







In April I donated $5,000 of the ad revenue from this website to an open source .NET project. It was exciting to be able to inject some of the energy from this blog into the often-neglected .NET open source ecosystem. As I mentioned at the time, I used
Are donations effective for open source projects?
The other day I came across a new initiative for funding open source development called the Bitcoin Grant. While interesting at first sight, I was wondering: How is this better than the traditional donation button most open source projects have? The Bitcoin Grant then seems to limit who can donate and how you can use those donations (you can’t pay rent with bitcoins just yet).

It’s time to rethink Open Source
Why developers give away valuable work for free — and what can be done to take that money back.

Fueling Open Source with Vibes & Money
Economists think Open Source is a business model. Devs know better, and fund it accordingly.

Moving beyond the charity framework
A healthy ecosystem for supporting open source in the long term.


Open Source infrastructure deserves a business model
Open Source infrastructure is essential, invisible, and chronically underfunded. A more sustainable approach may be to connect the cost of running that infrastructure to the organizations that rely on it most.

The Money In Open-Source Software | TechCrunch
It’s no secret that open-source technology -- once the province of radicals, hippies and granola eaters -- has gone mainstream. According to industry estimates, more than 180 young companies that give away their software raised roughly $3.2 billion in financing from 2011 to 2014. Despite the growing popularity of open-source software, though, many open-source companies are not financially healthy.

Open Source is a cost-allocation system
Because the right to use the software is not tied to payment, the license does not connect the people who benefit, the people who decide, and the people who bear the costs. Projects have to build those connections deliberately through governance.

Home - Open Source Collective
Open Source Collective is a non-profit fiscal host for open source projects. Get Transparent fundraising, money management, and legal representation

Response to Alex Kings Blog Post: Open Source Motivations
My response and disagreement with Alex Kings blog post entitled "Open Source Motivations" about how he feels about contributing Plugins to WordPress.org
Dear Matt Mullenweg: an open letter from Wix.com's CEO
Dear Matt,We were all very surprised by your post, as you have so many claims against us.Wow, dude I did not even know we were fighting.First, you say we have been taking from the open source community without giving back, well, of course, that isn’t true. Here is a list of 224 projects on our public GitHub page, and as you can see they are all dated before your post. We have not checked if WordPress is using them, but you are more than welcome to do so, some of them are pretty good.We always sh

Open Source is four kinds of economic goods
Open Source code and the stewardship around it have different economics. That distinction helps show what a project might charge for, what it must budget for, and how it could fund stewardship without making the code less open.

The Minimally-nice Open Source Software Maintainer
Being involved in open source software is rewarding, yeah? You start off contributing to your favorite project, and it feels so heartwarming when that project’s maintainers recognize your effort. Then a few years later you somehow end up responsible for that project, and maybe some satellite projects, and people are clamoring for your attention, and your inbox is never empty, and it’s exhausting and terrifying, and the skills necessary to cope with all the personalities involved are entirely different from the skills you used to get your foot in the door in the first place.
More Money For Better Open-Source Software