Slashdot Mirror
Negotiating Pay for Open Source Work?
OpenSourceforMoney asks: "For about nine months now I've been working on an Open Source software project; the first release was five months ago. It's reasonably popular given its age -- several hundred users at least (users, not downloads) -- but despite my best attempts, I've been unable to get even a few dollars in donations to help support this (and being a student, I really need to get some money from somewhere). Now suddenly I've been approached by a company which wants to pay me to continue working on this project. How should I handle this? Should I ask for an hourly rate, or should I come up with specific targets and attach prices to each? How much money is it reasonable to ask for, for doing work which I'd end up doing (albeit more slowly) even if I wasn't getting paid? How have Slashdot readers handled the transition from working on a project for fun to being paid to work on it?"
Don't sweat the benefits and crap. If you're a student, you've prolly already got health insurance...especially if your folks are still listing you as a dependent.
Companies are much more willing to pay big $$$ to someone they don't have to give benefits too...so $50 - $100 per hour may not be out of the question.
Also, if you're only talking a relatively few hours, ask for more. i.e. if it's only 10 hours a week, $100/hour get's you a grand, while 20 hours a week at $50 gets you that same grand...it all looks the same on the company's monthly budget.
You take a big risk if you agree to a fixed price contract. While it might seem like there is potential to make more by working efficiently, it doesn't usually happen that way. Estimating how much time a software project will take is *hard*, much harder than it seems. Even if you have experience making those kinds of estimates you are likely to be significantly wrong -- usually too short. Then there is the question of whether a feature is actually done. Particularly if there isn't a well documented requirements document, there can be a wide gap in expectations.
So you can chop the project into tiny, easy-to-estimate pieces and write up a huge requirements document to manage your own risk, or you can just take an hourly rate and code. I know which I'd rather do...
Charging by the hour is tough when working alone because of the record keeping and the feeling that one will be accused of laziness for spending a lot of time at a *seemingly* simple task.
I reccommend negotiating a contract based strictly on an agreed upon task list (with a dollar amount affixed to each task).
Consulting agencies tyically charge significantly higher rates.
Check the details of the contract, i.e. who can terminate it, with how much advance warning, how conflicts are resolved, who pays for arbitration, if any, who pays for travelling, and so on. I always insist on the company paying arbitration, and paying my travel costs for arbitration, regardless of outcome. It lowers my risk significantly, and I have not yet had any trouble.
Stephan
I've never done less that $40/hr when working on contract. Now my minimum is $50/hr. On most projects I set a minimum time as well. I also give estimates and take 33-50% up front followed by one or two more payments as necessary. If you know your stuff, you shouldn't sell yourself short.
On the other hand, if it's a project you're doing anyway, I could understand taking less. In that case part of your pay is the satisfaction you get. The question is, can you afford that?
t'nera semordnilap
I'll address this issue from the other side. About 1.5 years ago, my former employer wanted/needed to replace an aging application that was shared source. That application had been customized by a former employee, but the original perl source was deliberately obfuscated, and the customizations were an ugly hack, completely undocumented, and had been done by an employee who was later fired.
I found a GPLed project that would meet all our needs except for a couple of missing features. I took that to my boss and suggested we pay the author to add what we needed and GPL that code as part of the main project. This was approved in principle, so I contacted the author.
We quickly negotiated a set price for the features we wanted, and I took that back to management for approval. It was quickly approved, and he got to work on the things we needed. It was a real win for everybody. We got all we asked for and then some, at a great price. Because we were (at that time) the largest deployment of that software in the world, it got the most thorough workout and bug discovery process of its life and many fixes of previously unknown bugs resulted from our testing and use.
It would have been much harder to sell management on an hourly rate. Since I was able to go to management with a list of what we needed and a concrete price to get those things, the deal was approved almost immediately, with no dissent. Every level of management, from my boss to the top, liked the fact that they could put a specific, reasonable price on it rather than an open-ended situation that they would have had with a per-hour contract.