8 ms·

Paying for Open Source Contributions

316 points by jevakallio 7y ago

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
TL;DR: A company pays their employees $20/hr for open source contributions done on the employees' own time with no strings attached. They also expand this to community promotion such as technical book writing and mentorships. They find this program to be wildly successful and highly encourage other companies to implement the same programs. I for one am extremely excited that this is reaching front page of HN and entering a broader mindshare. OSS represents everything I hope the tech industry may become someday in the future- high quality work produced by intelligent, talented people for the benefit of all.
jaden 7y ago
I'm a fan of anything that helps open source, but in my experience it's more effective if the employee is able to work on open source projects as part of their job. Then again, maybe that's just my current evening burnout talking.
- jevakallio 7y ago
  Author of the post here. Realistically, we can't pay people full engineering salaries to do random OSS. Our team can already contribute to OSS on their work time when it relates to their work, or our own projects, but for the personal interest/passion projects without direct benefit for us as a company, it doesn't scale. Doubly so when we have a pretty strict "no overtime" policy of working no more than 40 hours a week. We have failsafes in place in case anybody gets a bit too excited about free time OSS. We limit the Sauce hours you can do in a month for this reason, but nobody has hit that max yet, so it doesn't seem to be a systemic problem.
  - dudul 7y ago
    Out of curiosity, what's the monthly limit?
    - jevakallio 7y ago
      It's set at 30 hours a month. This is not for budget reasons, only to discourage excess working off-hours. This adds up to about a workday per week, which is what we feel is reasonable.
      - Insanity 7y ago
        You could argue that it's people their own choice how much they work - which is true. But sometimes this can become determinental to their health. I'm onboard with this idea to be honest, it sounds good!
  - chronogram 7y ago
    > Doubly so when we have a pretty strict "no overtime" policy of working no more than 40 hours a week. Is HR ready for this increase in applications from this post and the comments?
    - jevakallio 7y ago
      I guess they'll have to work overtime to process all the applications ;)
  - mcintyre1994 7y ago
    > Doubly so when we have a pretty strict "no overtime" policy of working no more than 40 hours a week. The post mentions an exact clockout time as well - 5pm. Out of interest is it a strict 9-5 schedule, or is it flexible but 40 hours a week? Have you written anything about the no overtime policy or 9-5 schedule (if that's enforced) and how you find that?
    - smusumeche 7y ago
      It is flexible. We need to be available for client meetings, but otherwise we are encouraged to work at times when we do our best work.
  - bhousel 7y ago
    > Realistically, we can't pay people full engineering salaries to do random OSS. Why can't you? Professors get paid full professor salaries to do "random research". Doctors get paid full doctor salaries to treat "random illnesses". I expect if you looked a bit closer, you'll find that "Random OSS" is maintenance that makes the entire ecosystem possible. Would love to hear from some of your engineers what they are doing to earn that $20/hr.
    - dblock 7y ago
      Right on.
    - smusumeche 7y ago
      Here's an example of a project I worked on under this program - a website for a local community developer meetup.
    - yawaramin 7y ago
      But professors are usually also required to teach classes or carry out other duties in return for getting research funding. They don't just get to randomly do whatever they want. And doctors treating 'random illnesses' doesn't really work as an analogy–that would be more like if they could randomly decide to turn away patients they didn't 'want' to treat.
    - rusticpenn 7y ago
      You overestimsate the amount of random research a Professor is able to do these days.
  - karussell 7y ago
    Greetings Jani! (maybe you remember visiting in London the guy from Germany) Really interesting to read this and from you via hackernews :D
  - dblock 7y ago
    Yes, you can pay people full engineering salaries to do random OSS. They contribute to your team's brand, reduce recruiting costs and reduce team churn. If they do too much random OSS to a point where it prevents them from achieving your business goals, you can terminate them.
onion2k 7y ago
Initiatives like this are exactly what gets me clicking on "Careers" links.
- drusepth 7y ago
  Conveniently, that mindset is one reason that makes higher-ups more comfortable approving initiatives like this!
sktrdie 7y ago
My opinion is that open-source contributions stems from passion. People do it and implement something because they're passionate about it. When you attach any money to it, it becomes tainted with responsibility and emotions. Such as, "should I work on this an extra hour and burn myself out and get those extra 40 bucks for dinner tonight?" That formula doesn't make individuals want to work more on open-source. Sure they push them towards doing stuff in open-source but that usually almost never leads to creating great pieces of work. One great and amazing thing that open-source thought us is that individuals can group together and work on amazing things without any economical reward. To me it was always a fascinating experiment outside the usual realms of politics, economics, social-studies. Nobody would have ever imagined it to work without "money", but it does and it will continue to work. In fact, instead of pushing capitalism mentality inside of open-source we should be doing exactly the opposite: push open-source mentality in other parts of our society.
- arendtio 7y ago
  I think your conclusion comes a bit too quickly. Sure, open-source is about passion for everyone who doesn't do it as a day job and earning money can kill that passion. But so can other factors (e.g. communities that demand but don't contribute) and still, we see a lot of OSS projects out there. In my opinion, an important factor here is that you earn that money for whatever OSS project you are working on. That reduces the pressure to work on that single project you would get paid to work on. And if you are completely against the compensation, you could still not tell your company about what you are doing after 5 pm ;-) I think it is a great opportunity for employees.
