SourceXchange goes into beta

EEPROM writes "SourceXchange is now officially in beta and is accepting developer registrations. You can register here. " Excellent idea on a way to get Open Source developers paid-check out CoSource for another interesting model.

Comments

Not the right way to do this

[Bruce Perens]

I think they are all starting out on the wrong foot. Non-profit organizations like FSF and SPI are better suited for the job of brokering free-software work, from a financial standpoint and a public responsibility standpoint as well.

The commercial Open Source clearing houses claim to be "more professional", but that's a red herring. A non-profit can contract the same consultants and reviewers that the commercial companies would. I'm also concerned that some of the commercial clearing houses have a vested interest in steering grants away from the non-profits who have done so much great work for us.

For an individual donor in the U.S, a non-profit organization with "501(c)3" tax status is up to 33% more effective per dollar spent. When I give FSF or SPI a grant, I can write the amount of of my income on my federal taxes. I get up to 1/3 back, and I can use that to fund more Open Source projects.

Then there's the responsibility issue: we know that FSF and SPI will run their projects for the benefit of the community. We can't say the same about the for-profits, they'll try to do the right thing when they can afford it and they'll put some free software pundits on their boards to appease us. I'm also concerned about some of the companies involved. For example, SourceXChange is an O'Reilly and Associates project, and O'Reilly's not, in my opinion, a good citizen of the Open Source community. For example, there's that situation with Perl: the software's Open Source, but the official reference manual is proprietary to O'Reilly. How open is it really if the documentation is closed? Do we want that to be the case with more software? Other publishers seem much more willing or able to get documentation with Open Source licenses produced while still paying their authors.

So, I think that this is a situation that merits careful watching. I personally am not going to register as a developer with any of these organizations until I know a lot more about them, and my donations will go to non-profit grants rather than commercially-mediated sponsorships. I'm also sponsoring net domains and offering hosting services to some free software projects to help them keep going without a budget.