I also like that DevFlight works with individual maintainers, rather than with projects. Many prolific maintainers work with several projects. They may not have created any of those projects, and they may not run them either. When the spotlight is on the project (and by extension the founders of "top dogs" of that project), those valuable maintainers get ignored. I'm glad DevFlight is focusing on the individual.
I don't disagree that finding ways for prolific open source contributors to be able to monetize their expertise is incredibly valuable, but I'm not sure if that's actually DevFlight's focus.
Their website copy focuses on "the maintainer's" project, and DevFlight's comments on this post repeatedly reference leveraging any community channels the maintainer created (such as social media and Slack) for outreach. As well, the example list of projects they listed above has a presumption of authority/control over the project or else they don't make as much sense - you can't guarantee things like project stability or prioritize features without having some presumption of authority over the project to back it.
While DevFlight is focusing on the individual, from what I can tell it's specifically on individuals that are project maintainers, and not simply prolific contributors. From a corporate standpoint, those are two vastly different sales pitches. If the maintainer of the project commits to prioritizing feature requests or stability of the project, then they have the actual authority/capacity to follow through on that commitment. A prolific contributor might have the expertise and familiarity with the project to make those commitments, but if the maintainers have other ideas, the contributor would have no resolution other than to fork the project to maintain their commitment. Then the company is operating off of a custom fork of the project, maintained by a single person and not as battle tested as the official project, which may or may not have to deviate further away from the official project over time depending on what the contributor committed to vs. where the official project is going.
Companies hire third parties to customize, integrate, and support software all the time. And a prolific contributor to a project is a really good individual to choose for that type of work. The conversion rate for cold selling those services via outbound lead generation, without the weight of someone who can speak authoritatively on behalf of the project, will be significantly lower though.
Hopefully Victor or Tony can chime in and provide some clarification on who their target audience is. :)
Great question. At this point, we’re focused on partnering with core maintainers of a project. As you’ve stated, these are the individuals who have control over what gets implemented in a project and ensuring project stability. However, we are also exploring ways to get expert contributors involved in the future.
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I also like that DevFlight works with individual maintainers, rather than with projects. Many prolific maintainers work with several projects. They may not have created any of those projects, and they may not run them either. When the spotlight is on the project (and by extension the founders of "top dogs" of that project), those valuable maintainers get ignored. I'm glad DevFlight is focusing on the individual.
I don't disagree that finding ways for prolific open source contributors to be able to monetize their expertise is incredibly valuable, but I'm not sure if that's actually DevFlight's focus.
Their website copy focuses on "the maintainer's" project, and DevFlight's comments on this post repeatedly reference leveraging any community channels the maintainer created (such as social media and Slack) for outreach. As well, the example list of projects they listed above has a presumption of authority/control over the project or else they don't make as much sense - you can't guarantee things like project stability or prioritize features without having some presumption of authority over the project to back it.
While DevFlight is focusing on the individual, from what I can tell it's specifically on individuals that are project maintainers, and not simply prolific contributors. From a corporate standpoint, those are two vastly different sales pitches. If the maintainer of the project commits to prioritizing feature requests or stability of the project, then they have the actual authority/capacity to follow through on that commitment. A prolific contributor might have the expertise and familiarity with the project to make those commitments, but if the maintainers have other ideas, the contributor would have no resolution other than to fork the project to maintain their commitment. Then the company is operating off of a custom fork of the project, maintained by a single person and not as battle tested as the official project, which may or may not have to deviate further away from the official project over time depending on what the contributor committed to vs. where the official project is going.
Companies hire third parties to customize, integrate, and support software all the time. And a prolific contributor to a project is a really good individual to choose for that type of work. The conversion rate for cold selling those services via outbound lead generation, without the weight of someone who can speak authoritatively on behalf of the project, will be significantly lower though.
Hopefully Victor or Tony can chime in and provide some clarification on who their target audience is. :)
Great question. At this point, we’re focused on partnering with core maintainers of a project. As you’ve stated, these are the individuals who have control over what gets implemented in a project and ensuring project stability. However, we are also exploring ways to get expert contributors involved in the future.