It's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. It works for products, but it doesn't work well for libraries, frameworks, dev tools, and the like.
donating is incredibly convenient nowadays
It's convenient to get started but not to scale. I run one of the foremost corporate Open Source donation programs (imo, obv):
GitHub Sponsors is very difficult to use at scale (100s or 1000s of deps). Thanks.dev is better but still has a lot of room to grow.
addressing the root of the issue
Open Source is a common pool resource, and these are funded through collective social pressure, the limit case of which is taxation. More on this in a future post.
It works for products, but it doesn't work well for libraries, frameworks, dev tools, and the like.
That is why we need to create an open-source ecosystem where projects that get paid redistribute to their dependencies.
I have in mind 2 OSS ecosystems: open-source-economy.com and tea.xyz
Comments
I define this in the post as "Open Source subsidization, not sustainability."
https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-open-source-susta...
It's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. It works for products, but it doesn't work well for libraries, frameworks, dev tools, and the like.
It's convenient to get started but not to scale. I run one of the foremost corporate Open Source donation programs (imo, obv):
https://blog.sentry.io/we-just-gave-500-000-dollars-to-open-...
GitHub Sponsors is very difficult to use at scale (100s or 1000s of deps). Thanks.dev is better but still has a lot of room to grow.
Open Source is a common pool resource, and these are funded through collective social pressure, the limit case of which is taxation. More on this in a future post.
That is why we need to create an open-source ecosystem where projects that get paid redistribute to their dependencies. I have in mind 2 OSS ecosystems: open-source-economy.com and tea.xyz
This blog article, for example, explains how a bounty system could be beneficial for the whole ecosystem: https://www.open-source-economy.com/blog/make-open-source-fi...
I would be very curious to hear what you are thinking about those two projects. Spoiler: they are both in the early stage - and both use blockchain.