- philplckthun 7y ago
  As an active Open Source contributor I'd like to say that apart from passion being involved it also is a big responsibility depending on the project either way and being paid for it affirms my passion and beliefs. Disclaimer: I work for Formidable
- kelset 7y ago
  open source maintainer here - I disagree that you get those "responsibility and emotions" only when you attach money. You already get plenty of those by the sheer fact that you care about the craft you contribute to. > Nobody would have ever imagined it to work without "money", but it does and it will continue to work. I'm sorry to break it for you, but it doesn't actually work. And constant articles and talks from OSS maintainers about burnout is one of the proofs. If you want to read more, there is a great book on this subject which I feel will help you get a more informed opinion on it: https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/ https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-stu... Initiatives like this are important to "show by example" - currently there are too many Open Source consumers and not enough contributors. And also, work IS work - and it should be retributed.
moneil971 7y ago
This seems like a good way to recognize the extra time put in to support OSS projects - and I like the thoughtfulness about not making it an incentive to spend even more hours working, by capping hours and keeping the bonus amount low.
antt 7y ago
>We pay our employees $20/hr for contributions to OSS and tech communities, whether it’s a third-party library we use in our work like React, Next.js While I applaud the sentiment $20 per hour is too little to make me care and enough to make me start thinking about money. A much better way to deal with this would be pushing laws to allow for tax offsets for contributing time to charities (open source ones). Seeing $10 per hour (after tax) that doesn't inspire me much. Being able to write off my full time wage as a tax deductible would make me vastly more motivated to document what I've been working on and work on a lot more of it.
- jevakallio 7y ago
  This is a great idea. I don't know if it's even a starter, tax code wise, but would be amazing if it could be done. For the time being, we are happy with $20 for the reasons outlined in the post itself. It's not an incentive, it's a reward, and a purely optional one. Many people in the company (I'm the author) do work on Open Source and don't make use of the benefit, because they don't care about the money. This, for us, is fine.
  - antt 7y ago
    I don't care about it now as a full time employed adult. As a university student I could have well become a full time maintainer of some of the scientific libraries that have been neglected since the 80s. Now as a gainfully employed productive member of society I like the idea of going on a legal tax strike when the government does something I absolutely detest. >Oh by the by, since you are trying so hard to destroy civil society again this year, here's my bill for keeping it running. You're welcome. Which is precisely why it would never happen. But you should definitely spend some ~money~ speech on politicians and lobbyists to start some of them thinking about it.
natmaka 7y ago
Freexian (R. Hertzog) offers something pertinent (Debian LTS): https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts-details.html https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts-details.html
nickjj 7y ago
I like the idea, but I'm concerned about the $20 / hour. Since this is done on the employees' own time (after hours), isn't this basically saying, "hey, go help make our app's dependencies better in an overtime scenario but we're going to pay you $20 / hour instead of 1x to 2x your usual salary"? I know at the bottom it clears that up but I dunno, it just feels weird to me. It seems like a concealed way to mainly benefit the company and potentially exploit the good will of its employees.
- jevakallio 7y ago
  I agree this could be the case, except that there is no pressure to work on anything work-related. You can literally contribute to any OSS project, whether it's your own video game side hustle, a learning project in a language we don't use, or, if the mood strikes, also one of our projects' dependencies.
- habnds 7y ago
  agreed, additionally, there's an interesting behavioral phenomenon where people are perfectly willing to help strangers on the street when asked for free, but the willingness rate drops dramatically when someone offers them a small amount of money because it reframes the conversation. Once people see open source as a way to make money, it becomes a very different thought process.
  - smusumeche 7y ago
    A lot of us in this industry are very fortunate to have high salaries. At the risk of sounding crass, $20/hour is not much money to me. So this is really just a show of support. I'm going to donate the money anyway. (disclaimer: I work at Formidable)
    - Aeolun 7y ago
      It sounds like just enough to be nice, and not nearly enough to move the needle, to me. I guess that’s why I think it’s great. If it was a smaller token amount, it would feel sad. If it was more, it would feel exploitative (like a number of people in this thread already said).
return1 7y ago
I wonder what oss people think about Worklist, a bidding system for open source. I have not seen it be used beyond highfidelity. https://worklist.net https://worklist.net
wolfhumble 7y ago
Question to author of the post: How are these hours reported? Thanks!
- smusumeche 7y ago
  Hours are self reported using the same system that we use for logging client work.
  - wolfhumble 7y ago
    Okay, thanks!
swalsh 7y ago
Out of curiousity, is there a site where people can put up some money for an open request on development? Like as opposed to hiring a contractor, and specifically developing the requirements, it would be more similar to a feature request with a bonus. Like specifically, my company has been yearning for a more complete solution to indexes on ORC files (there exists something, but the solution falls short for our specific siutation).
- dbnotabb 7y ago
