Ask HN: A company wants to pay me to write open-source code | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: A company wants to pay me to write open-source code

8 pointsscottrogowski21 comments

Hi HN,

I wrote a moderately popular (800+ stars) open-source project on Github a few years ago. Recently, a startup contacted me because they want some additional features and want to pay me to build them. They are happy to keep all improvements I make as open-source. For me, this is a fantastic opportunity to improve my project for everyone while making a little bit of money.

They sent over a contracting agreement that won't work for what they are asking. Basically, it is designed for proprietary contracting work and has clauses referring to the "Assignment of Innovations", etc. To their credit, they themselves suggested that the contract was not good and that I send something over if I had a better one.

Well, I've scoured the internet and I can't find anything - but I'm also not a lawyer. What kind of contracts are available for this sort of work? I assume it's been done before.

In short, I'm looking for a contract that says something like:

1. Consultant will add agreed-upon features to the project

2. Company will pay consultant upon completion of features

3. Company agrees that the code will remain open-source and retains no ownership

4. No warranty is implied

Hello from the GitHub team! It sounds like GitHub Sponsors might be helpful for you here.

Companies and individuals can sponsor you for your work, and you can coordinate feature requests or ongoing support right on your repository.

Open Source Collective or Open Collective can be helpful in tandem with Sponsors if you don't want to set up your own business bank account or legal status.

Sponsors currently supports monthly recurring payments, and we're in the middle of a staged rollout for one-time payments. If that would be helpful for you here, feel free to email me bdresser@github.com and we can get you set up :)

Hey, have you looked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26293050 and https://twitter.com/rafaelcodes/status/1365795326418948097 ?

Asking developers to commit tax fraud is not cool.

Thanks! I did look into Github sponsors earlier and I believe I would need the one-time payments for something like this. I'll take another look tomorrow and might be reaching out.

Happy to help - email me: Andrew [at] Leahey.org

I worked like that for several years. It was perfect.

Take their contract and strike out all the wrong terms and conditions. Easier than coming up with your own. Their lawyers are probably completely incompetent. Coming to terms with them would be much easier with just striking out their wrongs. Eg they will certainly not agree on the general "Company agrees that the code will remain open-source and retains no ownership". They paid for so it's their copyright. But under your copyright terms. So they will get their copyright line added, but under a open source license.

Second, the here cited sponsor or bounty programs will not work good enough, compared to what the company offers you. Like factor 1000. Unless you got 100.000 stars and over 2.000 sponsors stay with the company offer.

This is one of the times when the value of fiscal sponsorship really shines. For example, if you sign up with Open Source Collective [1] (which I'm on the team of), we can form a contract with the payer and receive the funds, then distribute them to you as the maintainer.

We do this kind of thing all the time for projects under our umbrella. We have lawyers on tap and lots of experience in this area, and we take on all the responsibility for tax reporting, legals, compliance, banking, invoicing etc etc.

If your project has >100 stars you can set up a Collective instantly.

[1] https://oscollective.org

I took a look at your legalese https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQbiyK2Fe0jL...

And it looks like OSC only disburses money when it's a "valid expense" according to OSC and a 501c nonprofit. All extra money seems to be held in an account that OSC keeps the interest for, and funnels elsewhere upon termination of the agreement. So it seems that entering into an agreement with OSC involves losing control over who I can contract with, losing control over the donations and not having access to the money anymore except in very specific circumstances, and likely losing all of it should I decide to leave. On top of that, should I feel myself wronged by OSC, I essentially take on HUGE financial risk for legal action because you have a clause that the loser pays all fees of the winner (which basically means that the small guy loses always, because you can just drown him in paper until he gives up, broke, and then owes you hundreds of thousands on top of that to pay for your lawyers doing that to him - and you have a perverse incentive to do that because it will net you profit since your lawyers are in-house).

All of this is on top of the 10% fee you charge.

Interesting. I do like the idea of putting this out in the open for a bunch of different reasons.

You say that you can form a contract with the payer. I can't find anything mentioning that on your docs. Do you have the ability to make a contract which provides specific payments for different milestones?

When working on open source drivers for their chips Qualcomm solved that by internally moving employees to use Code Aurora [1], the employees used different emails when working with open source code

[1] https://www.codeaurora.org/

I can vouch for and.co, you as the contractor can crate a customized contracts which addresses most of your concerns. You can also add extra clauses just in case. If all parties are acting in good faith then the amendments/additions on the generated contract shouldn't need to be run through a lawyer

Do you know whether and.co has standard contracts / clauses for open source work? My concern is that open source would be legally tricky because of consideration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration). Essentially, they are getting nothing of value in exchange for giving me something.

I don't recall a specific template option for open source, however I have previously amended the contract to add a clause that any open source contributions I make in the course of a project will remain open source

I doubt the company will throw money to someone to write the code without any hint of residual rights.

Even if they're open source religious - still they want at least their name probably listed along the lines as a creators

I personally wouldn't have any issue listing the names of open source supporters. If anything, it adds a bit more legitimacy to my project so I would prefer it.

Saw Rudderstack doing this via GitHub Sponsors as a bounty program. Wonder if the open collective community might have something to share

Hello, Open Collective team member here!

We do have quite a few open source projects running bounty programs.

Here are some examples:

* https://www.jhipster.tech/bug-bounties/ * https://www.mautic.org/blog/community/funding-mautic-communi... * https://docs.opencollective.com/help/contributing/developmen...

You can connect your GitHub Sponsors to your Open Collective and use both channels to fundraise and resource bounty payments.

More on that here: https://docs.opencollective.com/help/collectives/github-spon...

A sponsorship / bounty program is an interesting train-of-thought. It certainly 'fits' into an open source ethos and might give the company the added benefit of positive marketing.

I just looked at the Github sponsors program and AFAICT, they only offer a recurring monthly plan which is probably not what either myself or the company are looking for. I'd be curious about more options though.

They have one time payments now

easy. speak to a lawyer

I did. They suggested I first try to find an existing template rather than paying to draft something new. Contracts can be subtly complicated and open source can make them more-so.

why don't you take a monetary contribution from company towards open source features under open source license. They would contribute per feature delivered based on a milestone plan you define. They have zero ownership, no contracts required, they get their features, while you have required monetary support. is that not the open source model? simplifies contracts( ie eliminates) as well.

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