11 ms·

Polar v1.0: Let’s Fix Open Source Funding

168 points by patrick91 3y ago

avodonosov 3y ago
I wish success to initiatives like that. From the article I didn't understand the model. Or how it is diffirent from existing projects like https://bountysource.com/ https://bountysource.com/ and others.
- jonas-w 3y ago
  It sounds like bountysource, but bountysource seems to have stopped paying bounties. Found these two links on the Wikipedia Article for Bountysource: [CRITICAL] Bountysource Escrow, Complain @ dfpi.ca.gov, 18.05.2023 - https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1539 https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1539 What is wrong with your support and cash out process?, 20.06.2021 - https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1586 https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1586
- birk 3y ago
  Working on docs for the site. Clear we can do a better job explaining this. Until then, I answered this thread on the topic the other day which hopefully clarifies: https://github.com/polarsource/polar/discussions/391#discussioncomment-6436312 https://github.com/polarsource/polar/discussions/391#discuss...
jehna1 3y ago
Polar asks you to grant "act on your behalf" permissions to your Github. As someone who has both professional and open source projects at Github, that's a definite deal breaker
- birk 3y ago
  Unfortunately, this is the default by GitHub and their OAuth prompt and nothing we can change. See https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/37117 https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/37117 Most of our API integration is purely about synchronising repositories, issues & PRs (read-only). With the exception of 2 things. 1) Inject the Polar badge. We then edit the issue body to append it at the bottom. 2) You can explicitly post a comment as yourself via Polar when you badge an issue, but this is entirely optional and merely a convenience feature would you want to. Requires manual & clear action.
- senden9 3y ago
  I did come here to post the same reaction. I saw the OAuth prompt with "act on your behalf" and intermediately closed the browser tab. When I want to take a look at something new I do not want ti give it what looks like nearly full access on my account.
mfts0 3y ago
The vision for the v1 is spot on. There were some attempts to turn the open source ecosystem into a creator economy - they are so similar but… The big BUT is that software needs to be maintained whereas a video once uploaded on YouTube doesn‘t need to be edited again. I have a feeling that Birk and the Polar team have the right insights to build the right tools to serve the specific needs of open-source software maintainers.
- birk 3y ago
  Hey, Birk here (founder of Polar). Thank you so much @patrick91 for sharing our post here and thank you @mfts0 for the kind words. Completely agree. I believe open source – as one of the largest and most important ecosystems in the world – is deserving of having a thriving "creator economy". Combined with it being a win-win for the users (businesses and individuals). But such a platform needs to be bespoke for open source and its nuances vs. focused on content creation. It can't be a silver bullet solution either. All projects are different. So with Polar, we aim to build out a suite of all the possible value-add offerings, but allow maintainers to experiment, tweak and adapt to make it fit their initiatives and communities. We have our work cut out for us. It's going to be insanely hard and fixing funding is the holy grail, but it's an important mission to pursue and I'm convinced a creator economy will form since current models are not beneficial to anyone. Just a matter of who & how. That's why I think it's crucial we're building it open source ourselves to truly build in public and serve maintainers through quick iterations and based on their needs, what's working etc. Fun times :-)
meagher 3y ago
Best case: Maintainers paid, GitHub acquires Polar. Worst case: Maintainers paid, GitHub copies Polar.
- birk 3y ago
  Here's my thinking re: GitHub on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36736826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36736826
  - meagher 3y ago
    No doubt Polar can be a better product overall and focus on things that GitHub would never do. GitHub has a major distribution advantage though. Could see them adding something basic into GitHub Sponsors along with first-party UI that shows up on all issues. Curious what you think about subscriptions versus one-time payments. Seems like Polar is going more for the latter. Would love if this was normalized and could see it leading to more money coming in overall. My concern is that subscriptions are great for predictability (company sponsors $500/mo) and without that I need to find a way to re-acquire money to pay rent every month.
    - birk 3y ago
      > No doubt Polar can be a better product overall and focus on things that GitHub would never do. GitHub has a major distribution advantage though. Could see them adding something basic into GitHub Sponsors along with first-party UI that shows up on all issues. Absolutely, I'm not saying it's not a risk. Ultimately, my stance and belief is that OSS is obviously a massive ecosystem deserving of an independent COSS pathway to support careers and small businesses to emerge from it. Creating such a long-tail economy is going to require so many different things and more will emerge once it's successful. That's how it should be. So I'm convinced there is room for many actors within this domain. Just like how Open Collective is doing a phenomenal job and solving real & hard problems within the donation & sponsorship domain even with GitHub Sponsors (often in partnership with OC). So going back to my stance on what I think GitHub's strategy should be: Instead of expanding GitHub Sponsors themselves, I think it should become the payments layer within OSS. Offered through an API that their apps & partners can integrate with with GitHub getting revshare. Avoiding spreading themselves thin by chasing all these opportunities themselves and instead empowering more of them through a GitHub Payments API. > Curious what you think about subscriptions versus one-time payments. Seems like Polar is going more for the latter. Would love if this was normalized and could see it leading to more money coming in overall. My concern is that subscriptions are great for predictability (company sponsors $500/mo) and without that I need to find a way to re-acquire money to pay rent every month. Completely agree. We're going to do both. Started with one-time payments now in early alpha, but expanding into subscription is a core part of our long-term vision for all of the reasons you mentioned and more.
iamflimflam1 3y ago
Definitely a problem that needs to be solved. And the current donation/patreon/coffee mechanism just doesn't work. The problem is that I don't know if people/businesses are really willing to pay the actual cost of getting things done. I'm not even sure people even appreciate the work that is involved in most of their requests - how many times have you looked at some commercial software and had the "could build that in a weekend" reaction. My other concern is around expectations. I've always tried to be very clear with any donation type thing that it's a donation. There's no obligation created on my part to provide any services or support. Directly coupling payments to requests might turn this into much more of a "I paid you to do this, why isn't it done yet".
- bruce511 3y ago
  >> I don't know if people/businesses are really willing to pay the actual cost of getting things done. ooo, ooo, I know... (hand up) - pick me... pick me... Short answer, no the're not. The ones that are demonstrate their willingness to do so by, you know, spending money on proprietary software. I'm as happy as the next guy to make use of Open Source software, but it either works for me (no money necessary) or it doesn't (in which case I'll spend the money, with, you know, an actual business...) Ok, cynic mode off, but let's be honest - there's a new "solution" to this problem like every other week. They all want to funnel money between the mythical person who wants to pay, to the mythical developer who wants to receive. All the other methods have failed, but apparently the problem is not the lack of people _willing_ to pay, but the fact that it's "too hard to pay"? I gotta say, after all these attempts, you would think one of them would have succeeded, unless, perhaps, aside from a few anecdotes, the actual pool of payers doesn't exist. I wish you well, I really do, but I fear you're solving the wrong problem. Trouble is the right problem isn't solvable. But maybe, just maybe, if you solve the wrong problem enough, then maybe something of substance will happen. I could go on about how most OSS developers don't _want_ to be paid. Because getting paid tiny amounts is a hassle which exceeds the income. So sure, guarantee me 10K a month for more than a year, and maybe it's worth the effort of accounting, and taxes, and obligations, and deadlines, and people complaining after the fact, before the fact, during the fact. But for a few hundred $ here and there - pass... Cynic mode back on - another month, another startup planning to solve this "problem". Good luck!