  I work for a company launching an Open source board where companies can post jobs for cash works-hub.com/issues
- cobbzilla 7y ago
  BountySource is one option. You can post a GitHub issue with a bounty; it doesn’t even have to be your own. You can also contribute to other bounties. I added to a bounty to support inline code comments to Gitea’s pull request UI. It was the one feature I truly missed after moving from GitHub. The issue was already on the roadmap, but wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. once the bounty hit a couple hundred bucks, someone implemented the feature and claimed the bounty. Money well spent.
bhousel 7y ago
As a professional full-time open source maintainer and developer, initiatives like this bother me a lot. The work we do is worth much more than $20/hr. Ideally I'd like to see open source developers in stable, tenured positions that pay fair salaries with benefits. Anything that normalizes the idea that open source should be funded on tips, patreons, or spare time goodwill is embarrassing to all of us. We can do better. If you value open source, hire people to do it and pay them fairly.
- kylecesmat 7y ago
  Formidable employee here: To be quite honest we are compensated very fairly for our industry already and this program is not meant to ‘provide a living wage’ by any means. Instead, this is a ‘fair nod’ at the work some of us feel compelled and motivated to do after work hours. Not saying your perspective is wrong, just hopefully providing a bit more context about what this program means for someone who uses it.
  - systematical 7y ago
    This is awesome. If my employer did this I'd probably take a lot of that money and donate to other OSS and charity since I'd neebed working on OSS regardless.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    I get that. I work ten hours a week or so for free on my open source passion projects. If that turned in to an extra $200 a week that would be cool - I’m doing the work anyway. I haven’t read the article yet but my only fear with crowd funding is what happens when I want to take a month off of technical work.
    - stingraycharles 7y ago
      As someone who supports several developers, I hope you take as much holiday as you need. I mostly support it to increase the chance of the project surviving in the long term, and as a token of appreciation of your past contributions.
bobblywobbles 7y ago
If I'm paid for open source, I'm going to lose any motivation to work on it more. The reason why I contribute to open source projects is BECAUSE I want to contribute for free. Put money in the deal and I'm no longer doing this work selflessly, but for self-interest instead.
- jb3689 7y ago
  What if you just give the money to charity? Does that change your opinion?
  - bobblywobbles 7y ago
    I already give money to charity. The reason why I don't like to put money in open-source work is it attaches a value on something where I would consider the work priceless and personal. It makes the work feel cold, or transactional. I'm sure others would agree.
- ryanisinallofus 7y ago
  Someone here gets the 20/hour for STEM volunteer work with kids then donates the money to a charity which Formidable also doubles as a part of another program. Would that address the issue for you or is the idea of getting paid for fun stuff just ruin the fun no matter what on principle? (I work at Formidable)
  - bobblywobbles 7y ago
    I may differ from others, but anything that I do as volunteer work needs to be unpaid. Putting money in the equation means that I'm no longer doing X work for Y people, but instead doing X work for Z dollars. Putting money in the work makes it transactional, and that turns me off to "paid volunteer work". At that point, it's really just another label for "optional job". Volunteer work is donating your time or effort, so putting the "paid" label on it is misleading in my eyes. I also already donate to charity so I don't see a need to get paid to donate more money, which others may have an incentive to do. This is a point to consider.
- 7y ago
orliesaurus 7y ago
There are a bunch of companies that give back to open source maintainers through a better approach...tidelift [1] is one that comes to mind. Has anyone been on their open source programme? Does it operate well? [1] https://tidelift.com https://tidelift.com
- Aeolun 7y ago
  I’m not sure I’d consider this a better approach. If everyone used tidelift open source would become a popularity contest, and basically about the money.
crysin 7y ago
I wish I was rich enough to view getting a bonus of $20.00 an hour for fun-time work as being more offensive than receiving nothing at all.
- jahewson 7y ago
  Introducing a token payment such as this undermines the altruism of open source contribution. When people are motivated by altruism they don't want money. e.g. I would help my neighbor move some furniture for free, but I wouldn't do it if he offered to pay me $5.
  - leapis 7y ago
    I would help my neighbor move some furniture for free, and I'd still do it if he offered to pay me $5. I wouldn't accept the money (because it's socially unacceptable to do so), but his offer wouldn't get in the way of me helping him. If he offered me a drink after, I wouldn't say no. It's understood that this offer is in direct response to me helping him, but I'm still motivated out of altruism. I'm simply receiving a greater reward for my altruism, and this time it's socially acceptable to take this. The time of the people eligible for this program is worth more than $20/hr. This amount of money is never going to be a primary source of motivation for them. As the article said, "A side effect of building a company culture around OSS is that the kind of people who gravitate to work at Formidable are passionate about their open source work, and won’t stop contributing when they clock out at 5 pm." I did a bit of volunteer work in high school as part of a program, and upon graduation the program granted everyone a small, $250 "scholarship". I spent ~10 hours per week, for a year, as part of this program, thus making my "wage", if you will, about $2/hr. I can promise you, nobody participated in that program for the "scholarship". It showed that our time was appreciated, but wasn't nearly enough to incentivize the program to anyone who wasn't going to do it anyways. I see nothing wrong with a token payment like this. It makes contributing to open source a more attractive option, but still only a viable option to those who were already motivated to contribute out of altruism. Obviously 20/hr isn't a token payment for a lot of us, but the concept itself of a token payment isn't something that necessarily invalidates altruistic intentions, in my view. I'll contribute to open source projects irregardless of whether or not they have a Bountysource, but I'll still accept a reward if it's offered. The purpose of this program is to reward people who are already motivated to contribute to open source, which in turn signals to its employees that Formidable appreciates open source contributions.
