I am the developer of Gmvault (http://www.gmvault.org) an open source tool having its development hosted on github (https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault).
I really like the idea of crowd funding and would like my tool to be founded like that if possible as I would like it to be open source and available to anybody while providing enough money to run the development server.
I even more like to idea of having bounties on bugs as this would help me prioritizing features and bug fixes while funding the development.
However since the release of the tool in may I had around 20000 downloads but less the 20 persons supported the development by donating something. I still hope that having such a facility directly embedded in Github would allow people to be a bit more philanthropic and rewarding for the developers as often developers would probably want to continue full time the adventure of developing a product or a library.
What if I gave you $150,000? Would you make the product to my specifications? Does this illustrate why this could be a channel to disrupt the spirit of open source software?
Imagine Github does implement this. Now you have a bunch of coders who want to work on "open source" projects for money, hoping to get backers as if they did a Kickstarter project. Or maybe it could start an OSS Github "gold rush."
Now that we have a bunch of money-hungry developers, it'd be pretty easy to de-rail or commandeer projects simply by donating a large portion of money. Now imagine a non OSS competitor starts contributing. Multiple things can happen:
1) Any innovation or development of features could be easily copied and incorporated into competitive projects for sale.
2) A developer gets "hooked" on that donation money and starts favoring the large donors' requests over others.
3) These requests could sabotage the quality or the focus of the project.
4) The donor could pull funding at this point and collapse development and support of the project.
Full blown conspiracies aside, the whole point of OSS was to open up development for everyone to grow and learn, and to remove software development from the corruptible influence of money.
I think others on this thread had a great idea, make it a "tip", and make it anonymous. We would still have to limit "tips" because anyone can make a huge tip and then e-mail a "ransom" letter to the developers to do stuff if they want to continue getting large tips. The previous ordered list applies here.
Again, I'm going to an extreme and likely this sort of abuse wouldn't be rampant in a system like that. But involving money at all directly into the process sounds like it could do more harm than good.
If you want to take donations, you can do a Kickstarter to get up and running and then take some sort of "beer" or micropayment service on your website. Github integrating this into their offering seems irresponsible to the OSS community at large.
and to remove software development from the corruptible influence of money.
What? I've been part of the F/OSS world in one capacity or another for something like 15 years now, and I've never heard anybody posit that before. Yes, some F/OSS advocates are somewhat anti-commercial, but to say that "the point" of OSS is about removing the influence of money, is a pretty novel idea from what I can see.
Consider this: The FSF specifically say, in the GPL FAQ[1], that you can charge money for GPL'd programs. The Open Source Definition (OSD)[2] has as it's first plank:
"The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale."
And programmers employed by various corporations contribute a significant amount of code to the ASF, and to the Linux kernel, etc. Look at the Apache OOo proposal[3], for example, and now how many of the initial committers were from IBM or Red Office.
Thanks for the information. I admit I'm not fully versed. I don't know much about enterprise OSS, but I do know that IBM created Eclipse as a way to get people onto their development tools and Java technology. Not to say that's even a bad thing
(although I'm no fan of Eclipse but thats irrelevant), just that I guess I don't want to see things like Github motivated by money, when its worked so damn well without it.
What I don't want to see is programmers begging for "donations" so they can work on their project. Clearly my example was a little overblown, but if its not broken why fix it?
Thanks for the info though - as I'm sure I'm not the only one that learned from it.
> the whole point of OSS was to open up development for everyone to grow and learn, and to remove software development from the corruptible influence of money
That's sort of begging the question: "Will money disrupt OSS development? Well, yes of course, because the point of OSS is to prevent the corruptible influence of money."
Lots of people working on OSS projects do so while on somebody's payroll, and they don't seem to derail those projects as a matter of course.
You point out a valid use-case. I think they fall into a couple of different categories:
1) Developers build OSS components that solve a larger business need for the organization. The fact they could modularize it and make it generic enough for open consumption is intrinsic motivation on part of the developer. In this case the "somebody" who is paying them doesn't really care about the OSS, just that they solve the larger task.
2) People build OSS projects on their own time, while working for someone else.
