What I’ve learned over the past year funding open source

Code Sponsor Weekly Update

January 29, 2018

Introducing Sponsorware: How A Small Open Source Package Increased My Salary By $11k in Two Days

<p>After digging deep on SQLite during a pair programming session with a client/friend, I had an idea…</p> <p>About 45 minutes later, a proo...

How to become an amazing contributor (to an open source project)

It's a busy morning here in New York City. My email inbox is full of pleasant surprises. The first is a patch for one of my open source projects. A second will appear this afternoon. A third should come late at night—or maybe tomorrow–from a new contributor. Alongside my day job, I contribute and manage open source projects. The number of projects I work on has grown from a couple of small tools to well over a dozen in the last three years. Open source has become a great way to learn new technology, experiment with modern software development practices, and, of course, meet other like-minded engineers. I find that seeing great contributors send working and tested code provides a unique feeling of accomplishment, as powerful as having many satisfied users of my own applications or strong revenues posted by the employer that pays my bills.

GitHub Sponsors

Invest in the open source projects you depend on with GitHub Sponsors.

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.

GitHub’s one-dimensional view of open source contributions – Wes McKinney

TL;DR One of the most harmful parts of the GitHub platform is the code contribution calendar. This “hacker score card” overemphasizes the value of commits over the other kinds of important contributions to open source projects, like doing code reviews and discussing bugs and new features on the issue tracker.

Moving beyond the charity framework

A healthy ecosystem for supporting open source in the long term.

Freemium the Registry

Laurie Voss on an open source funding model

It’s actually open source software that's eating the world

At Lightspeed we’ve been investing aggressively in open source software (OSS) businesses for the past 10 years. Recently, we’ve seen a significant increase in entrepreneurs pitching open source startups, and we’ve also seen greater competition for these deals. We pulled together some numbers in an attempt to measure the acceleration in interest in and funding for OSS businesses in the last few years. The results were staggering even to us.

StratosFund (@stratosfund.at)

Funding for open source projects in the Atmosphere! Help bring your most requested features to life! stratosfund.at

One Startup's Heretical Plan to Turn Open Source Code Into Cash

With a new kind of license, open sourcers are trying to strike a balance between getting paid and preserving their values.

A method for giving credit to organizations that contribute code to Open Source

By tracking organizational contributions in Git commits, we can give organizations more tangible reasons to fund open source and help sustain it over time.

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).

Open Source Endowment — World's First Endowment Fund for OSS

The Open Source Endowment provides truly sustainable funding for critical open source software through a community-driven endowment model.