jph 3y ago
I'm your target and I don't exactly understand what you're writing. For example, I want to donate $100 toward Rust Rocket version 1.0.0. Can Polar help with this goal? If so, what's my next step?
- birk 3y ago
  Sorry about that, but happy to clarify anything. You can pledge behind any open source issue that's on GitHub today. Just simply need to replace github.com in the URL with polar.sh or goto polar.new and drop the link. We'll then reach out to the maintainers if they're not on the platform. Will soon ship so that an automatic comment is made (once). We don't want to create spam in the issues.
  - tomcam 3y ago
    I really wish that had been, say, within the first 3000 words of the homepage. In fact, I think they would make a perfect lead. I literally had to go to the comments, page here to understand what was going on.
    - birk 3y ago
      Great feedback, I really appreciate it! Will definitely fix
mustache_kimono 3y ago
This may sound crazy, but I think the right model for open source funding is charging for updates. Red Hat has actually shown us the way. Developed world Ubuntu/Red Hat/SUSE users should pay $~20/year for access to all releases, $5 of which goes to the distro, $5 which goes to the base system/core utilities, and the rest should fund your particular OSS apps/frameworks/supporting apps running above the base layer. Yes, obviously donation/sponsorship doesn't work, but I'm not sure pay per issue resolved is the best model either. Good apps shouldn't be punished for having few issues, or needing few features. People should be able to opt in, but I think opting in at the distro level is the right choice as it would create a broad base of support. Of course, there will be those that don't want to pay, but I think a premium model for power users and enterprise customers makes sense. These premium users could have access to beta/nightly channels, early SRPMS/src debs, and priority or triaged issue/PR resolution? Are there issues to be resolved? Yes, of course. How to divide payments to apps, and within app communities, but these aren't insurmountable problems. Canonical, etc., could simply set standards and require app communities to explain any variance from those standards.
- MildRant 3y ago
  I have 0 doubt in my mind that it could cost 1 dollar and most people wouldn't pay.
  - mustache_kimono 3y ago
    Which is entirely fair for some users who need less, but it would remove the talking point "We support OSS" while doing nothing. If "Google pays $25 million in OSS fees to...", we definitely know they care. "People won't pay" is absolutely fine for users who simply need a barebones systems and never need a priority ticket re a Postgres issue, or a priority update. I actually think its fine to create two classes of users -- those that pay a modest amount, and those that pay nothing. Perhaps the lesson is those that pay a modest amount get modestly more service, and those that pay nothing should have no expectations. Perhaps those persons who contribute to OSS or develop karma within OSS would receive a gratis memberships?
- deleted 3y ago
traviswt 3y ago
Won't this just encourage maintainers to sit on issues... just waiting for the bounty to increase? They might even purposefully introduce painful but simple bugs just to push consumers to pay to have them fixed.
- habosa 3y ago
  Would be cool if bounties could have an expiration date. I’ll pay $100 if issue X is fixed by date Y. Probably more reflective of business value too, since if an issue isn’t fixed relatively quickly I’ll have to build my own workaround.
- cuu508 3y ago
  Another kind of problem would be when someone pledges a big sum for an obscure feature, a first-time contributor writes a (technically perfect) PR for it. Maintainer does not want to merge it, because the feature does not align with maintainer's project goals. But not merging will now look like a dick move, as it denies the PR author the compensation.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    Then the payment can go to a fork. If the maintainer really wants to keep his vision for the project and others are literally voting with their wallets for something else, why would that be a problem?
  - birk 3y ago
    With Polar today only the maintainer receives the pledges once an issue/feature is completed. However, we're working on the ability for maintainers to split that with any potential contributors. It's definitely an important feature and part of our model. Just something we decided to scope out from the initial launch – in the interest of launching early and building in public. An important distinction between Polar vs. traditional bounty services though and regarding your point is: Everything goes through the maintainer(s) and we're equipping them with the insights, capital and tools to reward their contributors. While bounty services allow anyone to post a bounty and anyone to pursue it. However, ultimately it needs to be reviewed, merged and maintained indefinitely by the maintainer(s). By ensuring it all flows via maintainer(s) it: 1. Rewards maintainers as well – key given their efforts 2.Guarantees maintainers are aligned & behind pledges first. Combined with in control on how to expose, delegate and reward it. Avoiding unnecessary friction, bad faith and overhead if such alignment is first made during PR.
brigadier132 3y ago
I have had situations where i wanted to use an open source tool that was somewhat obscure and i would have paid $300-400 an hour for consulting from the maintainers/creators and could not get in contact with anyone. So if you create open source software i recommend posting a link to a consulting business with some minimum price that you are satisfied with, even if its something like $1k an hour.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Been on both sides of that end, the problem is that especially outside of the US offering paid services comes with some serious challenges on its own: - registering a business entity costs money and (especially in dysfunctional bureaucratic hellholes) time - you can be held completely liable for whatever you offer if you don't take excruciating care with the legalese fineprint - it's a complete nightmare on tax filings (e.g. in Germany you can't have your taxes handled by Lohnsteuervereine if you have a side business, i.e. income from sources other than regular employment) - you often lose anonymity because PayPal discloses your real name to everyone knowing your email address, or SEPA payments requiring your name - people can and will fuck with you just because they can or because they hate you for whatever reason. Anything from mass reporting you to Paypal over death threats to outright SWATting you.
  - artdigital 3y ago
    You don’t need to register a business for a bit of side money. Even in Germany, you don’t need to register as “eingetragener Kaufmann” unless it’s, you know, actually a proper side business and ticks some criteria. Going down that road, there’s heaps of people doing consulting as sole proprietor (or e.K. In Germany) without getting sued or stuck in tax hell I think you’re looking at things a bit too pessimistic here
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > Even in Germany, you don’t need to register as “eingetragener Kaufmann” unless it’s, you know, actually a proper side business and ticks some criteria. You absolutely can do a Gewerbeanmeldung. The problem is, without a Kapitalgesellschaft ("Mini GmbH" and similar), you're fucked liability-wise. Your entire private assets can be taken if you end up bankrupt.
password4321 3y ago
So a VC-funded company expected to produce unicorn returns is going to accomplish this when non-profits haven't? It doesn't seem logical but I hope someone can pull it off! I would like to learn more about the background of the founders - what they've already done in any way related to this. Why does Polar have a chance?
- mustache_kimono 3y ago
  > So a VC-funded company expected to produce unicorn returns is going to accomplish this when non-profits haven't? Business accomplishes something non-profits haven't isn't exactly a stop the presses event?
  - password4321 3y ago
    I clearly failed to sufficiently emphasize the VC unicorn part enough, my bad. Polar is a Stripe/Square for GitHub issues, expected to charge enough fees to pay for a portfolio of failed startups and still make their investors money.
    - bogwog 3y ago