paxys 7y ago
We would love to copy something like this at our company, but given the large employee count and costs involved self reporting is definitely not a feasible option.
dblock 7y ago
No no no. This work should be part of your total, main, comp. Working on open-source projects directly contributes to your employer's business, even if the code of that project doesn't get used in those systems. You're building your team's brand (and yes, your own, too). Because other Engineers want to work in an environment where OSS is encouraged, this reduces costs of hiring and retaining Engineers. At $20/hr Formidable is getting recruiting on the cheap.
- orta 7y ago
  Disagree on the no aspect, I think there are folks who will do OSS at depth regardless - but there are people for whom the incentives (of community, empowerment, fame etc) aren’t enough and maybe this is one way to make them jump the hurdle. I pitched that this could be worth trying at Artsy on my last day
sisk 7y ago
Surprised by the amount of negativity in this thread. My interpretation of this is an organization recognizing external contributions as personal growth and community enrichment and seeking to reward that behavior. I would put this in the same vein as healthcare providers subsidizing gym memberships, or organizations paying for people to attend training, conferences, or higher education. In any case, you're making the choice of self-improvement though in this case with community enrichment as an additional benefit. I don't know how Formidable compensates but anyone who thinks the compensation is anything more than a nod is missing the point. The purpose is not to place a monetary value on the work being done, it's an acknowledgement of gratitude. If you won't accept that then consider it a small supportive investment in a person who is choosing to invest in themselves and their community.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
caniszczyk 7y ago
This is interesting, I recently wrote about ways companies can support and sustain open source: https://opensource.com/article/19/4/ways-support-sustain-open-source https://opensource.com/article/19/4/ways-support-sustain-ope...
127 7y ago
Only thing different for me in doing open source for free and asking money for it, is that for the paid products, the audience participation goes through the roof and I actually know that someone values my work as they are paying for it. Plus, money is always nice.
majikandy 7y ago
Benefit for employee: recognition for out of hours coding, learning and contribution to society. Benefit for company: employees reporting hours working which would normally be invisible (Spotting burnout, keeping company project focus etc) Sounds like a brave but sensible move and an idea I hadn’t heard before. Also makes business sense to that company.
tzakrajs 7y ago
I feel like this will end up cannibalizing their engineers effort.
verisimilitudes 7y ago
I'd be horrified about this Formidable company (What a name.) trying to claim ownership over anything I did in my free time that I was paid $20.00 for. >More recently, we’ve expanded the definition of contributing to include any social impact work within the field of technology Well, without clarification on my concerns, this would lead me to simply billing time around things such as answering questions in project IRC channels or helping to organize things, all activities that can't be later claimed, and not use this for programming at all.
- Spivak 7y ago
  Say your open source project was a brick-and-mortar company. The things you're describing would probably be the work of two full time positions. I see no reason at all why it shouldn't be claimed. Support and Community Management are capital W work.
- exogen 7y ago
  Well they don't claim any ownership, so: problem solved! :) There's a benefit to having the option to transfer ownership though when it makes sense: some projects become a support burden, or incur hosting costs, or have just lost your interest. Over time I've donated several of my personal projects to Formidable so that the company itself can officially maintain them (including during work hours, with the higher pay that entails, if you get assigned to work on it).
pabs3 7y ago
I think if I worked at a company that was doing this, I would ask them to pay the money directly to a charity instead (like the Free Software Foundation or Software Freedom Conservancy).
- jevakallio 7y ago
  That's actually a good idea. Right now we pay the salary to you, and you can then donate it to a charity. It would be way more tax efficient to just skip the middle step. Will take this under consideration!
ossie 7y ago
I applaud any attempt to make open source work worthwhile to those who might not be able to continue spending the time on it without such a stipend/reward/incentive (whatever you want to call it). However, i have to admit that once capital is introduced into an altruistic equation, it has a way of murking things up. Successful initiatives will ultimately be those that allow people so inclined to continue doing open source work, rather than incentivizing potentially needless open source activity from opportunists. Personally, I would like to see an honor or certificated system "giving pledge" that rewards impactful open source projects...especially those that are not initiated/backed by a corporation. Think of it as a sort of B-Corp (O-Corp anybody?) where a tiny sliver of value (equity/revenue/profit/annual fixed amount) is allocated to the open source libraries on which that business is built. How the money is used is another debate entirely, so is the handling of commercialized open source projects. A very good candidate for something like this would be d3.js.

