Question: funding open-source software

[Dan Bernier]

The creator of Clojure is asking its community to fund its
development: http://clojure.org/funding

I don't expect you to pay for Clojure, though I plan on donating, as a
personal user. I want your thoughts on this. It's a weakness of mine
that I focus on tech, not business, so I honestly haven't thought
about this as much as I should have.

Most open-source software, he points out, is funded somehow: a related
product, corporate or academic sponsorship, charging for support.
OTOH, you fund proprietary, close-source software by paying for it
directly. "Most alarmingly, [proprietary closed-source] is the only
model that associates value with software itself, and therefore with
the people who make it."

What do you think of his points? How is Ruby development funded? or
other OSS? Rails, it seems clear to me, has a related product:
37signals built it, and open-sourced it to farm out the maintenance.
I think many Ruby gems are hobbies or side-projects. I think Giles
Bowkett talked about Renaissance-style patronage as an option, and I
remember Gregory Brown talked to us about the farmer's market as a
metaphor for connecting hackers and small businesses. Long-term, how
do you see OSS funded?

--
twitter @danbernier
http://invisibleblocks.wordpress.com

[Mister Rohit]

"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" -Emerson

I guess the funding issue depends a lot on whether or not people
depend on your software. If you are just trying to make money,
probably writing free software is not exactly the best path. But if
you write something thats good enough that fills a real need and
people depend on it, hopefully they will contribute, in bug reports,
developer time and assistance and even funding.

Are most open-source software packages funded? I would imagine the
reverse is true, but for the very large and successful software it is
probably true.

From a business perspective I think there is money to be made in good
open source through customization and support. I see a lot of open
source packages that are sponsored by a company that provides expert
level consulting, customization and 24x7 support contracts for that
software. Not to say there isn't a lot of money for the top Linux
kernel developers, for Matz, et cetera. There's more than one way to
make money in open source.

Now if only someone would fund my gtk2_nagios_monitoring_animated_penguins.rb :)

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[Dan Bernier]

> Not to say there isn't a lot of money for the top Linux kernel developers, for Matz, etc

So, is Matz (or the main active developers) /paid/ to work on Ruby?
Who pays? I know, as a point of comparison, Python has been
patronized by Google hiring Guido van Rossum, like JRuby was
patronized by Sun hiring the main commiters...

[Mister Rohit]

According to Wikipedia Matz is paid to do "research".

<i>"As of 2009[update], Matsumoto is the head of the research and
development department at the Network Applied Communication
Laboratory, an open source systems integrator company in Shimane
Prefecture. He is the fellow of Rakuten Institute of Technology, an
R&D organization in Rakuten Inc. He is a member of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints and served as a missionary for the church.
Matsumoto is married and has four children."</i>

I imagine his research is mostly Ruby development. And getting
honorariums to speak at conferences all over the world is probably a
substantial amount of additional income too.

[Flinn Mueller]

Dan, I remember Gregory Brown's analogy of the software farmer's market. Not to invalidate what he said I think OSS is in many cases a function our trade. Many of us work for small companies or are self employed and don't have huge investments in intellectual property. Our value is in our ability to get things done using technology. As we refine our techniques we often discover better ways to get things done. In many cases this comes about as a derivative of someone else's previous work. We in turn sometimes decide to share our own innovation and the cycle continues. It's not always about altruism either -- there's a clear trade off in sharing our innovation. We derive notoriety, community gifts, bragging right, peer review, money, etc. as a result of our OSS endeavors. We also refine our craft and hopefully improve our marketable skills in the process. When we look at OSS as a means not just the end we realize it offers value not just to the user but also the author and contributor. As in the free market the software will survive and proliferate based on it's value (monetary, educational, developmental, etc).

[Dan Bernier]

Flinn, I agree with you, but I think you're talking about OSS on a
smaller scale than what Rich has been trying for the past few years.
There certainly are benefits to developing OSS like reputation and
respect, but you can't feed a family on those directly.

> Many of us work for small companies or are self employed...

When it's part of your job to contribute to OSS, that's very cool.
But your company profits by doing whatever it does, and it pays your
salary, so neither of you is financially dependent on the OSS. I
think this is a good model for creating OSS.

But Rich is asking a different question: is it possible to make a
living by writing OSS? Not by working for a company that makes money
supporting the OSS, or for a university who has funded the OSS, but by
public sponsorship for the OSS itself?

It reminds me of paying for music. When you could only get music on
tape or CD, we paid for the atoms, thinking we were paying for the
information. But since the bits were freed from the atoms, we've been
struggling with whether, and why, we should pay for something that's
free to copy. We value it, but it has zero scarcity, so it seems like
it should be free. We need a way to reward the creation that doesn't
rely on paying for atoms OR bits.

Which brings up the question: what is scarce about information?

[Sujal Shah]

I think you're creating a false separation. Does Oracle make more money from "selling" the software or on the yearly license maintenance and professional services that go with their business? There are very few companies, I'd argue, especially in the enterprise space, that make money on the sale of perpetually licensed software (e.g. Word, Windows, consumer software).

Games and consumer software are really it. Those are big markets, of course, and there are few OSS companies in those spaces. In other words, I get what you're saying, but by removing "support/maintenance" as a valid way to make money building OSS, you're really not making a fair comparison between the two models.

Sujal

[Flinn Mueller]

On Dec 18, 2009, at 9:15 AM, Dan Bernier wrote:

> Flinn, I agree with you, but I think you're talking about OSS on a
> smaller scale than what Rich has been trying for the past few years.
> There certainly are benefits to developing OSS like reputation and
> respect, but you can't feed a family on those directly.

I'm using those as examples of value trade off for the developer to self fund. Reputation and respect amongst peers could lead to better marketability of skills and in turn real value through a contract or pay check.

>> Many of us work for small companies or are self employed...
>
> When it's part of your job to contribute to OSS, that's very cool.
> But your company profits by doing whatever it does, and it pays your
> salary, so neither of you is financially dependent on the OSS. I
> think this is a good model for creating OSS.

I'd argue that OSS is a more integral part of my job than anyone would like to acknowledge. Without the availability of free and open software we'd have to create much of our own tool kit ourselves or pay someone else to. This is where patronage of an OSS project comes in. Google funds Guido van Rossum because Google is a benefactor of his work. It makes sense for Google to fund the maintainer to continue deriving value from the further development of Python. Value is the key element to answering the question, will the community fund my project.

> But Rich is asking a different question: is it possible to make a
> living by writing OSS? Not by working for a company that makes money
> supporting the OSS, or for a university who has funded the OSS, but by
> public sponsorship for the OSS itself?

The development of Closure needs to answer a value proposition for someone. If enough value is being derived by someone Closure will have no problem finding funding. I am skeptical of a ground swell of community support in many OSS projects though.

> It reminds me of paying for music. When you could only get music on
> tape or CD, we paid for the atoms, thinking we were paying for the
> information. But since the bits were freed from the atoms, we've been
> struggling with whether, and why, we should pay for something that's
> free to copy. We value it, but it has zero scarcity, so it seems like
> it should be free. We need a way to reward the creation that doesn't
> rely on paying for atoms OR bits.

<flame bait>I don't think this analogy holds true in the case of music or in the case of OSS. Music is made scarce by government endorsed monopoly through copyright law. We pay for access to it though some type of channel... radio, physical media, online, etc. not ownership of it.</flame bait> Similarly with software we pay for access to it not ownership. Many OSS projects are able to get funding through the community because their value proposition is strong.

> Which brings up the question: what is scarce about information?

This is another can of worms entirely.