      I wonder what enshitification will look like if this business survives? Higher fees, something to do with advertising, crypto/NFT bullshit, garden walling/API restrictions, etc... History has shown these types of things are 100% inevitable with these types of businesses if they manage to survive, so it's smart to think about them well in advance and have an exit strategy if you decide to depend on them.
      - birk 3y ago
        Answered another comment re: enshitification here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36755232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36755232
    - mustache_kimono 3y ago
      I think this is a fair critique. I have my own -- "This is why this won't work..." take, and I must admit that it's a VC funded startup does make this seem less viable. It's only that I think exactly the same re: FOSS non-profits.
jph 3y ago
If anyone wants to see Polar in action on a GitHub issue, I'm experimenting with Polar on my Architecture Decision Record repo: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/architecture-decision-record/issues/51 https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/architecture-decision... (I'm on the fence about the value of Polar for this kind of issue... see what you think)
- birk 3y ago
  That's awesome and thanks for sharing @jph! I'd love to hear your feedback and how we can make Polar better for you. I'm always available to chat. @birk (twitter), birk [at] polar.sh or on our Discord.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
dboreham 3y ago
Fix an unfixable thing? Edit: to expand -- these initiatives seem to always be cooked up by people who do not write software, don't fix bugs, don't hire software developers. They never work because adding a feature to a product or fixing a bug isn't a commodity item that you can just buy with a click and spread cost between many parties. The result is that most of the prospective purchasers end up having an easier path to get what they want, which is to fork and fix themselves (usually via in-house devs already on staff).
vendiddy 3y ago
I will on occasion email an OSS maintainer offering to pay for some improvement or consulting. But I don't do this often because of the friction. In other I can't even find their email, but then it feels awkward to publicly post this in a GH issue.
- birk 3y ago
  Completely agree. I've run into this many times too and having talked with a lot of companies, I know the same is true for a lot of them. As Polar removes the friction here, it will hopefully accelerate our ability to sponsor such efforts
posnet 3y ago
I was very confused, I thought this was about the polars, data science/data analytics toolkit. I know names are hard, but maybe pick something more distinct.
fizzynut 3y ago
Interesting idea, A small but impactful change I would make would be to change dollar amounts into tokens. e.g. 1 token = $50. A company might want to buy 1000 tokens and allocate tokens individually to specific issues, but they also might want to put tokens in a pot the maintainer can access to "spend" on issues they want to prioritise for the project or allow them to "spend" tokens at a specific rate, etc. It also means that money is committed upfront by the companies, i.e. the money is real and exists, has been set aside for this thing and in case of a dispute polar can make decisions, etc
- birk 3y ago
  Thank you! Excellent feedback and completely aligned with the intent here. > It also means that money is committed upfront by the companies, i.e. the money is real and exists, has been set aside for this thing and in case of a dispute polar can make decisions, etc Glad to say, that's how it works already. A pledge is paid upfront and the capital resides within the Polar platform account with Stripe until the issue is marked completed. Then it's transferred to the maintainer minus fees (10%). Or refunded to the backer after 6 months (a timeframe we'll experiment with). We're going to build a "Polar balance" so individuals or companies can top-up their account, automatically disperse it etc too. So the only question is whether it needs to be abstracted into a "token" concept or can simply continue to be $ upfront. Definitely some advantages and opportunities with "token" vs. money though. Just a bit mindful of the associations people have with "token" specifically from the crypto world. > they also might want to put tokens in a pot the maintainer can access to "spend" on issues they want to prioritise for the project or allow them to "spend" tokens at a specific rate Love this! https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/858 https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/858
RobotToaster 3y ago
>Premium access. Educational material Arguably, putting a restrictive licence on manuals makes something not free software https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html
yoavm 3y ago
I'm sorry, but I would never give money to an open-source project through a VC-backed company that takes a 10% commission. I could maybe live with it if it was 0.5%, but heck I'll just find the maintainer and wire them the money somehow. Github Sponsorship takes 0% from private accounts. I could very much be wrong about this, but the whole thing feels like it's coming from the perspective of someone thinking "I've heard about OSS, let's see how I can monetize it", rather than "I've participated in the OSS world for a long time, and I have an idea that can improve it".
- skrebbel 3y ago
  It’s not about giving money, it’s about buying features, services and support from the maintainers.
  - biscuitech 3y ago
    Doesn't open collective already do this though? You can fund specific goals iirc.
    - skrebbel 3y ago
      Sure but to my reading Polar has a much stronger “help maintainers become entrepreneurs” angle which seems like a novel approach to me.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  You can make more money on a platform that has a higher fee if that platform has a better brand, has less friction, has more users, is easier to setup, etc.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    Yeah but 10% is still very greedy, assuming they become the dominant platform for this. And if they don't become the big platform for this then they aren't adding the value which justifies 10% anyways.
rglullis 3y ago
Now that the company is funded, are you hiring? I'd love to work for a company that has the sole goal of making FOSS sustainable, I even wrote a bit about it here: https://raphael.lullis.net/open-source-funding/ https://raphael.lullis.net/open-source-funding/
- birk 3y ago
  Really liked the blog and this article too https://raphael.lullis.net/can-foss-eat-the-world/ https://raphael.lullis.net/can-foss-eat-the-world/ Lot of overlap :-) Would be great to connect. Just hired for the open role we had, but we’ll grow more. You can reach me at birk[at]polar.sh
ushakov 3y ago
Why would I use this instead of the usual ways (GitHub Sponsors, PayPal, Patreon, OpenCollective)?
- toyg 3y ago
  From what I understand, Github Sponsors is not granular: you either subscribe to a project or you don't. Polar seems to allow for issue-specific funding and other more granular bits.
tibor_a 3y ago
We did this in 2010 :). In the years since there has been many similar attempts. This one, however, seems to have all the important things right. Congrats for the funding and good luck!
- birk 3y ago
  Thank you! If you are who I think you are we’re already connected, but otherwise I’d love to chat: birk[at]polar.sh
toyg 3y ago
Props for trying, the software world needs something like this. However, I don't see how this is not fundamentally just a Github feature. They don't have it now, but if Polar gets any traction, they'll implement it pretty swiftly and probably eat your lunch.
- api 3y ago
  Does MS want to incentivize really professional polished open source? This is such a no-brainer thing for GitHub to do, I've really wondered why they never did it. It'd also be an obvious thing for Patreon to consider getting into, though it's maybe outside their core expertise.
- birk 3y ago
  Thanks toyg! Re: GitHub, I answered another comment on this note here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36736826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36736826
mintone 3y ago
Great to see more in this space. We've been working on the same problem with https://www.ringerhq.com https://www.ringerhq.com for the past ~year and have seen great success with specific projects. We're changing our approach slightly to give contributors and maintainers more tools after receiving feedback on specific features. If I can reiterate one piece of advice: listen to the community!
- birk 3y ago
  Big fan of what you're building with Ringer. Would love to chat more if you're interested. You can reach me at birk [at] polar.sh
woodruffw 3y ago