316 points by jevakallio 7y ago

TL;DR: A company pays their employees $20/hr for open source contributions done on the employees' own time with no strings attached. They also expand this to community promotion such as technical book writing and mentorships. They find this program to be wildly successful and highly encourage other companies to implement the same programs. I for one am extremely excited that this is reaching front page of HN and entering a broader mindshare. OSS represents everything I hope the tech industry may become someday in the future- high quality work produced by intelligent, talented people for the benefit of all.

jaden 7y ago

I'm a fan of anything that helps open source, but in my experience it's more effective if the employee is able to work on open source projects as part of their job. Then again, maybe that's just my current evening burnout talking.

jevakallio 7y ago
Author of the post here. Realistically, we can't pay people full engineering salaries to do random OSS. Our team can already contribute to OSS on their work time when it relates to their work, or our own projects, but for the personal interest/passion projects without direct benefit for us as a company, it doesn't scale. Doubly so when we have a pretty strict "no overtime" policy of working no more than 40 hours a week. We have failsafes in place in case anybody gets a bit too excited about free time OSS. We limit the Sauce hours you can do in a month for this reason, but nobody has hit that max yet, so it doesn't seem to be a systemic problem.
- dudul 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, what's the monthly limit?
  - jevakallio 7y ago
    It's set at 30 hours a month. This is not for budget reasons, only to discourage excess working off-hours. This adds up to about a workday per week, which is what we feel is reasonable.
    - Insanity 7y ago
      You could argue that it's people their own choice how much they work - which is true. But sometimes this can become determinental to their health. I'm onboard with this idea to be honest, it sounds good!
- chronogram 7y ago
  > Doubly so when we have a pretty strict "no overtime" policy of working no more than 40 hours a week. Is HR ready for this increase in applications from this post and the comments?
  - jevakallio 7y ago
    I guess they'll have to work overtime to process all the applications ;)
- mcintyre1994 7y ago
  > Doubly so when we have a pretty strict "no overtime" policy of working no more than 40 hours a week. The post mentions an exact clockout time as well - 5pm. Out of interest is it a strict 9-5 schedule, or is it flexible but 40 hours a week? Have you written anything about the no overtime policy or 9-5 schedule (if that's enforced) and how you find that?
  - smusumeche 7y ago
    It is flexible. We need to be available for client meetings, but otherwise we are encouraged to work at times when we do our best work.
- bhousel 7y ago
  > Realistically, we can't pay people full engineering salaries to do random OSS. Why can't you? Professors get paid full professor salaries to do "random research". Doctors get paid full doctor salaries to treat "random illnesses". I expect if you looked a bit closer, you'll find that "Random OSS" is maintenance that makes the entire ecosystem possible. Would love to hear from some of your engineers what they are doing to earn that $20/hr.
  - dblock 7y ago
    Right on.
  - smusumeche 7y ago
    Here's an example of a project I worked on under this program - a website for a local community developer meetup.
  - yawaramin 7y ago
    But professors are usually also required to teach classes or carry out other duties in return for getting research funding. They don't just get to randomly do whatever they want. And doctors treating 'random illnesses' doesn't really work as an analogy–that would be more like if they could randomly decide to turn away patients they didn't 'want' to treat.
  - rusticpenn 7y ago
    You overestimsate the amount of random research a Professor is able to do these days.
- karussell 7y ago
  Greetings Jani! (maybe you remember visiting in London the guy from Germany) Really interesting to read this and from you via hackernews :D
- dblock 7y ago
  Yes, you can pay people full engineering salaries to do random OSS. They contribute to your team's brand, reduce recruiting costs and reduce team churn. If they do too much random OSS to a point where it prevents them from achieving your business goals, you can terminate them.

onion2k 7y ago

Initiatives like this are exactly what gets me clicking on "Careers" links.

drusepth 7y ago
Conveniently, that mindset is one reason that makes higher-ups more comfortable approving initiatives like this!

sktrdie 7y ago

My opinion is that open-source contributions stems from passion. People do it and implement something because they're passionate about it. When you attach any money to it, it becomes tainted with responsibility and emotions. Such as, "should I work on this an extra hour and burn myself out and get those extra 40 bucks for dinner tonight?" That formula doesn't make individuals want to work more on open-source. Sure they push them towards doing stuff in open-source but that usually almost never leads to creating great pieces of work. One great and amazing thing that open-source thought us is that individuals can group together and work on amazing things without any economical reward. To me it was always a fascinating experiment outside the usual realms of politics, economics, social-studies. Nobody would have ever imagined it to work without "money", but it does and it will continue to work. In fact, instead of pushing capitalism mentality inside of open-source we should be doing exactly the opposite: push open-source mentality in other parts of our society.

