The Open Source 5%
Was thinking about the WordPress fiasco (I mentioned over at incorporated yesterday) and it bothers me that the people doing and providing these amazing things aren’t able to support themselves financially (so you get this kind of event).
I get Douglas Campbell when he says:
“WordPress has never bought me lunch. Ping-O-Matic has never paid for my family to go to a Saturday matinee. Not one user of WordPress, Ping-O-Matic, or any other open project that I’ve participated in has ever utilized my Donation Page to send me money or a wishlist item”
So, what I’m thinking is that for each $ IncSub makes for hosting or my consulting that draws on open source, I think it’d be reasonable to pass on 5% to the open source projects which they draw on (that’d be mostly WordPress & Drupal at the moment).
A few questions. Is this a reasonable amount? Do you think that ‘the open source 5%’ could catch on? Shall I make a badge :o)
April 1st, 2005 at 6:23 pm
Surely you aren’t thinking of charging your clients if you are using open source software in your hosting or consulting business. If you expect software devlopers to provide their ip, skills and time for nothing what makes you think you can then use it to make a personal profit.
Surely all of your ideas and advice should be freely available to anyone that wants them.
P.S. As an academic advocate of open source I presume you don’t mind people plagiarising your work.
April 1st, 2005 at 7:09 pm
Um, because the license says I can, doesn’t it?
A lot of my ideas / advice is free, some of it isn’t.. I imagine that most os developers work on that kind of basis, but I could be wrong.
I guess my question to you would be whether there are any examples of revenue / payment models in the os movement which you think are reasonable… is something like the 5% I suggested reasonable? I dunno… how much do developers see of the final $ in a consultancy model where it’s not os, I haven’t worked there but evidently you do.
Not too sure I would be that distressed if people started plagiarising my work either, but that’s another post.
April 1st, 2005 at 8:02 pm
Not sure if a percentage model is best. You are supporting the OS commons in your own way, as are many other developers. If you want to donate money, that’s great but not necessary, IMO.
What I find essential about OS is that we are all working in own way to create a common good, but you don’t make money from the commons. You make money by developing a business at the edge of the commons, and this takes not only intelligence and creativity, but some business sense and luck. OS is altruistic because you don’t have a real return on investment for your time & effort. I think that it should stay that way.
However, as Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/01/the_google_watc.html) says:
1. Running a successful open source effort is a great idea. I can’t think of an individual who has invested the time and not had a great personal outcome as well …
The ultimate lesson keeps getting repeated but it’s almost impossible for publishers, advertisers, media companies and especially individuals to understand:
The more you give away, the more you get.
April 2nd, 2005 at 12:41 am
“N or is it M”: There is nothing wrong with charging for your services and knowledge while using open source software. RedHat and Sendmail are just two examples of successful companies based on adding value-added services around OSS. The company I work for in my day job uses Perl, Apache, Squid, and a bunch of other open source projects to create a set of services. We aren’t selling the software, we’re selling our expertise in how to make these things work together to accomplish a very specialized type of service.
James: I think any amount you’re willing to contribute would be appropriate.
April 2nd, 2005 at 4:08 am
I think it’s a great idea. Maybe this will simply become good business ethics in the future and not something seen as irrational philanthropy.
April 2nd, 2005 at 10:33 am
Hmmmmm… Harold I get where you’re coming from, you do get back what you give and more, the art of being a Mensch right :)
Oh, and Buddhist dharma.
Maybe I should give clients the option of whether they would like 5% of their fees to go to OS? In a way I guess I’m talking about the ethics that Kirk mentioned… plus I’m a pretty bad donator :o) I’ll give when asked but generally not out of the blue and hence having some sort of fixed structure which regulates me will make me feel happier with myself.
Maybe OS stuff should have charitable status too… taxwise.
But I have to admit that I see something in what you say about altruism, the commons and keeping it that way. This is worth thinking about more. Would really appreciate any more discussion on this.
Cheers, James
April 2nd, 2005 at 10:36 am
I think it’s the right thing to do if you are making money from the use of open source software. If you only use a small number of open source products it’s probably easy.
A while ago I started a list of all the open source software that I have used, with the intent of putting up a thank you page (not done yet) and making a donation or two. That list is still growing - Linux, software languages, software libraries, applications, etc - and I still haven’t decided which projects to donate to.
One thing that would help me make such decisions is a clear statement from each open source project that specifies who receives the donations and how the money is used. I’d be more likely to donate if a project states something like “donations are received by non-profit organisation XYZ and are used to pay hosting and bandwidth costs” compared to a project that give me no infomation.
May 7th, 2005 at 12:50 am
I remember a movement to use an email signature with a link to a donation page in some free software support lists. The signature said something like Did you find this information helpful? Click here to donate to a free software project. On the page you’d see a list of projects the author wanted to support and the user could donate $x and choose a single project or divide the $ among several. I can’t remember what it was called and a quick google was unfruitful.
@ N or is it M: there are tons of people making money from free software; the web basiclly runs on it: Apache, php, perl, mySQL, sendmail, postfix, qmail, exim, squirrellmail. My school recently paid to have some folks from Canada come down to set up our email system using free software (spamassassin, postfix, spamity etc.). The GPL and similar licensees are not about restriction but rather freedom. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.
“Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price isn’t more free, or closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.
“Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to the Free Software Foundation or some other free software development project. By funding development, you can advance the world of free software.”