I’m glad to see more people tackle the problem of open source funding; at the same time, I’m not convinced that adding VC money to the problem makes things any better. There’s a secret third thing that never seems to get mentioned: not pittances through donations and not speculative investment from VCs, but plain old paid engineering. Most open source maintainers don’t want to be “entrepreneurs”; they just want to be paid an (approximately) fair rate for their time. Hiring them (or paying them for consultation time) achieves this.
- birk 3y ago
  I don’t think we’re in disagreement as it relates to getting maintainers better funding. We absolutely agree a core unlock there is to recognize the value-add services on top and being able to create services and subscriptions around those. Such as consulting, paid support etc. To subscriptions with premium content and more. We’ll provide all of the tools to make it easy, and it’s up for each maintainer to craft what suits them, their desires and community. I think we both agree this should exist and could be helpful to many maintainers who likely want it and would benefit from it? So re: VC. I simply wouldn’t be able to afford pursuing this platform without VC backing. Zero chance. It’s going to take a lot of time, people, lawyers, tax professionals, operations to sales and more to do right and world-wide. Not to mention, since it’s an unproven model in an ecosystem without much economic activity, it’s incredibly risky and will take time before it creates such an economy. To me that’s the beauty and hope VC brings. Supporting entirely new models, markets and innovations that take time to build. I love indie/bootstrapping, but it encourages working with incremental changes within existing & large markets because you need revenue to exist in large scale from Day 1 through which you can mine.
VoxPelli 3y ago
I think I prefer StackAid, it funds the entire chain of dependencies and doesn't lock anything down: https://www.stackaid.us/ https://www.stackaid.us/
- birk 3y ago
  Huge fan of StackAid! Glad you're using it! Just to clarify and out of curiosity, what do you mean with "doesn't lock anything down" in the context of StackAid vs. Polar?
  - VoxPelli 3y ago
    It doesn’t paywall anything, you can’t say that only people who support you on StackAid gets A or B. (One idea I think we toyed with at Flattr, which was also a flat fee donation system, was to potentially enable people to lock something down on whether you donated to anything at all, but ultimately decided that the internet was meant to be opened and thus we added mechanisms to Flattr to make it really hard to abuse it as a paywall, which eg Germans loved but most Americans was really confused by )
bogwog 3y ago
This is interesting and I genuinely hope you succeed because OSS funding is important. I have some questions: 1. Can anybody place a bounty on any issue? That seems like it could take control away from the maintainer. Is there a way for a maintainer to reject an issue bounty, so they can keep control over the direction/architectural decisions of the project? 2. Could someone pledge money towards a milestone (e.g. the next major version) rather than specific issues? 3. Are you offering any kind of business support to maintainers, such as reaching out to business users on their behalf to negotiate a sponsorship/support contract/bounty/etc? The sales part of all of this seems like it's the biggest challenge for OSS projects where it's just a few engineers who don't have the time or skill to do sales.
- birk 3y ago
  Fantastic questions & feedback – thank you @bogwog! 1. Yes they can, but they remain anonymous and private only for the maintainer to see and take action on. Currently, we don't have automation for explicit rejection/approval, but something we want to add. Completely agree re: maintainer control – it's a core principle of ours. 2. Not today, but I absolutely love this idea. Added it to the backlog: https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/855 https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/855 3. Agree. We have a lot of plans here for the future. Definitely think this is a huge opportunity long-term.
homanp 3y ago
Flawless execution
laurent123456 3y ago
What's different from the other crowdsourcing platforms for open source?
- birk 3y ago
  I answered this thread on the topic the other day which hopefully clarifies: https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/391#discussioncomment-6436312 https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/391#discussi...
ducktective 3y ago
Nice idea and good luck :) >Join our Discord to discuss ideas, early design proposals and upcoming features Yeah, no...disheartening to see this many FOSS developers opting for Discord for realtime chat.
- doakes 3y ago
  Why disheartening? What would you prefer?
  - ducktective 3y ago
    It's a walled garden that was hostile to third-party clients from the start. It asks for phone number to sign up. The client is slow (both web version and electron version). Ghost notifications and spams in DM. No way to find channels to join. Matrix, IRC...at least set up a bridge to one if you are going Discord
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
https://ondsel.com/blog/software-bounties-are-a-dumb-idea/ https://ondsel.com/blog/software-bounties-are-a-dumb-idea/ Conclusion: > Bounties are a lousy foundation for sustainable development of large projects like FreeCAD. They typically represent a gross underestimation of real work required to solve a problem, commonly miss a bigger picture, and encourage worst software development practices. Growing larger is fun but also really overwhelming. Most ambitious projects that aim to stay afloat will have to experiment with different approaches to getting funded on a regular basis and come up with their own mix of solutions. It’s that or perish.
- birk 3y ago
  > will have to experiment with different approaches to getting funded on a regular basis and come up with their own mix of solutions Couldn't agree more. Sponsoring issues/features is our 1st offering with Polar, but our goal with v1.0 is to have a suite of add-on services that maintainers can sell on-demand or as part of a subscription. We started with issues/features since they're universal to all open source initiatives and where demand is first represented & communicated most often today. Lots of challenges to solve there too be sure, but solvable.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ThinkBeat 3y ago
(Old man rant) For fuck's sake. If I wanted to be a social media influencer, I'd be on Instagram / OnlyFans. If i wanted to spend my time "an entrepreneur with superpowers to convert the community into backers", I would be running a company / start up doing sales. I wish to write code. Some of that code is open source. Some of it I write because someone pays me to do so. I dont have to do any sales and that is fantastic. So far nobody has given me money for my open-source code and that is fine. I write my open-source tools because I admire those who came before me and all they have contributed to the world. It is a civic duty. They gave us operating systems, compilers, databases, libraries. When someone creates a new thing and its 90% derived from free tools with a bit of code sauce / UI on top it, call it open source and then run around wanting to get paid for it they are in the wrong pasture. If you are wanting to make billions of dollars and you create some form of "open source" system but you get angry if someone uses it and does make money from it, you are in the wrong pasture. Contemplate Linux, (Open)*BSD, GNU tools, Postgres and everything open source you use to make your product and none of which you have paid for. Imagine if Theo had $1 for every OpenBSD install. (I love OpenBSD) Id owe him at least a few hundred dollars. On aggregate he would be at least a millionaire. For people who do want to inject money into open source that is great. Dont pick me. Pick projects that are vital in the stack and who are underfunded.
- birk 3y ago
  And I salute you for it, truly. Intent here is not for each commit across all of OSS to be paid for. Or that every maintainer has to charge for add-on services. Polar is designed for maintainers who either 1) spend an enormous amount of time in effectively unpaid support already or 2) want tooling to run an independent business around their OSS initiatives. It’s not designed for everyone and you opt-in to use it (as maintainers, contributors or backers). To me that’s the core trait of OSS: Freedom. Today, I don’t think maintainers have that freedom to easily pursue an independent business or get paid for support towards businesses without an insane amount of unnecessary overhead. That’s what we aim to change for those who seek it.
XCSme 3y ago
> our $1.8M pre-seed round to help us pursue our mission of expanding the open source economy $1.8M VC funding for what?

