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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

Paid consulting has always been a thing - the idea that's new here (I think) is encouraging companies to deliberately reach out to and book talks from maintainers who aren't good at marketing or selling their time - almost as an accounting hack to help get their company to send some money in the right direction.

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I don't think that's new either. Companies have always reached out to FLOSS maintainers for "pay for support" or "pay for work on feature X" arrangements - and video presentations about the software are a kind of support. It was common enough in the late 1990s that people would remark on it as an unexpected funding source for (otherwise hobbyist-driven) FLOSS development.

Sounds like we should try and turn it into an expected funding source instead then!

It also seems like a good way to get the OSS maintainer familiar with the company in case they ever wanted to have a more direct financial relationship

There used to be (maybe there still is) this kind of situation in the FreeBSD world. Employees became maintainers, maintainers were highly sought after as employees and lots of contracts were signed. It didn’t tick the gpl boxes, but there was a good and healthy dialog between the open and closed sourced worlds and a lot of the maintainers were able to make a good living.

This is 100% a simple, great idea.

What I like most about it is that it slots cleanly into the education budget bucket that is normally allocated at large corporates (atleast in my experience).

It would be a ton cheaper than what that usually ends up getting spent on (generally re:Invent tickets and expenses).

That's a great thought - I just added that to the post, thanks:

> Your company likely has an existing education budget which might be a good source of funds for this kind of engagement.

> What I like most about it is that it slots cleanly into the education budget bucket that is normally allocated at large corporates (atleast in my experience).

> It would be a ton cheaper than what that usually ends up getting spent on (generally RE:Invent tickets and expenses).

While this is true, keep in mind that you probably wouldn't get a ton of education for your money, and that's kind of by design: you're supporting the maintainer, not buying education.

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