Other ideas we could experiment with

[mixmix]

This first incarnation was an experiment. The plan is to iterate, and try different things in practice to see what works and doesn't.

What should we try next? A slight tweak of this model, a change to something quite different?

You can contribute to this thread by offering things like :
✔️ actionable ideas to try (most useful if it includes detail about who would implement it, and how)
✔️ links to other experiments (prior or ongoing)
✔️ offers of support around experiments
- e.g. use funding and using it in a project you maintain
- offers of support from people with resources (contacts, money, time) they'd like to go to support open-source

This is not a thread about :
❌ volunteering as a solution

See also Discusssion threads - topics like Probems with FOSS, Dreaming about the future of FOSS, how to evaluate experiments

[traverseda]

If you don't feel like this is something you can do without funding you could find a maintainer who is interested in doing this on a volunteer basis.

[tedivm]

Many projects exist without funding- I maintain a variety of projects (including some with millions of downloads) and up until two months ago (when I joined Tidelift, who now gives me $100 a month) had not received any payment. Open source doesn't need to have a business model.

That being said, any method of funding that people should go with should be able to scale beyond a single project without causing issues.

[traverseda]

My comment is not off-topic. It is a legitimate suggestion for solving the problem you're having.

It might be a good idea for you to appoint a neutral third-party to moderate this discussion. I am particularly unimpressed that you edited the original-post in order to make my point off-topic, especially without any sort of comment. That makes me look like I'm intentionally derailing, but when I posted that comment it was perfectly in-line with what you were looking for.

[mixmix]

no offense meant. fair call about the edit.
It occurred to me after the fact that it was obvious to me (but perhaps not to you) that we're looking for alternative experiments in the context of resourcing + funding. Doing free work is something we already do and is not novel at all <3

[traverseda]

That last comment was off-topic, I once again asked why you don't hand the repository over to someone who's willing to do it on a volunteer basis. I'd still like to know the answer to that, but I don't think it's worth making a whole new issue over.

I think it would be better to mark it off topic then to delete it.

[feross]

The goal of this experiment wasn't to see if we could find volunteers to become maintainers (the answer to that question is obvious). Rather, the goal was to see if we could start to change the dynamic between maintainers and open source consumers.

I'm happy to keep maintaining StandardJS. But I would like to see a shift in the way that we do open source and I'm willing to take a bit of heat personally in order to explore potential solutions.

I’m curious to explore the question: what if anyone could make a living working on open source without needing to be super lucky like me? How much healthier and vibrant would the ecosystem be? How many more new folks could start to participate? What if someone new to open source could adopt an abandoned package, quickly run npm install funding, and start earning money for maintaining a package? How many more people would be able to join in the fun and opportunity of OSS?

Do you see how "handing over the package to a volunteer" would answer none of my questions?

[traverseda]

That's a laudable goal, it would be great if anyone could make money maintaining open-source.

What I don't understand is how you thought that this would get us anywhere closer to that world. How did you imagine this working, best case scenario? Why did you think this would get us anywhere closer to that goal? Who do you imagine would be buying advertisements at enough scale to make this viable as anything other then something that makes you a quick buck?

I'm just having a hard time connecting your actions to what you say your motivations are, so maybe you can walk me through that?

[simonwep]

@mixmix you should really take a look at this reddit thread.

[feross]

How did you imagine this working, best case scenario?

This experiment is likely not going to be the ultimate solution to the open source sustainability problem. However, if everything goes perfectly, here's what I'd want. A maintainer will be able to npm install funding into their project and start receiving money for their maintenance work. Now, formerly abandoned packages suddenly have a monetary value and, therefore, a reason to be maintained. Bug fixes, security fixes, etc. now will not be ignored. Open source packages will be healthier. Folks who want to quit their job to work full-time on open source now have a means to do so. More quality open source code is written and released. Folks who provide way more value to the world by writing open source code instead of proprietary code are now able to do open source full time. We all win.

As more folks add funding, many copies of it may end up in a dependency tree. That's fine. Only one message is ever printed out (this package de-dupes the messages). As more maintainers join, more messages are shown, but the total sponsor income must be split among more maintainers. We'd have to see how this played out as no one knows the value of a sponsor message in the terminal (this has never been tried before). There's a chance this makes maintainers a really nice living, or it ends up just being more akin to a "basic income". I don't know how it would play it. That's why this is an experiment.

Who do you imagine would be buying advertisements at enough scale to make this viable as anything other then something that makes you a quick buck?

There are plenty of sponsors who want to get their message in front of developers. Have you ever listened to a developer podcast like The Changelog? Companies pay a pretty penny to get their message in front of devs there. There are plenty of examples of demand from the sponsor side including the companies who use CodeFund, CarbonAds, or ReadTheDocs.

I don't know if you're even a user of StandardJS or what brought you to this issue, but if you're familiar with my work at all, you'll know that I've given away nearly all the code I've written in my lifetime and never expected a payment in return. This isn't about making a quick buck. This is about challenging the assumptions of open source consumers. This is about pushing back on the entitlement to free labor that is pervasive in GitHub issues all across this site.

[traverseda]

I'm not a user of standardJs, I arrived here after seeing this on hackernews, and wanted to push back on this lest my terminal become infected by the toxic advertising industry and the constant need to monetize every aspect of our lives.

but if you're familiar with my work at all, you'll know that I've given away nearly all the code I've written in my lifetime and never expected a payment in return.

I'm not familiar with your work, but the first uncharitable glance (and the context of a bunch of angry redditors) does not look great.

I realize that all this negativity can very easily get you down, and I'm just sharing my impression of the situation. If you want me not too, I'll gladly disengage, but I'm hopeful that by sharing my impression you can either fix some of these issues, or better present yourself so it's harder to make this kind of misunderstanding about your character.

This is about pushing back on the entitlement to free labor that is pervasive in GitHub issues all across this site.

Your choosing the name "standardJs", which seems like you're trying to trick users into thinking that your linter configuration is somehow official. Calling your linter configuration the "JavaScript Standard Style" seems at best very arrogant.

It seems like you've done a bunch of self-promotion in order to get your "standard style" as widely used as you could.

Then you decided to monetize it. To me that's not an issues of people feeling entitled to free labour, to me that seems like you tried to put yourself into a position where you're indispensable to a bunch of people's workflows, and then once you were firmly embedded you started trying to extract value from people.

The combination of questionable self-promotion in order to get this kind of workload and then complaining that nobody is paying you to do this work does not garner much sympathy. Especially when there are some great alternative that people do get paid to work on. I hear good things about airbnb's eslint config.

[feross]

If you want me not too, I'll gladly disengage

Please do.

I'm not interested in re-litigating the naming of StandardJS – there are plenty of issues about this topic on the issue tracker already. Your post also makes a lot of uncharitable assumptions about my motives that feel mean-spirited in nature.

[JD557]

Isn't this a problem that can be solved with a software license?

Maybe there's already one, but otherwise it should be possible to create one to address such problems. I believe that some commercial game engines have (or had) similar licenses.

E.g. Distribute your code with a license that states:

1. Usage of this software is free for noncommercial, educational or commercial use for companies with less than N employees. Other uses require the acquisition of a commercial license (to acquire a commercial license, contact XXX@YYY.com).
2. The user is free to study how the program works and change it.
3. The user is free to redistribute copies of the software and copies of modified of this software. In both cases, the copies must be accompanied by this license file.

P.S.: IANAL, you should probably consult one to actually implement this.