168 points by patrick91 3y ago

I wish success to initiatives like that. From the article I didn't understand the model. Or how it is diffirent from existing projects like https://bountysource.com/ https://bountysource.com/ and others.

jonas-w 3y ago
It sounds like bountysource, but bountysource seems to have stopped paying bounties. Found these two links on the Wikipedia Article for Bountysource: [CRITICAL] Bountysource Escrow, Complain @ dfpi.ca.gov, 18.05.2023 - https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1539 https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1539 What is wrong with your support and cash out process?, 20.06.2021 - https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1586 https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1586
birk 3y ago
Working on docs for the site. Clear we can do a better job explaining this. Until then, I answered this thread on the topic the other day which hopefully clarifies: https://github.com/polarsource/polar/discussions/391#discussioncomment-6436312 https://github.com/polarsource/polar/discussions/391#discuss...

jehna1 3y ago

Polar asks you to grant "act on your behalf" permissions to your Github. As someone who has both professional and open source projects at Github, that's a definite deal breaker

birk 3y ago
Unfortunately, this is the default by GitHub and their OAuth prompt and nothing we can change. See https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/37117 https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/37117 Most of our API integration is purely about synchronising repositories, issues & PRs (read-only). With the exception of 2 things. 1) Inject the Polar badge. We then edit the issue body to append it at the bottom. 2) You can explicitly post a comment as yourself via Polar when you badge an issue, but this is entirely optional and merely a convenience feature would you want to. Requires manual & clear action.
senden9 3y ago
I did come here to post the same reaction. I saw the OAuth prompt with "act on your behalf" and intermediately closed the browser tab. When I want to take a look at something new I do not want ti give it what looks like nearly full access on my account.

mfts0 3y ago

The vision for the v1 is spot on. There were some attempts to turn the open source ecosystem into a creator economy - they are so similar but… The big BUT is that software needs to be maintained whereas a video once uploaded on YouTube doesn‘t need to be edited again. I have a feeling that Birk and the Polar team have the right insights to build the right tools to serve the specific needs of open-source software maintainers.

birk 3y ago
Hey, Birk here (founder of Polar). Thank you so much @patrick91 for sharing our post here and thank you @mfts0 for the kind words. Completely agree. I believe open source – as one of the largest and most important ecosystems in the world – is deserving of having a thriving "creator economy". Combined with it being a win-win for the users (businesses and individuals). But such a platform needs to be bespoke for open source and its nuances vs. focused on content creation. It can't be a silver bullet solution either. All projects are different. So with Polar, we aim to build out a suite of all the possible value-add offerings, but allow maintainers to experiment, tweak and adapt to make it fit their initiatives and communities. We have our work cut out for us. It's going to be insanely hard and fixing funding is the holy grail, but it's an important mission to pursue and I'm convinced a creator economy will form since current models are not beneficial to anyone. Just a matter of who & how. That's why I think it's crucial we're building it open source ourselves to truly build in public and serve maintainers through quick iterations and based on their needs, what's working etc. Fun times :-)

meagher 3y ago

Best case: Maintainers paid, GitHub acquires Polar. Worst case: Maintainers paid, GitHub copies Polar.

birk 3y ago
Here's my thinking re: GitHub on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36736826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36736826
- meagher 3y ago
  No doubt Polar can be a better product overall and focus on things that GitHub would never do. GitHub has a major distribution advantage though. Could see them adding something basic into GitHub Sponsors along with first-party UI that shows up on all issues. Curious what you think about subscriptions versus one-time payments. Seems like Polar is going more for the latter. Would love if this was normalized and could see it leading to more money coming in overall. My concern is that subscriptions are great for predictability (company sponsors $500/mo) and without that I need to find a way to re-acquire money to pay rent every month.
  - birk 3y ago
    > No doubt Polar can be a better product overall and focus on things that GitHub would never do. GitHub has a major distribution advantage though. Could see them adding something basic into GitHub Sponsors along with first-party UI that shows up on all issues. Absolutely, I'm not saying it's not a risk. Ultimately, my stance and belief is that OSS is obviously a massive ecosystem deserving of an independent COSS pathway to support careers and small businesses to emerge from it. Creating such a long-tail economy is going to require so many different things and more will emerge once it's successful. That's how it should be. So I'm convinced there is room for many actors within this domain. Just like how Open Collective is doing a phenomenal job and solving real & hard problems within the donation & sponsorship domain even with GitHub Sponsors (often in partnership with OC). So going back to my stance on what I think GitHub's strategy should be: Instead of expanding GitHub Sponsors themselves, I think it should become the payments layer within OSS. Offered through an API that their apps & partners can integrate with with GitHub getting revshare. Avoiding spreading themselves thin by chasing all these opportunities themselves and instead empowering more of them through a GitHub Payments API. > Curious what you think about subscriptions versus one-time payments. Seems like Polar is going more for the latter. Would love if this was normalized and could see it leading to more money coming in overall. My concern is that subscriptions are great for predictability (company sponsors $500/mo) and without that I need to find a way to re-acquire money to pay rent every month. Completely agree. We're going to do both. Started with one-time payments now in early alpha, but expanding into subscription is a core part of our long-term vision for all of the reasons you mentioned and more.

iamflimflam1 3y ago

Definitely a problem that needs to be solved. And the current donation/patreon/coffee mechanism just doesn't work. The problem is that I don't know if people/businesses are really willing to pay the actual cost of getting things done. I'm not even sure people even appreciate the work that is involved in most of their requests - how many times have you looked at some commercial software and had the "could build that in a weekend" reaction. My other concern is around expectations. I've always tried to be very clear with any donation type thing that it's a donation. There's no obligation created on my part to provide any services or support. Directly coupling payments to requests might turn this into much more of a "I paid you to do this, why isn't it done yet".

bruce511 3y ago
>> I don't know if people/businesses are really willing to pay the actual cost of getting things done. ooo, ooo, I know... (hand up) - pick me... pick me... Short answer, no the're not. The ones that are demonstrate their willingness to do so by, you know, spending money on proprietary software. I'm as happy as the next guy to make use of Open Source software, but it either works for me (no money necessary) or it doesn't (in which case I'll spend the money, with, you know, an actual business...) Ok, cynic mode off, but let's be honest - there's a new "solution" to this problem like every other week. They all want to funnel money between the mythical person who wants to pay, to the mythical developer who wants to receive. All the other methods have failed, but apparently the problem is not the lack of people _willing_ to pay, but the fact that it's "too hard to pay"? I gotta say, after all these attempts, you would think one of them would have succeeded, unless, perhaps, aside from a few anecdotes, the actual pool of payers doesn't exist. I wish you well, I really do, but I fear you're solving the wrong problem. Trouble is the right problem isn't solvable. But maybe, just maybe, if you solve the wrong problem enough, then maybe something of substance will happen. I could go on about how most OSS developers don't _want_ to be paid. Because getting paid tiny amounts is a hassle which exceeds the income. So sure, guarantee me 10K a month for more than a year, and maybe it's worth the effort of accounting, and taxes, and obligations, and deadlines, and people complaining after the fact, before the fact, during the fact. But for a few hundred $ here and there - pass... Cynic mode back on - another month, another startup planning to solve this "problem". Good luck!

