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Comment by throwawaaarrgh | Hacker News Reader

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. But why $20k? It's obviously not a salary... It could pay for infrastructure if a project needed it, but if the project doesn't... I'm having a hard time understanding how it helps sustain the project. I personally wouldn't do both a full time job and work on an OSS project in all my spare time, for the money. If I really need that project I'm gonna do it regardless, and if I don't need that project, sacrificing all my free time isn't worth $20k.

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It definitely depends on the maturity of the project and the country you live in.

I was selected to be part of this first cohort with Mockoon. I'm from Luxembourg, so 20k is surely not a life changing amount of money. However, I quit my job two years ago to focus full-time on it. I think that I can make a living (probably a mix of paid services and sponsoring) while keeping the app open-source. But it's a long hard road and I am freelancing on the side which gave me the right balance but not complete peace of mind, financially speaking. So, while it's not a life changing amount, it will buy me some precious time. I also feel really motivated by this awesome recognition (after 5 years of work on this project) and I am looking forward the 10 weeks of coaching. So, all in all, it's a bit of a life changing event for me :)

(Edited a bit for clarity)

Congratulations! I hope it turns into a great experience for you.

Thank you :)

I maintain one of the selected projects. $20k means that I can focus on the project without taking any freelance work on the side for a while. Hopefully making the project more attractive to sponsors, hopefully snowballing into more OSS and less freelance.

By the way, https://github.com/sponsors/code-hike/

$20k for 10 weeks of work seems like a good deal. It’s only 10 weeks so you can’t just quit your job; but if you are in between jobs, can go on leave, or (most likely case) work part-time and just don’t get paid enough, it’s a big help. And it’s certainly better than nothing which is what most OSS devs get unfortunately

I view the money as a nice-to-have bonus. The big benefits of the program are:

- validation by Github of your open source project

- the signal boost associated w/ that validation

- the actual content of the course (licensing, managing issues, etc.)

- meeting other open source people to discuss what is working and what isn't

20k is nothing to sneeze at, but, as you say, most people aren't in the open source game for the money...

FWIW, we (Dioxus) are using the $20K to fund an internship for one of our contributors. We're hoping the program will act like VC funding (marketing, really) and help us unlock larger corporate sponsorships.

[1] http://github.com/dioxusLabs/dioxus

Because it's just 10 weeks. It's very clearly not a "salary" (as "salary" is usually measured by years), but more like a contracted work that lasts 10 weeks. $20k is more than most jobs posted on Upworks (etc).

(Yearly salary seems to me to be a US thing. Maybe it's an Anglophone thing?)

It'd depend on several factors, won't it? Those who are already working on OSS projects have found their balance (or willing to work despite challenges). This amount might make small or big difference for them. You should also consider that how much this is worth will depend on where they live too (for example, my yearly expense is less than $2000).

Depends on the country of stay. If you are in Pakistan or India then those 20k is quite a lot. Not so much in Italy or Spain.

20k for 10 weeks is a pretty decent salary, even in the EU. Might not be super competitive for short term work but it's definitely enough to live on in most places.

Even in most (all?) Mediterranean countries, 2000/week is pretty good pay, would work out to 8000/month, which is on the upper-end when it comes to writing code for the usual web stuff. Pair it with that you get to work on FOSS, I'm having a hard time imagining a similar position with similar pay.

Middle income is $10-$20 per day[1]. $2k per week = $400 per day = 20x - 40x middle income. Minus taxes. And I guess you need to factor in that the figure includes people who are not employed. But still should leave you in the ~10x group.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2015/07/08/a-global-middl...

Finally, software engineers can break out of the $10-20 per day income bracket!

Yeah that's not a lot of runway. But it could be reasonable for a student or for someone living in a low cost of living location. Or if you have savings from your job and just need a little boost to get started. Or if you're okay with living frugally, which seems to be how people like Andreas Kling or Andrew Kelley get by. But yeah it's not really a sustainable model.

I'd say this is more about positioning themselves as "someone who cares about open source" more than anything else.

Their main product is proprietary, and they have a looong history of vendor lock-in and anti-competitiveness (including: Extend, Embrace, Extinguish). Giving out these grants lets them present themselves as someone who cares and funds open source, even if their core business stands strongly against it.

Perhaps people in tech mostly now GitHub's and MicroSoft's reputation. But if says "we love open source and even give out grants", its easy to understand why legislators would believe that both parts of the statement to be true.

> But why $20k?

One side note, is that it appears to be $20k per maintainer vs per project.

From the post:

> GitHub Accelerator is a 10-week program where open source maintainers receive an initial sponsorship of $20K to work on their project ...

> The 2023 cohort has 20 projects, with 32 participants ...

As others have noted, it's not a lot of runway, but maybe enough to not have to freelance on the side and that full-time focus for 3 months could be enough to snowball into a full-time "ramen-profitable" business (maybe). It'll be interesting to see how the first cohort plays out.

No, it appears to be $20k per project, as per https://accelerator.github.com/#faq --

"$20,000 stipend per project ($2,000 per week of participation) for the duration of the 10 week program. If there are multiple participants from a project, the stipend is divided evenly between them."

Thanks for catching this... that's a bummer.

dropping work for three months for a $n fellowship is the same thing as switching to a $4n job without benefits that you know will fire you in three months. $20k is not enough for that sort of thing

Probably the cheapest way to advertise and build goodwill.

Don't forget that GitHub belongs to Microsoft. This is yet another attempt at controlling the OSS world.

(Not to mention control developer salaries.)

A rain of silent downvotes, how interesting...

$20k is one or two weeks in a HFT sweatshop vs. trading your project/dignity into M$?

Not seeing the value prop from GitHub here.

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