arendtio 7y ago
I think your conclusion comes a bit too quickly. Sure, open-source is about passion for everyone who doesn't do it as a day job and earning money can kill that passion. But so can other factors (e.g. communities that demand but don't contribute) and still, we see a lot of OSS projects out there. In my opinion, an important factor here is that you earn that money for whatever OSS project you are working on. That reduces the pressure to work on that single project you would get paid to work on. And if you are completely against the compensation, you could still not tell your company about what you are doing after 5 pm ;-) I think it is a great opportunity for employees.
philplckthun 7y ago
As an active Open Source contributor I'd like to say that apart from passion being involved it also is a big responsibility depending on the project either way and being paid for it affirms my passion and beliefs. Disclaimer: I work for Formidable
kelset 7y ago
open source maintainer here - I disagree that you get those "responsibility and emotions" only when you attach money. You already get plenty of those by the sheer fact that you care about the craft you contribute to. > Nobody would have ever imagined it to work without "money", but it does and it will continue to work. I'm sorry to break it for you, but it doesn't actually work. And constant articles and talks from OSS maintainers about burnout is one of the proofs. If you want to read more, there is a great book on this subject which I feel will help you get a more informed opinion on it: https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/ https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-stu... Initiatives like this are important to "show by example" - currently there are too many Open Source consumers and not enough contributors. And also, work IS work - and it should be retributed.

moneil971 7y ago

This seems like a good way to recognize the extra time put in to support OSS projects - and I like the thoughtfulness about not making it an incentive to spend even more hours working, by capping hours and keeping the bonus amount low.

antt 7y ago

>We pay our employees $20/hr for contributions to OSS and tech communities, whether it’s a third-party library we use in our work like React, Next.js While I applaud the sentiment $20 per hour is too little to make me care and enough to make me start thinking about money. A much better way to deal with this would be pushing laws to allow for tax offsets for contributing time to charities (open source ones). Seeing $10 per hour (after tax) that doesn't inspire me much. Being able to write off my full time wage as a tax deductible would make me vastly more motivated to document what I've been working on and work on a lot more of it.

jevakallio 7y ago
This is a great idea. I don't know if it's even a starter, tax code wise, but would be amazing if it could be done. For the time being, we are happy with $20 for the reasons outlined in the post itself. It's not an incentive, it's a reward, and a purely optional one. Many people in the company (I'm the author) do work on Open Source and don't make use of the benefit, because they don't care about the money. This, for us, is fine.
- antt 7y ago
  I don't care about it now as a full time employed adult. As a university student I could have well become a full time maintainer of some of the scientific libraries that have been neglected since the 80s. Now as a gainfully employed productive member of society I like the idea of going on a legal tax strike when the government does something I absolutely detest. >Oh by the by, since you are trying so hard to destroy civil society again this year, here's my bill for keeping it running. You're welcome. Which is precisely why it would never happen. But you should definitely spend some ~money~ speech on politicians and lobbyists to start some of them thinking about it.

natmaka 7y ago

Freexian (R. Hertzog) offers something pertinent (Debian LTS): https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts-details.html https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts-details.html

nickjj 7y ago

I like the idea, but I'm concerned about the $20 / hour. Since this is done on the employees' own time (after hours), isn't this basically saying, "hey, go help make our app's dependencies better in an overtime scenario but we're going to pay you $20 / hour instead of 1x to 2x your usual salary"? I know at the bottom it clears that up but I dunno, it just feels weird to me. It seems like a concealed way to mainly benefit the company and potentially exploit the good will of its employees.

jevakallio 7y ago
I agree this could be the case, except that there is no pressure to work on anything work-related. You can literally contribute to any OSS project, whether it's your own video game side hustle, a learning project in a language we don't use, or, if the mood strikes, also one of our projects' dependencies.
habnds 7y ago
agreed, additionally, there's an interesting behavioral phenomenon where people are perfectly willing to help strangers on the street when asked for free, but the willingness rate drops dramatically when someone offers them a small amount of money because it reframes the conversation. Once people see open source as a way to make money, it becomes a very different thought process.
- smusumeche 7y ago
  A lot of us in this industry are very fortunate to have high salaries. At the risk of sounding crass, $20/hour is not much money to me. So this is really just a show of support. I'm going to donate the money anyway. (disclaimer: I work at Formidable)
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    It sounds like just enough to be nice, and not nearly enough to move the needle, to me. I guess that’s why I think it’s great. If it was a smaller token amount, it would feel sad. If it was more, it would feel exploitative (like a number of people in this thread already said).

return1 7y ago

I wonder what oss people think about Worklist, a bidding system for open source. I have not seen it be used beyond highfidelity. https://worklist.net https://worklist.net

wolfhumble 7y ago

Question to author of the post: How are these hours reported? Thanks!

smusumeche 7y ago
Hours are self reported using the same system that we use for logging client work.
- wolfhumble 7y ago
  Okay, thanks!

swalsh 7y ago

Out of curiousity, is there a site where people can put up some money for an open request on development? Like as opposed to hiring a contractor, and specifically developing the requirements, it would be more similar to a feature request with a bonus. Like specifically, my company has been yearning for a more complete solution to indexes on ORC files (there exists something, but the solution falls short for our specific siutation).