jph 3y ago

I'm your target and I don't exactly understand what you're writing. For example, I want to donate $100 toward Rust Rocket version 1.0.0. Can Polar help with this goal? If so, what's my next step?

birk 3y ago
Sorry about that, but happy to clarify anything. You can pledge behind any open source issue that's on GitHub today. Just simply need to replace github.com in the URL with polar.sh or goto polar.new and drop the link. We'll then reach out to the maintainers if they're not on the platform. Will soon ship so that an automatic comment is made (once). We don't want to create spam in the issues.
- tomcam 3y ago
  I really wish that had been, say, within the first 3000 words of the homepage. In fact, I think they would make a perfect lead. I literally had to go to the comments, page here to understand what was going on.
  - birk 3y ago
    Great feedback, I really appreciate it! Will definitely fix

mustache_kimono 3y ago

This may sound crazy, but I think the right model for open source funding is charging for updates. Red Hat has actually shown us the way. Developed world Ubuntu/Red Hat/SUSE users should pay $~20/year for access to all releases, $5 of which goes to the distro, $5 which goes to the base system/core utilities, and the rest should fund your particular OSS apps/frameworks/supporting apps running above the base layer. Yes, obviously donation/sponsorship doesn't work, but I'm not sure pay per issue resolved is the best model either. Good apps shouldn't be punished for having few issues, or needing few features. People should be able to opt in, but I think opting in at the distro level is the right choice as it would create a broad base of support. Of course, there will be those that don't want to pay, but I think a premium model for power users and enterprise customers makes sense. These premium users could have access to beta/nightly channels, early SRPMS/src debs, and priority or triaged issue/PR resolution? Are there issues to be resolved? Yes, of course. How to divide payments to apps, and within app communities, but these aren't insurmountable problems. Canonical, etc., could simply set standards and require app communities to explain any variance from those standards.

MildRant 3y ago
I have 0 doubt in my mind that it could cost 1 dollar and most people wouldn't pay.
- mustache_kimono 3y ago
  Which is entirely fair for some users who need less, but it would remove the talking point "We support OSS" while doing nothing. If "Google pays $25 million in OSS fees to...", we definitely know they care. "People won't pay" is absolutely fine for users who simply need a barebones systems and never need a priority ticket re a Postgres issue, or a priority update. I actually think its fine to create two classes of users -- those that pay a modest amount, and those that pay nothing. Perhaps the lesson is those that pay a modest amount get modestly more service, and those that pay nothing should have no expectations. Perhaps those persons who contribute to OSS or develop karma within OSS would receive a gratis memberships?
deleted 3y ago

traviswt 3y ago

Won't this just encourage maintainers to sit on issues... just waiting for the bounty to increase? They might even purposefully introduce painful but simple bugs just to push consumers to pay to have them fixed.

habosa 3y ago
Would be cool if bounties could have an expiration date. I’ll pay $100 if issue X is fixed by date Y. Probably more reflective of business value too, since if an issue isn’t fixed relatively quickly I’ll have to build my own workaround.
cuu508 3y ago
Another kind of problem would be when someone pledges a big sum for an obscure feature, a first-time contributor writes a (technically perfect) PR for it. Maintainer does not want to merge it, because the feature does not align with maintainer's project goals. But not merging will now look like a dick move, as it denies the PR author the compensation.
- rglullis 3y ago
  Then the payment can go to a fork. If the maintainer really wants to keep his vision for the project and others are literally voting with their wallets for something else, why would that be a problem?
- birk 3y ago
  With Polar today only the maintainer receives the pledges once an issue/feature is completed. However, we're working on the ability for maintainers to split that with any potential contributors. It's definitely an important feature and part of our model. Just something we decided to scope out from the initial launch – in the interest of launching early and building in public. An important distinction between Polar vs. traditional bounty services though and regarding your point is: Everything goes through the maintainer(s) and we're equipping them with the insights, capital and tools to reward their contributors. While bounty services allow anyone to post a bounty and anyone to pursue it. However, ultimately it needs to be reviewed, merged and maintained indefinitely by the maintainer(s). By ensuring it all flows via maintainer(s) it: 1. Rewards maintainers as well – key given their efforts 2.Guarantees maintainers are aligned & behind pledges first. Combined with in control on how to expose, delegate and reward it. Avoiding unnecessary friction, bad faith and overhead if such alignment is first made during PR.

brigadier132 3y ago

I have had situations where i wanted to use an open source tool that was somewhat obscure and i would have paid $300-400 an hour for consulting from the maintainers/creators and could not get in contact with anyone. So if you create open source software i recommend posting a link to a consulting business with some minimum price that you are satisfied with, even if its something like $1k an hour.

mschuster91 3y ago
Been on both sides of that end, the problem is that especially outside of the US offering paid services comes with some serious challenges on its own: - registering a business entity costs money and (especially in dysfunctional bureaucratic hellholes) time - you can be held completely liable for whatever you offer if you don't take excruciating care with the legalese fineprint - it's a complete nightmare on tax filings (e.g. in Germany you can't have your taxes handled by Lohnsteuervereine if you have a side business, i.e. income from sources other than regular employment) - you often lose anonymity because PayPal discloses your real name to everyone knowing your email address, or SEPA payments requiring your name - people can and will fuck with you just because they can or because they hate you for whatever reason. Anything from mass reporting you to Paypal over death threats to outright SWATting you.
- artdigital 3y ago
  You don’t need to register a business for a bit of side money. Even in Germany, you don’t need to register as “eingetragener Kaufmann” unless it’s, you know, actually a proper side business and ticks some criteria. Going down that road, there’s heaps of people doing consulting as sole proprietor (or e.K. In Germany) without getting sued or stuck in tax hell I think you’re looking at things a bit too pessimistic here
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > Even in Germany, you don’t need to register as “eingetragener Kaufmann” unless it’s, you know, actually a proper side business and ticks some criteria. You absolutely can do a Gewerbeanmeldung. The problem is, without a Kapitalgesellschaft ("Mini GmbH" and similar), you're fucked liability-wise. Your entire private assets can be taken if you end up bankrupt.

password4321 3y ago

So a VC-funded company expected to produce unicorn returns is going to accomplish this when non-profits haven't? It doesn't seem logical but I hope someone can pull it off! I would like to learn more about the background of the founders - what they've already done in any way related to this. Why does Polar have a chance?

