[christophergs]

At my last gig I got budget to bring in the maintainer of an open-source testing library we using for some really important stuff.

We paid him $1500 for a couple of days consulting. He showed us how to fix a couple of tricky bugs and gave a talk to the eng team. At this point we've more than recouped the investment.

He was psyched to see his tool being used and I feel the visit contributed to him continuing to maintain the project.

After those two days we also tried to hire him (he declined because he was making bank elsewhere). But those two days were also the best interview process ever because we did hours of pairing in non-interview mode.

If you're a senior dev at a tech company with money you can easily make this kind of thing happen and it's such a win-win

[elboru]

Wow, that never occurred to me, that’s a win-win situation for everyone involved! The maintainer gets recognition and payment for his work, the company learns and has its questions answered. I’ll keep that in mind in my future projects, thanks.

[gnarbarian]

This is exactly how it's done. People are willing to pay for modifications and consulting. The only danger here is turning into Oracle where little effort is put towards usability in order to protect your consulting revenue stream. Just build great tools and libraries and people will come to you for help.

[elric]

About a decade ago, Gabriel Weinberg of DuckDuckGo fame set up fosstithe.org, which was about encouraging companies to set aside some percentage of your profit to donate to FOSS projects. Alas, the website no longer seems to exist. I still think it's a great idea, and every year I donate 5% of my profits to FOSS projects I like.

Convincing corporates to do the same is a little trickier. They want things like invoices, which can be hard for many smaller FOSS projects. Not every FOSS developer has a consulting gig. Not sure how to help out those developers, except by using their software and being appreciative, I guess.

[tnorthcutt]

Not every FOSS developer has a consulting gig.

But they could! It's as easy as saying "I can consult on $topic, please contact me to discuss details."

Then you charge money and do the work.

[elric]

It's probably not that clear cut. Maybe they have a full time job. Maybe their employer has An Opinion regarding side gigs. Maybe they live somewhere where a side gig comes with a lot of paperwork/taxes so it isn't worth the hassle.

[shawn-furyan]

There's probably some price where it's worth the hassle. I feel like every OSS project starter should have at least a firm notion of where that line is before they publish. On one hand, maybe you'll get it, but mostly it helps clarify what your time is worth so that you don't feel guilty about rejecting requests on your time that don't meet your own standards for value.