3) Someone is contracted or paid to build a solution for someone. Turns out it would be great OSS, and is given away for free afterwards. The contracting party is essentially paying for the development.
4) Then theres the case you point out. Where people pay others to explicitly build OSS, which I could be wrong but I don't see that happening that often, outside of maybe Redhat or something.
I disagree, OSS removes the corrupting influence of patents and copyright, not the influence of money. Plenty of OSS is made for money and yet the ecosystem hasn't collapsed. All four of your doomsday scenarios are possible today and yet the ecosystem thrives. #1 is actually a good thing, it means that more high quality open source software is distributed.
How is it harsh? I'm simply saying it would introduce a population of developers to Github that previously didn't participate and are only doing so because they can make money from it.
The developer audience is small and targeted. Kickstarter woos the masses. I doubt GitHub would make much money off this idea. The bigger problem is who gets the money from backers. Projects can have multiple contributors, projects can also be forked. There is no way this system could fairly pay the right contributors without massive complexity and pissing people off.
I don't see the problem. The money goes to the owner of the repo to distribute as they see fit.
If you contribute code to an OS project, and then someone makes money from that OS project, do you feel pissed off that you didn't get a cut of that money?
If you trust people to build you free stuff, why do you suddenly not trust them to get paid for it?
May I plug https://www.gittip.com/ up here, too? Gittip lets you pay money to developers on GitHub. It's only a month old. Three weeks ago we moved $30, and last week we moved $380.
'the owner of the repo to distribute as they see fit.' - that type of system will piss people off no matter how much you rationalize it.
'If you contribute code to an OS project, and then someone makes money from that OS project, do you feel pissed off that you didn't get a cut of that money?' - like a lot of money? and something you put a lot of code into? then yea. have you had an open source project that others have taken and reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars off of? I have, it sucks.
'If you trust people to build you free stuff, why do you suddenly not trust them to get paid for it?' - because ideal human behavior is different from real human behavior.
I think you make a good point, but I think it'd make a lot more sense for Github to facilitate donations to projects rather than adding a bunch of crowdfunding stuff. Id much rather donate cash to a project in development, much in the same way I can donate my time, than 'fund' it.
You're right. Unless the funds invested returns anything against it, this wouldn't be investment but donation. I am more interested in Github to find a way out of Kickstarter to create a whole new revenue stream for them.
I'm not sure I would consider the Kickstarter crowdfunding to be "investing". I think "investor" has a certain level of formality attached to it. Investors usually get some stake or something. Most of the Kickstarters I've seen give t-shirts, stickers, access to early betas, pre-orders, etc. Giving to a Kickstarter project seems barely more than a donation. I just think of it as an incentivised donation. If GitHub was to introduce some such feature, it would probably need to have similar incentives as well (bug fixed, feature added, etc) although straight donation (or tip jar or what every you want to call it) would be possible too.
Github's core offering is a hosted git solution. I'm not sure how a crowd funding add on fits into that core offering.
Like another user already said, more money doesn't necessarily mean a boost in development speed/quality. I think there is something in "Kickstarter for developers" (there are bounty based sites that work like this), but I don't believe it really fits with the product/value prop.
I still think Github's biggest potential for revenue is from the enterprise-sized to medium-sized development shops, by way of creating software collaboration tools. Git can be hosted anywhere, but there are reasons why developers like Github beyond it being a repository.
I think this is brilliant for Open Source projects, and running an Open Source project I instinctively felt this is a great idea.
There might be issues if the project has contributions from a large number of unconnected developers (on how to split the amount), or alternatively a project getting a decent amount of funding may put off certain developers, who then might not want to contribute for "free".
On the other hand, it could become a marketplace for contractors. That would be cool. Each project could make a small proposal and invite bids from freelancers, who could all bid on github.
It would be nice if Github gave you the option of adding $1 - N$ onto your membership fee, and then distributed that between the open source projects or authors that you follow.
I thought the same...I think that some people want to support good open source projects, but it is not really convenient to go through several project pages and donate (which is not always possible). This would facilitate such contribution.
