Why Don't Developers Support Open Source Maintainers?

Companies/governments should support Open Source they use. While I appreciate OSS and have donated to software I personally use, donating to stuff I use at work feels like I'm paying money that my employer owes.

Why is the emphasis on one developer donating to another, rather than companies that make money from that work?

[delayed]

This is all true, but the reason people don't is the same reason as many human behavioural tendencies: (1) most people don't feel they have much money to spare) people on bigger salaries often get more expensive houses and cars so end up feeling like they have little cash to spare, and (2) People feel that "one dollar" is too little to make a difference to the dev's life so it's not worth giving anything.

Whether those reasons are reasonable is separate; it's just the way most people act, and it's hard to imagine what will cause enough people to change that will make things better for developers.

Better for developers to find ways of monetising via "pro" features, commercial support, etc, as it's easier for people/companies to justify paying money if they feel they're paying for a product or service.

A lot of the time it's not that simple to donate to the smaller projects, even if you wanted to.

And if you're using them in a commercial setting then it's even harder, because very few finance departments will be willing to allow and process small donations to various projects.

> we may unintentionally consume other developers' time

this isn't a correct statement - using software is neither unintentional, nor are we responsible for "consuming time" of another for using software.

I am on both sides of this equation: i make open source tools and i consume a much larger amount of open source tools

I don't think that developers should be responsible for supporting open source: the micro-transactions necessary are annoying and the amounts are often too small to matter.

Rather money-making companies should consider supporting the open source projects that they rely on. Developers at companies should push their companies to support the projects they are relying on, ideally w/ a recurring subscription of some sort (if that matches the companies revenue model.)

Github sponsors, say what one will about it, was a big step forward in reducing the friction here, and I see a lot of people talking about fixing this exact issue[1], how to fund open source. At this point, w/ Github sponsors and a few other options available, I see the technical side as being mostly solved. Now it's a matter of going to the companies and showing them that its in their best interest (and a tax writeoff) to contribute to the projects they rely on.

This is a culture change that will involve engineers talking to the non-engineers who hold the purse strings and explaining that, yes, a $20/month payment to an open source project to keep it going makes financial sense, because that project is crucial in keeping our business running and we want the developer to keep working on it.

[1] - https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/01/07/open-source-has-a-fund...

I'd wager the average open-source maintainer has a good software job and is doing OK financially, and many are even doing the open-source as part of that job. If they're unemployed and trying to pay the bills from their independent open-source work, they should probably run their project like a business rather than hoping for donations.

> we may unintentionally consume other developers' time by using their libraries without giving back

Absolutely incorrect, and I have given away much code as open source for free. Nobody who uses my software consumes more of my time just by using it. I already spent that time building it for myself, and I have no idea when someone types "git clone"

What does take my time are things that bridge the gap between what works for me on my machine and what works for others on theirs: packaging, documentation, requests for features, bug fixes, etc.

Github stars should become a currency.

I think if the industry started a no-hire list of developers that cannot read the following before opening up bug reports demanding bug fixes, much would solve itself.

> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

There's a small contingent of loud and annoying stupid* people that foolishly believe they're entitled to future labor of an OSS maintainer by the grace of the code being under an open source license.

To demonstrate how literally deranged this is, imagine some kids playing sportsball after school for fun and just for fun. People around town start showing up to watch the kids play sportsball because the kids are pretty good and it's entertaining to watch them play. As time passes, more people start showing up to watch these kids play sportsball.

One day a fan asks one of the kids what the team names are. The kid, confused because they're just playing sportsball with their friends, responds with something off the cuff like the cats and dogs. To the kids, the team names don't even matter because they're just playing sportsball with their friends. Meanwhile the fans are making t-shirts, hats, and it's attracting other business into the area looking to cash in on hungry sportsball fans. A few restaurants and sportsball athletics store opens up across from where the kids play sportsball because it's so popular.

Eventually, the kids get bored and stop playing, but entitled fans and business owners feel like these kids are somehow now obligated to continue playing when it couldn't be further from the truth.

This is what it feels like as an open source maintainer. Discussion about forking, fragmentation, and community are downstream from the words in all caps.

*: Yes, stupid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc

Is there a simple standard license or licenses which allow personal and small to medium commercial use but larger companies with say more than $1B valuation need to pay?

I've mostly used open source by ripping out the actual IP from whatever assumptions and encapsulations they've got it welded to. In the end I have something different from what they had. I'm not interested in aiding and abetting the conflation of the actual value of the project with the glick it's embedded in. And I don't think they want to switch their project to accomodate my needs and interpretation.

I write a lot of embedded code so I need everything short and simple. And 'borrow' mostly format interpreting code, protocol generators etc. Not a lot of applications, certainly not in their entirety.

It's simple - most developers aren't using libraries for their personal benefit, but as a part of job, where the company benefits from the library.

We can use truck drivers as an analogy. Those who work a job (i.e. aren't owners-operators) aren't paying for toll roads and bridges out of their salary. Rather, it's the company which covers the cost of using the infrastructure.

I'm all for donating to software that one finds useful. I do think it depends on how useful you find it and how complex it is to create and maintain.

I have some free apps that I don't earn anything on and don't expect donations. They're simple, more educational or casual use, and my updates are few and far between. Even I probably wouldn't donate to an app like these.

Many FOSS developers don't accept money when offered. But I do think we'd have a healthier, more sustainable ecosystem if it became normalized for FOSS devs to receive funding from individuals. Patreon and Patreon-like facilities seem to be pushing things more in that direction.

I think one part of the issue is developers don't want to deal with the increased accounting/income tax complexity in exchange for a pittance of contributions. If you have a wildly popular project producing a competitive salary, it's a no-brainer. But if you're only receiving a few contributions here and there, and would rather just spend your time programming, it doesn't seem worth the trouble of accepting and claiming come tax season. Hence it's historically been common to just accept free beers/meals at talks/conferences.

Another part of the issue is accepting funds for many people creates a burden/obligation for a certain level of support and forward progress. i.e. it becomes an actual job vs. something they do in their spare time when inspiration strikes.

Because we're a cheap bunch of bastards, myself included. Most of us are paid exorbitantly well, yet most of us will never reach a point where we can say "I have enough money", and then go and find that all of the load bearing open source libraries that we owe our lively hood to (xkcd 2347), and donate. This is why selling developer tools is so frustrating, and you have to sell to the companies (read: enterprise contracts) that employ them instead.

> Just imagine the positive impact on open-source maintainers' earnings, as they truly deserve our support

Just imagine the positive impact if the corporations making billions and billions of dollars were to actually support them

Donations are not a realistic source of income for open source maintainers. They do what they do for reasons other than money. Often, they are mission driven (doing it because they want to achieve something) more than anything else.

You can help maintainers by contributing code or even bug reports to the ecosystem wherever it makes sense to do so. When you are in a situation where you can contribute something by spending a little bit of extra time (e.g., on merging your changes,) then do it.

Although I believe that maintainers are great and that they deserve to get paid for their work, the fact is they aren't getting paid and they don't expect to get paid.

Github sponsors helped. But in rough numbers only about 0.1% donate. With 30% I would have more time for maintainance, and I already had to stop some important projects