dbnotabb 7y ago
I work for a company launching an Open source board where companies can post jobs for cash works-hub.com/issues
cobbzilla 7y ago
BountySource is one option. You can post a GitHub issue with a bounty; it doesn’t even have to be your own. You can also contribute to other bounties. I added to a bounty to support inline code comments to Gitea’s pull request UI. It was the one feature I truly missed after moving from GitHub. The issue was already on the roadmap, but wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. once the bounty hit a couple hundred bucks, someone implemented the feature and claimed the bounty. Money well spent.

bhousel 7y ago

As a professional full-time open source maintainer and developer, initiatives like this bother me a lot. The work we do is worth much more than $20/hr. Ideally I'd like to see open source developers in stable, tenured positions that pay fair salaries with benefits. Anything that normalizes the idea that open source should be funded on tips, patreons, or spare time goodwill is embarrassing to all of us. We can do better. If you value open source, hire people to do it and pay them fairly.

kylecesmat 7y ago
Formidable employee here: To be quite honest we are compensated very fairly for our industry already and this program is not meant to ‘provide a living wage’ by any means. Instead, this is a ‘fair nod’ at the work some of us feel compelled and motivated to do after work hours. Not saying your perspective is wrong, just hopefully providing a bit more context about what this program means for someone who uses it.
- systematical 7y ago
  This is awesome. If my employer did this I'd probably take a lot of that money and donate to other OSS and charity since I'd neebed working on OSS regardless.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I get that. I work ten hours a week or so for free on my open source passion projects. If that turned in to an extra $200 a week that would be cool - I’m doing the work anyway. I haven’t read the article yet but my only fear with crowd funding is what happens when I want to take a month off of technical work.
  - stingraycharles 7y ago
    As someone who supports several developers, I hope you take as much holiday as you need. I mostly support it to increase the chance of the project surviving in the long term, and as a token of appreciation of your past contributions.

bobblywobbles 7y ago

If I'm paid for open source, I'm going to lose any motivation to work on it more. The reason why I contribute to open source projects is BECAUSE I want to contribute for free. Put money in the deal and I'm no longer doing this work selflessly, but for self-interest instead.

jb3689 7y ago
What if you just give the money to charity? Does that change your opinion?
- bobblywobbles 7y ago
  I already give money to charity. The reason why I don't like to put money in open-source work is it attaches a value on something where I would consider the work priceless and personal. It makes the work feel cold, or transactional. I'm sure others would agree.
ryanisinallofus 7y ago
Someone here gets the 20/hour for STEM volunteer work with kids then donates the money to a charity which Formidable also doubles as a part of another program. Would that address the issue for you or is the idea of getting paid for fun stuff just ruin the fun no matter what on principle? (I work at Formidable)
- bobblywobbles 7y ago
  I may differ from others, but anything that I do as volunteer work needs to be unpaid. Putting money in the equation means that I'm no longer doing X work for Y people, but instead doing X work for Z dollars. Putting money in the work makes it transactional, and that turns me off to "paid volunteer work". At that point, it's really just another label for "optional job". Volunteer work is donating your time or effort, so putting the "paid" label on it is misleading in my eyes. I also already donate to charity so I don't see a need to get paid to donate more money, which others may have an incentive to do. This is a point to consider.
7y ago

orliesaurus 7y ago

There are a bunch of companies that give back to open source maintainers through a better approach...tidelift [1] is one that comes to mind. Has anyone been on their open source programme? Does it operate well? [1] https://tidelift.com https://tidelift.com

Aeolun 7y ago
I’m not sure I’d consider this a better approach. If everyone used tidelift open source would become a popularity contest, and basically about the money.

crysin 7y ago

I wish I was rich enough to view getting a bonus of $20.00 an hour for fun-time work as being more offensive than receiving nothing at all.

jahewson 7y ago
Introducing a token payment such as this undermines the altruism of open source contribution. When people are motivated by altruism they don't want money. e.g. I would help my neighbor move some furniture for free, but I wouldn't do it if he offered to pay me $5.
- leapis 7y ago
  I would help my neighbor move some furniture for free, and I'd still do it if he offered to pay me $5. I wouldn't accept the money (because it's socially unacceptable to do so), but his offer wouldn't get in the way of me helping him. If he offered me a drink after, I wouldn't say no. It's understood that this offer is in direct response to me helping him, but I'm still motivated out of altruism. I'm simply receiving a greater reward for my altruism, and this time it's socially acceptable to take this. The time of the people eligible for this program is worth more than $20/hr. This amount of money is never going to be a primary source of motivation for them. As the article said, "A side effect of building a company culture around OSS is that the kind of people who gravitate to work at Formidable are passionate about their open source work, and won’t stop contributing when they clock out at 5 pm." I did a bit of volunteer work in high school as part of a program, and upon graduation the program granted everyone a small, $250 "scholarship". I spent ~10 hours per week, for a year, as part of this program, thus making my "wage", if you will, about $2/hr. I can promise you, nobody participated in that program for the "scholarship". It showed that our time was appreciated, but wasn't nearly enough to incentivize the program to anyone who wasn't going to do it anyways. I see nothing wrong with a token payment like this. It makes contributing to open source a more attractive option, but still only a viable option to those who were already motivated to contribute out of altruism. Obviously 20/hr isn't a token payment for a lot of us, but the concept itself of a token payment isn't something that necessarily invalidates altruistic intentions, in my view. I'll contribute to open source projects irregardless of whether or not they have a Bountysource, but I'll still accept a reward if it's offered. The purpose of this program is to reward people who are already motivated to contribute to open source, which in turn signals to its employees that Formidable appreciates open source contributions.