That's interesting but most people don't know about it (and the sums are very small too). An integrated service would take things to a much different level much much more trust that the money actually goes to the developers.
Hey there! I'm the lead developer on Gittip. May I say a few words?
First, I think GitHub could definitely make some money doing what OP suggests.
Second, Gittip is starting with GitHub but I hope it will grow beyond GitHub.
Third, sums are growing. Gittip is a month old. We moved $30 three weeks ago and moved $380 last week. We're set to move $480 tomorrow--more if you contribute! :-)
Fourth, the pricing model is different. If GitHub were to do like Kickstarter they'd take a 10% cut. Gittip is priced to cost.
Fifth, Gittip drinks its own Kool-Aid. The people developing Gittip (i.e., me) are looking to make their living through Gittip itself, not from a 10% cut.
Sixth, Gittip is developed in the open ... on GitHub. Jump in! :D
While I generally love the idea and think well of it, your fifth point is actually a bit of concern. I'd rather you took a small percentage and were able to maintain things.
What if you're moving hundreds of thousands of dollars a week, but are still only getting $200 and change for yourself? Will the site close? As an 'opted-in' developer, there goes my revenue stream.
I'm not saying it isn't noble, but while I can appreciate you relying on it for your revenue stream, and would love to get to a point where I could rely on it for mine, there's a confidence factor in the service that doesn't necessarily interact with either of those.
It might not mean anything to anybody else, but I'd have a hard time relying on that until I knew it wasn't going to implode, and that probably means periodically checking your number.
Another small concern I have with it are actually seeing the totals. If you get to $600 on your page, that's $2400(ish) a month. I worry that figure might discourage people -- "Oh, he's already 'rolling in it', I'll tip somebody else that needs it more." I feel like it almost looks like charity at that point.
It'll be interesting to see how things actually shake out though.
I had low expectations for this, but I actually like the idea. facilitating some sort of donation, fund, back, etc. income for the developers making the software could be good.
chosing whether to give to the main dev, a specific dev or equally spread that donation amongst all devs contributing to a project would make it a lot more fair too. i would use this functionality with a doubt.
Yeah. Most of the time when I am working on something and if that's a big thing to get turnaround on, I loss my level of energy that I had when I started it because there is no incentive or quick turnaround.
The problem here is the massive assumption that if the developers of a project had more money, then that would directly relate to more time/effort being spent on the project. That's not always true.
A bounty on issues would also be interesting... sometimes you have an issue you can't personally fix and isn't critical enough to get a contributors interest. $100 might get their interest though :)
Bug tracking software has played with the idea of bug bounties for many years now. However I challenge you to provide a link to a public bug tracker where these bug bounty features are successfully used.
For further reading, there exists plenty of discussion and analysis surrounding bug bounties for security vulnerabilities. Bounty rewards are typically a token gesture that don't even begin to cover the real costs of the developer/researcher. And for open source projects -- many developers are writing code for fun, as a challenge or as an experiment. Are intrinsically motivated developers going to respond positively to extrinsic motivators?
The news about GitHub raising money and this article came right at the time when I was contemplating moving to BitBucket. While comparing the latter's plans with GitHub ones I couldn't help but wonder how Atlassian is turning any profit on BitBucket (the plans seem quite cheaper, and I already wonder how GitHub turns out to be profitable)
This seems predicated on GitHub needing additional revenue. I don't think their announcement signalled that at all. GitHub accepted an investment partner. My assumption is that they got excellent terms since they are very cashflow-positive, they hope to IPO one day, and they require investment-savvy advisors.
I could see this as a possibility but honestly that sounds like a lot of work for GitHub when there is already a means to crowdfund your project. I don't see what is stopping people from just starting their own Kickstarter project to support the project they are storing on GitHub.
I have it in the back of my head that there is a way for the site to get a small percentage of the revenue if they 'properly' integrate it. At least I think Instacast, the iOS podcasting client, used that feature.
However since the release of the tool in may I had around 20000 downloads but less the 20 persons supported the development by donating something. I still hope that having such a facility directly embedded in Github would allow people to be a bit more philanthropic and rewarding for the developers as often developers would probably want to continue full time the adventure of developing a product or a library.