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Segment Open Fellowship

segment.com

119 pointsfouadmatin11 comments

I think it's great that Segment is doing this, but I wonder: Is this the best way to pay people to work on open source software?

I very rarely see high quality open source software produced by people who are unemployed, and I don't know how many people would want to give up a well-paying job for a three-month stint as an open source fellow. Taking a leave of absence from your job to do this? Maybe, but three months seems like the worst possible duration -- long enough that you have to hand everything off to someone else, but short enough that the transition time is burdensome. This might work well for independent consultants, but that's about it as far as I can see.

It seems to me that a better approach might be some sort of part-time arrangement, allowing developers to stay at their existing employers on reduced hours -- almost like an open source software version of the flexible arrangements many companies make for new parents. The open source community would benefit by having a developer who has hours dedicated to the project; the employer would benefit by (a) keeping their employee and (b) probably making use of the software in question; and Segment would benefit by spending less per developer funded.

Hey Colin! That's something we went back & forth on for a while. We're not convinced this model is the right one but seems to be the most effective duration for us to run this experiment.

The primary concern is how expectations are communicated so that all parties (fellow, employer & Segment) are all on the same page about what work is getting done, when. Definitely not saying this isn't solvable problem but for our first fellowship, we wanted to focus on running the program & supporting a handful of fellows. I'd love any suggestions you/others have around different formats for the program we could try, feel free to comment here or send me an email fouad@segment.com!

Hey there! Fouad here, from Segment. We're really excited to share the fellowship with everyone and hear about people's projects.

If you have any questions/ideas, please feel free to leave a comment here & I'll be around to respond :)

We rely heavily on open-source software at Pavlov and contributing back to the community is core to our DNA.

I’m really excited to see similar efforts by companies like Segment, Stripe, and OpenAI that are devloping a strong brand around engineering culture / OSS.

Totally - I think we all stand on the shoulders of giants, easy to take for granted all the hard work put into OSS. I love the conscious effort to give back!

I'm not familiar with Pavlov. Are you guys doing a similar program and how has it worked out so far?

I run a company called Pavlok and I'm curious about your company :)

> Today we’re proud to announce the Segment Open Fellowship. The Fellowship is a three month long program supporting three to five open-source developers with $8k per month to focus full-time on their project, no other strings attached.

For $1K more this could be reworded to sound even bigger. Make it $25K (3 x $8K + 1) and eliminate the time period. Depending on the tax ramifications a frugal developer could stretch that out for well beyond 3-months[1].

That aside it's great to see more companies doing this. Kudos Segment!

[1]: Though the on-site piece should probably have a time limit. Can't have stragglers hanging around forever...

Oh cool idea koolba -- Yeah, part of the goal of not having an "onsite restriction" is to defer to fellows on how their funds could be best spent (and where). Will keep this in mind for the future!

I interpreted it to be flexible this way too, although the funding could go further than 3 months outside of the bay area. I'm looking forward to seeing what types of projects they pick and if the focus is on more up-and-coming or already established projects.

I think it'd be awesome to have something like create-react-app for every framework. It'd help improve accessibility of new tech to beginner devs so much, and indirectly support diversity efforts in tech.

Segment is an awesome company, and it's great to see them being a benevolent actor in the community. I can certainly see them becoming another Stripe in the sense of technical excellent.

In some ways they're somewhat similar. They're all very smart, young founders that have taken an idea that's traditionally owned either by large, non-cooperative organizations or require in-house development and put it behind an API.

I'm looking forward to seeing them grow.

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