paxys 7y ago

We would love to copy something like this at our company, but given the large employee count and costs involved self reporting is definitely not a feasible option.

dblock 7y ago

No no no. This work should be part of your total, main, comp. Working on open-source projects directly contributes to your employer's business, even if the code of that project doesn't get used in those systems. You're building your team's brand (and yes, your own, too). Because other Engineers want to work in an environment where OSS is encouraged, this reduces costs of hiring and retaining Engineers. At $20/hr Formidable is getting recruiting on the cheap.

orta 7y ago
Disagree on the no aspect, I think there are folks who will do OSS at depth regardless - but there are people for whom the incentives (of community, empowerment, fame etc) aren’t enough and maybe this is one way to make them jump the hurdle. I pitched that this could be worth trying at Artsy on my last day

sisk 7y ago

Surprised by the amount of negativity in this thread. My interpretation of this is an organization recognizing external contributions as personal growth and community enrichment and seeking to reward that behavior. I would put this in the same vein as healthcare providers subsidizing gym memberships, or organizations paying for people to attend training, conferences, or higher education. In any case, you're making the choice of self-improvement though in this case with community enrichment as an additional benefit. I don't know how Formidable compensates but anyone who thinks the compensation is anything more than a nod is missing the point. The purpose is not to place a monetary value on the work being done, it's an acknowledgement of gratitude. If you won't accept that then consider it a small supportive investment in a person who is choosing to invest in themselves and their community.

deleted 7y ago
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caniszczyk 7y ago

This is interesting, I recently wrote about ways companies can support and sustain open source: https://opensource.com/article/19/4/ways-support-sustain-open-source https://opensource.com/article/19/4/ways-support-sustain-ope...

127 7y ago

Only thing different for me in doing open source for free and asking money for it, is that for the paid products, the audience participation goes through the roof and I actually know that someone values my work as they are paying for it. Plus, money is always nice.

majikandy 7y ago

Benefit for employee: recognition for out of hours coding, learning and contribution to society. Benefit for company: employees reporting hours working which would normally be invisible (Spotting burnout, keeping company project focus etc) Sounds like a brave but sensible move and an idea I hadn’t heard before. Also makes business sense to that company.

tzakrajs 7y ago

I feel like this will end up cannibalizing their engineers effort.

verisimilitudes 7y ago

I'd be horrified about this Formidable company (What a name.) trying to claim ownership over anything I did in my free time that I was paid $20.00 for. >More recently, we’ve expanded the definition of contributing to include any social impact work within the field of technology Well, without clarification on my concerns, this would lead me to simply billing time around things such as answering questions in project IRC channels or helping to organize things, all activities that can't be later claimed, and not use this for programming at all.

Spivak 7y ago
Say your open source project was a brick-and-mortar company. The things you're describing would probably be the work of two full time positions. I see no reason at all why it shouldn't be claimed. Support and Community Management are capital W work.
exogen 7y ago
Well they don't claim any ownership, so: problem solved! :) There's a benefit to having the option to transfer ownership though when it makes sense: some projects become a support burden, or incur hosting costs, or have just lost your interest. Over time I've donated several of my personal projects to Formidable so that the company itself can officially maintain them (including during work hours, with the higher pay that entails, if you get assigned to work on it).

pabs3 7y ago

I think if I worked at a company that was doing this, I would ask them to pay the money directly to a charity instead (like the Free Software Foundation or Software Freedom Conservancy).

jevakallio 7y ago
That's actually a good idea. Right now we pay the salary to you, and you can then donate it to a charity. It would be way more tax efficient to just skip the middle step. Will take this under consideration!

ossie 7y ago

I applaud any attempt to make open source work worthwhile to those who might not be able to continue spending the time on it without such a stipend/reward/incentive (whatever you want to call it). However, i have to admit that once capital is introduced into an altruistic equation, it has a way of murking things up. Successful initiatives will ultimately be those that allow people so inclined to continue doing open source work, rather than incentivizing potentially needless open source activity from opportunists. Personally, I would like to see an honor or certificated system "giving pledge" that rewards impactful open source projects...especially those that are not initiated/backed by a corporation. Think of it as a sort of B-Corp (O-Corp anybody?) where a tiny sliver of value (equity/revenue/profit/annual fixed amount) is allocated to the open source libraries on which that business is built. How the money is used is another debate entirely, so is the handling of commercialized open source projects. A very good candidate for something like this would be d3.js.