[demircancelebi]

I also think the biggest issue in OSS is incentives and see two ways of handling this issue:

1) Bounties: Some mechanism for people to easily pay $100 for fixing the bug, $1000 for implementing a feature, and so on. If Github takes care of the payment part, I think it can even be used in big companies and would definitely incentivize people. Sites like bountysource.com show that the model already works, it just has to be handled by Github so adoption would definitely be higher.

2) Second one is more ambitious: Although bounties are a nice way for people make money, it still cannot allow people to just focus on their OSS work, since it does not offer a revenue stream. Github should become what Youtube is to video creators. If Github were to share a percent of its revenue with OSS maintainers, that'd make a huge difference in the OSS space and in the world.

This recent tweet from the creator of ESLint captures the essence of the status-quo really well: https://twitter.com/slicknet/status/1086053326007881728

[pjc50]

> Github should become what Youtube is to video creators

What, a metrics-driven controversy/clickbait factory?

We'd be far better off with what Patreon is to creators, a system that gives people enough predictability of income that they can make a job of it.

[demircancelebi]

You are right about what Youtube is, but what I meant by Youtube instead of Patreon is this: With Patreon, you have to work for building an audience, but Youtube pays you based on your views. A Github that pays people based on the usage of their code might not be the easiest problem to solve, but what I'm suggesting in the end is the same thing with you. Only time might show what such incentives may turn the platform into, but considering the general audience of the site, I doubt it'd turn out like Youtube.

[pjc50]

Getting the money from the intermediary to the developer is only half the problem. First you have to get the money into the intermediary.

On youtube this is done with advertising. I can't imagine people being happy with that embedded in open source software. People got upset enough about Ubuntu and the Firefox/Pocket deal.

> A Github that pays people based on the usage of their code might not be the easiest problem to solve

A github that charges people to use code is even harder; that sounds like instant suicide.

[demircancelebi]

I was happily paying 7 USD/month up until last week for the private repos, and they apparently had 300M USD/year revenue when Microsoft bought them a few months ago. I am not aware of their costs, but since they are part of Microsoft now and trying to foster adoption, integrating money into the system should be considerable.

[rumcajz]

As for bounties, I think it messes up with the OSS governance model. Let's say there's a bounty for feature X. You implement the feature, want to merge it in, but the maintainers don't like it and don't want to merge it. Now what?

[bureado]

Yeah. Science has a (some would argue) slightly more sophisticated approach to bounties in the form of grants. The inconvenient part is that many things ending in "Foundation" in open source have no resemblance to things like the NSF.

[quadrangle]

Bounties are full of problems. Adding them to GitHub introduces huge issues in the same way as a recent discussion brought out how AirBnB can be one thing early on but starts running into tons of problems at scale.

https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software... for further reference.

> Github should become what Youtube is to video creators

A surveillance advertising system tying your work to misc manipulative ads for things you don't endorse??

[jve]

> Bounties + Allow pledging for issues with money. Here, have 5€ from me, and €3 from this and that for fixing that bug or implementing that feature.

[C4stor]

I don't think it's fair to say the creator of ESLint is not making a buck out of his code. His twitter page for example is full of commercial links to his own products.

Complaining about "I do things for free" while your free product is the gateway to your paying products (in this case gaining followers and popularity to sell them other things or directing them to his ad-containing website) seems totally dishonest to me.

Doesn't mean he's not doing god's work with ESLint <3, it's just that this specific tweet is really not covering the full story. Maybe his books and website earns him pennies a month and it's a shame, maybe he does six figures with them, I won't hasard a guess.

[sbr464]

Yet, I use eslint every day, I have money, I’m willing to pay, but I’m not familiar with the owner or his products, (nor inclined to seek them out), nor will I go find their Patreon page (although I do support several YouTuber Patreon pages).

I personally feel like npm and Github are sitting on goldmines, in a financial sense and in a simple solution sense, yet they are their own worst enemy, chasing all value to $0 as fast as possible.

GitHub/npm: just charge me $10-20+/more/month and distribute it out for me. I want to support the community, but I don’t want to deal with it. I code e-very-day. It’s worth it to me to support tools and the community, but don’t leave it up to my own arbitrary choices or timing. Maybe check my package.json or code coverage with said packages to dish out funds auto-magically. Just do something-charge me!

Side note — last week Github announced free private repos, while I was gladly paying. Why not instead just charge for the repos and create a massive fund to help solve the problem? Maybe the catch is: to receive funds you have to primarily host your source code on Github. That may help retain popular libs from leaving to other platforms.

[demircancelebi]

Exactly my thoughts. Considering Github's recent numbers (300M USD/year revenue) and its recent acquisition by Microsoft, something like 30M USD/year would be enough to fund 250-1000 people a year full time. Maybe there might be an upper limit on how much you can make through the platform (like 10k USD/month), so instead of ending up with a few millionaires, a 10% revenue share would be enough to fund 250-1000 people full time, much more people half-time. With such a system in place, I think everyone would be better off, including Github - Microsoft.

[pjc50]

> chasing all value to $0 as fast as possible.

The marginal cost of distribution of software is nearly zero. Therefore the cost of software, not just OSS, gets driven to zero. Hence why so many commercial services have switched to "advertising supported", "SaaS/hosted/online-only", or cloud subscription.