mustache_kimono 3y ago
> So a VC-funded company expected to produce unicorn returns is going to accomplish this when non-profits haven't? Business accomplishes something non-profits haven't isn't exactly a stop the presses event?
- password4321 3y ago
  I clearly failed to sufficiently emphasize the VC unicorn part enough, my bad. Polar is a Stripe/Square for GitHub issues, expected to charge enough fees to pay for a portfolio of failed startups and still make their investors money.
  - bogwog 3y ago
    I wonder what enshitification will look like if this business survives? Higher fees, something to do with advertising, crypto/NFT bullshit, garden walling/API restrictions, etc... History has shown these types of things are 100% inevitable with these types of businesses if they manage to survive, so it's smart to think about them well in advance and have an exit strategy if you decide to depend on them.
    - birk 3y ago
      Answered another comment re: enshitification here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36755232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36755232
  - mustache_kimono 3y ago
    I think this is a fair critique. I have my own -- "This is why this won't work..." take, and I must admit that it's a VC funded startup does make this seem less viable. It's only that I think exactly the same re: FOSS non-profits.

jph 3y ago

If anyone wants to see Polar in action on a GitHub issue, I'm experimenting with Polar on my Architecture Decision Record repo: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/architecture-decision-record/issues/51 https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/architecture-decision... (I'm on the fence about the value of Polar for this kind of issue... see what you think)

birk 3y ago
That's awesome and thanks for sharing @jph! I'd love to hear your feedback and how we can make Polar better for you. I'm always available to chat. @birk (twitter), birk [at] polar.sh or on our Discord.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

dboreham 3y ago

Fix an unfixable thing? Edit: to expand -- these initiatives seem to always be cooked up by people who do not write software, don't fix bugs, don't hire software developers. They never work because adding a feature to a product or fixing a bug isn't a commodity item that you can just buy with a click and spread cost between many parties. The result is that most of the prospective purchasers end up having an easier path to get what they want, which is to fork and fix themselves (usually via in-house devs already on staff).

vendiddy 3y ago

I will on occasion email an OSS maintainer offering to pay for some improvement or consulting. But I don't do this often because of the friction. In other I can't even find their email, but then it feels awkward to publicly post this in a GH issue.

birk 3y ago
Completely agree. I've run into this many times too and having talked with a lot of companies, I know the same is true for a lot of them. As Polar removes the friction here, it will hopefully accelerate our ability to sponsor such efforts

posnet 3y ago

I was very confused, I thought this was about the polars, data science/data analytics toolkit. I know names are hard, but maybe pick something more distinct.

fizzynut 3y ago

Interesting idea, A small but impactful change I would make would be to change dollar amounts into tokens. e.g. 1 token = $50. A company might want to buy 1000 tokens and allocate tokens individually to specific issues, but they also might want to put tokens in a pot the maintainer can access to "spend" on issues they want to prioritise for the project or allow them to "spend" tokens at a specific rate, etc. It also means that money is committed upfront by the companies, i.e. the money is real and exists, has been set aside for this thing and in case of a dispute polar can make decisions, etc

birk 3y ago
Thank you! Excellent feedback and completely aligned with the intent here. > It also means that money is committed upfront by the companies, i.e. the money is real and exists, has been set aside for this thing and in case of a dispute polar can make decisions, etc Glad to say, that's how it works already. A pledge is paid upfront and the capital resides within the Polar platform account with Stripe until the issue is marked completed. Then it's transferred to the maintainer minus fees (10%). Or refunded to the backer after 6 months (a timeframe we'll experiment with). We're going to build a "Polar balance" so individuals or companies can top-up their account, automatically disperse it etc too. So the only question is whether it needs to be abstracted into a "token" concept or can simply continue to be $ upfront. Definitely some advantages and opportunities with "token" vs. money though. Just a bit mindful of the associations people have with "token" specifically from the crypto world. > they also might want to put tokens in a pot the maintainer can access to "spend" on issues they want to prioritise for the project or allow them to "spend" tokens at a specific rate Love this! https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/858 https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/858

RobotToaster 3y ago

>Premium access. Educational material Arguably, putting a restrictive licence on manuals makes something not free software https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html

yoavm 3y ago

I'm sorry, but I would never give money to an open-source project through a VC-backed company that takes a 10% commission. I could maybe live with it if it was 0.5%, but heck I'll just find the maintainer and wire them the money somehow. Github Sponsorship takes 0% from private accounts. I could very much be wrong about this, but the whole thing feels like it's coming from the perspective of someone thinking "I've heard about OSS, let's see how I can monetize it", rather than "I've participated in the OSS world for a long time, and I have an idea that can improve it".

skrebbel 3y ago
It’s not about giving money, it’s about buying features, services and support from the maintainers.
- biscuitech 3y ago
  Doesn't open collective already do this though? You can fund specific goals iirc.
  - skrebbel 3y ago
    Sure but to my reading Polar has a much stronger “help maintainers become entrepreneurs” angle which seems like a novel approach to me.
charcircuit 3y ago
You can make more money on a platform that has a higher fee if that platform has a better brand, has less friction, has more users, is easier to setup, etc.
- reaperman 3y ago
  Yeah but 10% is still very greedy, assuming they become the dominant platform for this. And if they don't become the big platform for this then they aren't adding the value which justifies 10% anyways.

rglullis 3y ago

Now that the company is funded, are you hiring? I'd love to work for a company that has the sole goal of making FOSS sustainable, I even wrote a bit about it here: https://raphael.lullis.net/open-source-funding/ https://raphael.lullis.net/open-source-funding/

birk 3y ago
Really liked the blog and this article too https://raphael.lullis.net/can-foss-eat-the-world/ https://raphael.lullis.net/can-foss-eat-the-world/ Lot of overlap :-) Would be great to connect. Just hired for the open role we had, but we’ll grow more. You can reach me at birk[at]polar.sh

ushakov 3y ago

Why would I use this instead of the usual ways (GitHub Sponsors, PayPal, Patreon, OpenCollective)?

toyg 3y ago
From what I understand, Github Sponsors is not granular: you either subscribe to a project or you don't. Polar seems to allow for issue-specific funding and other more granular bits.

tibor_a 3y ago

We did this in 2010 :). In the years since there has been many similar attempts. This one, however, seems to have all the important things right. Congrats for the funding and good luck!

birk 3y ago
Thank you! If you are who I think you are we’re already connected, but otherwise I’d love to chat: birk[at]polar.sh

toyg 3y ago

Props for trying, the software world needs something like this. However, I don't see how this is not fundamentally just a Github feature. They don't have it now, but if Polar gets any traction, they'll implement it pretty swiftly and probably eat your lunch.

api 3y ago
Does MS want to incentivize really professional polished open source? This is such a no-brainer thing for GitHub to do, I've really wondered why they never did it. It'd also be an obvious thing for Patreon to consider getting into, though it's maybe outside their core expertise.
birk 3y ago
Thanks toyg! Re: GitHub, I answered another comment on this note here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36736826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36736826

mintone 3y ago

Great to see more in this space. We've been working on the same problem with https://www.ringerhq.com https://www.ringerhq.com for the past ~year and have seen great success with specific projects. We're changing our approach slightly to give contributors and maintainers more tools after receiving feedback on specific features. If I can reiterate one piece of advice: listen to the community!

