok so what your saying is that the copyright holder and ONLY the copyright holder has the right to NOT contribute a modification to his program under the GPL because he is not bound by his own license.(Makes sense. One does not need to license oneself the rights to one's own program.) Anybody else though IS required to do so because the only reason they have any rights at all is because of the GPL.
Ok well that is a slight plus in favor of the GPL. I personally don't think the GPL promotes freedom. One has to have the right to use a program anyway he wants. REQUIRING anyone to do anything is not freedom it is force. But RMS is a communist and that is the way they think. Personally if I were a programer and I was inclined to do open source then I'd use BSD style. It's honest because you have to site your sources and it is free because you can do anything you want with the code.
Thanks for clearing this up for me.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I've said this before (check my earlier postings), but basic income would solve this problem and many others. It is based on the idea that everyone has the right to do unpaid work as well as paid work, and any combination of the two, and still have a reasonable income. Look it up on citizensincome.org or wikipedia.
I'm lost what do you mean?
If you run out moneys then you can go live in friendlier country based on socialism or communism instead of rude arrogant capitalist system which force people to work to get what they want.
Just ask any other Americans.
Are there any Americans in here who can tell me what this guy is talking about?
I don't know what he's thinking, but I do live in a friendlier country that is socially liberal and fiscally conservative -- I'm Canadian.
I hope he didn't just automatically assume I'm American just because I'm posting to US-centric ./ :).
Yaz.
bom tish
Affero.org