[cavneb]

What other solutions do we have to provide scalable funding to open source projects? This comment really frustrates me. Do we put more buttons on our repos asking for money from other developers? Do we try to find corporate sponsorship and hope that they don’t try to influence the project? And if we did want to go that route, how do we do it?

Why is this not the right way to go about it? The “ads” were relevant, unobtrusive and ethical. There was never any click tracking, never any remarketing, nothing.

Code Sponsor provided the FIRST and ONLY means of scalable funding for open source projects. It was not depending on charity from others. It was a business transaction between sponsors and developers. The sponsors saw a return and the developers got paid to continue doing what they love.

If anyone else has a better idea, please share. Until then, I claim that it’s IS the right way to go about it.

[isoos]

I understand your frustration: in an ideal world, we should be able to easily reward people who contribute to the greater good, and open source developers are certainly in that category.

However, this reward may not always be money: community recognition and extended network, better chances of hiring, or attribution from projects that depend on you should also be considered.

Yeah, it is valid to say that funding needs to be improved. But while ads provide a way, it is a stretching to call it the only or the right way. Maybe open source development is just fine with corporate sponsorship + people doing it in their free time. Maybe developers are repelled by ads so much that it actually hinders contributing to interesting projects. Maybe charity and donations work better we just haven't figured it out yet (see Patreon, which had a surprising success, despite the skepticism around microfunding).

[cavneb]

> Community recognition and extended network, better chances of hiring, or attribution from projects

This has been the case since day 1. It is a great motivation for people to get into open source, but there gets to be a point where this is no longer a motivation. As their projects become more and more popular, they are having to work nights and weekends to keep the project alive and maintained.

> May be open source development is just fine with corporate sponsorship + people doing it in their free time

Again, this is how it’s always been. Most open source projects do not look for corporate sponsorship because they don’t know where to start. Working in free time is great until it isn’t.

> Maybe developers are repelled by ads...

This is true. Some are repelled. But ask yourselves if the Code Sponsor banner looks like an ad? It was crafted in a way to look enough like the documentation to not distract developers from the README, but different enough to not be considered deceiving.

> Maybe charity and donations work better

Ask Kent C. Dodds this question. He had the charity buttons on every one of his repos and he received $0 in donations. Scalable funding cannot come from charity, it has to come from marketing funds.

[manigandham]

It is a great way, just hard to pull off on a platform like github combined with the general distrust of adtech that's common with devs/HN crowd.

Ads are still the most scalable, fast, easy and passive way to generate revenue but unfortunately the adtech industry has poisoned the well so people forget all the smaller companies trying to do the right thing. Perhaps opencollective can pickup something like this. Good luck on your next project.

[eropple]

> If anyone else has a better idea, please share.

Email me. I don't know if I have the bandwidth to do it right now, but I'm confident that I have the answer.