Sponsoring Open Source Developers (2020)

Props to Rich Hickey and Co.

After 20 years of maintaining open source software on multiple projects and getting $0 dollars of support I applaud the attempt to reward these professionals.

Building and maintaining "personal infrastructure" to do open source "at scale" is expensive in time (github, continuous testing, test suites, pull requests, email, DMs, phone support, etc.) and equipment (development computer, router, network connection, AWS, backups, etc.)

In addition, if your project gains traction you'll get invited to give talks. These can sometimes be overseas (yeah, I know, nobody travels anymore). The time to prepare a talk and the travel cost is another personal expense. The most I ever got from a talk was a free hoodie. But I paid for the round-trip airfare, rental car, 3 days at a hotel, and most of my meals.

On the project I've maintained for the last 20 years I estimate that I've spent about $3000 per year. That should be the "baseline" for supporting an open source project.

I've looked at a lot of funding sources (govt grants, company grants, contribution "buckets", charity organizations, crowd funding, google summer of code, etc.)

One key problem is the need for "fiducial oversight". That is, a grant organization needs to know there is a professional accountant who manages the funds and receipts.

Rich Hickey can do the open source world a favor by sponsoring a couple full-time funds management "fiducial oversight" professionals (aka an accounting firm). These 2 or 3 accountants could handle grant fund management for a large range of open source projects.

Block grants could be given and distributed to multiple open source projects based on their grant proposals.

Universities have this. The only grant I got was at a university. The provost took about 55% "for support" but I did get my research funded.

Perhaps somebody who knows somebody who knows Rich could pass this along.