birk 3y ago
Big fan of what you're building with Ringer. Would love to chat more if you're interested. You can reach me at birk [at] polar.sh

woodruffw 3y ago

I’m glad to see more people tackle the problem of open source funding; at the same time, I’m not convinced that adding VC money to the problem makes things any better. There’s a secret third thing that never seems to get mentioned: not pittances through donations and not speculative investment from VCs, but plain old paid engineering. Most open source maintainers don’t want to be “entrepreneurs”; they just want to be paid an (approximately) fair rate for their time. Hiring them (or paying them for consultation time) achieves this.

birk 3y ago
I don’t think we’re in disagreement as it relates to getting maintainers better funding. We absolutely agree a core unlock there is to recognize the value-add services on top and being able to create services and subscriptions around those. Such as consulting, paid support etc. To subscriptions with premium content and more. We’ll provide all of the tools to make it easy, and it’s up for each maintainer to craft what suits them, their desires and community. I think we both agree this should exist and could be helpful to many maintainers who likely want it and would benefit from it? So re: VC. I simply wouldn’t be able to afford pursuing this platform without VC backing. Zero chance. It’s going to take a lot of time, people, lawyers, tax professionals, operations to sales and more to do right and world-wide. Not to mention, since it’s an unproven model in an ecosystem without much economic activity, it’s incredibly risky and will take time before it creates such an economy. To me that’s the beauty and hope VC brings. Supporting entirely new models, markets and innovations that take time to build. I love indie/bootstrapping, but it encourages working with incremental changes within existing & large markets because you need revenue to exist in large scale from Day 1 through which you can mine.

VoxPelli 3y ago

I think I prefer StackAid, it funds the entire chain of dependencies and doesn't lock anything down: https://www.stackaid.us/ https://www.stackaid.us/

birk 3y ago
Huge fan of StackAid! Glad you're using it! Just to clarify and out of curiosity, what do you mean with "doesn't lock anything down" in the context of StackAid vs. Polar?
- VoxPelli 3y ago
  It doesn’t paywall anything, you can’t say that only people who support you on StackAid gets A or B. (One idea I think we toyed with at Flattr, which was also a flat fee donation system, was to potentially enable people to lock something down on whether you donated to anything at all, but ultimately decided that the internet was meant to be opened and thus we added mechanisms to Flattr to make it really hard to abuse it as a paywall, which eg Germans loved but most Americans was really confused by )

bogwog 3y ago

This is interesting and I genuinely hope you succeed because OSS funding is important. I have some questions: 1. Can anybody place a bounty on any issue? That seems like it could take control away from the maintainer. Is there a way for a maintainer to reject an issue bounty, so they can keep control over the direction/architectural decisions of the project? 2. Could someone pledge money towards a milestone (e.g. the next major version) rather than specific issues? 3. Are you offering any kind of business support to maintainers, such as reaching out to business users on their behalf to negotiate a sponsorship/support contract/bounty/etc? The sales part of all of this seems like it's the biggest challenge for OSS projects where it's just a few engineers who don't have the time or skill to do sales.

birk 3y ago
Fantastic questions & feedback – thank you @bogwog! 1. Yes they can, but they remain anonymous and private only for the maintainer to see and take action on. Currently, we don't have automation for explicit rejection/approval, but something we want to add. Completely agree re: maintainer control – it's a core principle of ours. 2. Not today, but I absolutely love this idea. Added it to the backlog: https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/855 https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/855 3. Agree. We have a lot of plans here for the future. Definitely think this is a huge opportunity long-term.

homanp 3y ago

Flawless execution

laurent123456 3y ago

What's different from the other crowdsourcing platforms for open source?

birk 3y ago
I answered this thread on the topic the other day which hopefully clarifies: https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/391#discussioncomment-6436312 https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/391#discussi...

ducktective 3y ago

Nice idea and good luck :) >Join our Discord to discuss ideas, early design proposals and upcoming features Yeah, no...disheartening to see this many FOSS developers opting for Discord for realtime chat.

doakes 3y ago
Why disheartening? What would you prefer?
- ducktective 3y ago
  It's a walled garden that was hostile to third-party clients from the start. It asks for phone number to sign up. The client is slow (both web version and electron version). Ghost notifications and spams in DM. No way to find channels to join. Matrix, IRC...at least set up a bridge to one if you are going Discord

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

https://ondsel.com/blog/software-bounties-are-a-dumb-idea/ https://ondsel.com/blog/software-bounties-are-a-dumb-idea/ Conclusion: > Bounties are a lousy foundation for sustainable development of large projects like FreeCAD. They typically represent a gross underestimation of real work required to solve a problem, commonly miss a bigger picture, and encourage worst software development practices. Growing larger is fun but also really overwhelming. Most ambitious projects that aim to stay afloat will have to experiment with different approaches to getting funded on a regular basis and come up with their own mix of solutions. It’s that or perish.

birk 3y ago
> will have to experiment with different approaches to getting funded on a regular basis and come up with their own mix of solutions Couldn't agree more. Sponsoring issues/features is our 1st offering with Polar, but our goal with v1.0 is to have a suite of add-on services that maintainers can sell on-demand or as part of a subscription. We started with issues/features since they're universal to all open source initiatives and where demand is first represented & communicated most often today. Lots of challenges to solve there too be sure, but solvable.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ThinkBeat 3y ago

(Old man rant) For fuck's sake. If I wanted to be a social media influencer, I'd be on Instagram / OnlyFans. If i wanted to spend my time "an entrepreneur with superpowers to convert the community into backers", I would be running a company / start up doing sales. I wish to write code. Some of that code is open source. Some of it I write because someone pays me to do so. I dont have to do any sales and that is fantastic. So far nobody has given me money for my open-source code and that is fine. I write my open-source tools because I admire those who came before me and all they have contributed to the world. It is a civic duty. They gave us operating systems, compilers, databases, libraries. When someone creates a new thing and its 90% derived from free tools with a bit of code sauce / UI on top it, call it open source and then run around wanting to get paid for it they are in the wrong pasture. If you are wanting to make billions of dollars and you create some form of "open source" system but you get angry if someone uses it and does make money from it, you are in the wrong pasture. Contemplate Linux, (Open)*BSD, GNU tools, Postgres and everything open source you use to make your product and none of which you have paid for. Imagine if Theo had $1 for every OpenBSD install. (I love OpenBSD) Id owe him at least a few hundred dollars. On aggregate he would be at least a millionaire. For people who do want to inject money into open source that is great. Dont pick me. Pick projects that are vital in the stack and who are underfunded.

birk 3y ago
And I salute you for it, truly. Intent here is not for each commit across all of OSS to be paid for. Or that every maintainer has to charge for add-on services. Polar is designed for maintainers who either 1) spend an enormous amount of time in effectively unpaid support already or 2) want tooling to run an independent business around their OSS initiatives. It’s not designed for everyone and you opt-in to use it (as maintainers, contributors or backers). To me that’s the core trait of OSS: Freedom. Today, I don’t think maintainers have that freedom to easily pursue an independent business or get paid for support towards businesses without an insane amount of unnecessary overhead. That’s what we aim to change for those who seek it.

XCSme 3y ago

> our $1.8M pre-seed round to help us pursue our mission of expanding the open source economy $1.8M VC funding for what?