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Comment by waltbosz | Hacker News Reader

Interesting post about Jellyfin's finances (2024)

https://opencollective.com/jellyfin/updates/were-good-seriou...

> We have quite a budget collected over the last 5 years, and while we're really happy to see so many in the Jellyfin community contribute to us, we want to ask you to stop! No, really. We don't actually need your money. At least, not here and now. We have over $24,000 in the bank, and with average monthly expenses of only ~$600, that's over 40 months (3.3 years) of runway! So, we have plenty of money for the near future ...

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Are they not paying themselves?

No.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-meta/blob/master/polici...

> Jellyfin funds itself exclusively from donations by individual users. It does not and will not accept any sponsorship or other monetary compensation in exchange for features, priority access, support, or any other work by the community.

They spend the donations on paying for hosting servers, etc. They don't pay anyone a salary.

Their post highlights that your favourite third party client can be different. If your third party client is made by someone who'll accept donations, you should donate to them to keep your client going.

Note that the lead dev of the official android clients does accept personal donations (via Github Sponsors and Buy Me A Coffee), but does not take requests on how to prioritize the work because he wants to keep it strictly as a hobby.

This is really the most healthy way to do things for small or medium-sized open source projects. Paying some people just creates and unnecessary hierarchy that is divorced from the how much they actually contribute to the project and can be an endless source for drama.

The genesis of jellyfin is as a fork of Emby by part of the developper who saw the need for finance of Emby to start driving choices being made in the project rather than user and technical needs and merits.

Part of the team needed it, part of it saw that as something that shouldn't go that way, so they did what you're supposed to do in open source and forked. Ergo they are very much against doing that for that specific project.

Or, you know, invest the money and try to become more self-sufficient over time, safeguarding development in the future.

I'm struggling to think of a use for the money that doesn't result in becoming dependent on the money and thus less self-sufficient long term. What did you have in mind with this comment?

Part of the team needed it, part of it saw that as something that shouldn't go that way, so they did what you're supposed to do in open source and forked.

So it's not really a surprise they don't go that way.

Classic HN user take. While $600 is obviously a pisspoor budget, they do incredible work compared to closed source solution companies like Plex. Not everything needs to be capitalistic, in fact the product pretty much sells and safeguards itself based on being freeware with pretty quality UX. Who will replace them?

"Capitalistic" is, I'm sure, meant derogatorily. I disagree with the sentiment, and I think the Jellyfin maintainers deserve at least a living wage for their time and efforts.

The Jellyfin devs have chosen for it to be a community/hobby project in order to avoid perverse incentives. That's a completely valid choice. There's a reason JF is the only mainstream media server solution that's continuously improved without any signs of enshittification, and personally I'm inclined to agree with the devs that keeping it completely non-profit has been a boon to its ongoing health and popularity.

Agreed! To clarify: I think they deserve a wage for their work and have previously donated, and that 'capitalizing' on their work is more than justifiable. I also think it's fine that they don't care!

> deserve at least a living wage for their time and efforts

I agree with the sentiment

However,

> $24000 in the bank

I assume there are multiple developers. If the developers are based on North America or Europe that money does not guarantee a living wage for more than.. some months?

It's not a failing of society for someone to have a hobby they enjoy which does not pay them a living wage nor is it derogatory to say not everything in society need be done for capitalistic reasons.

I consider myself a general fan of capitalism as driver behind our primary incomes but I do wish there would be some more room left for the other parts of our lives to be driven by passion, community, or pure enjoyment without it being considered a tragedy to leave them that way.

I'm happy to pay for passion, for community commons, and I'm happy to compensate people for the work they do for pure enjoyment if I want it.

Trade and exchange are natural and human and friendly and cooperative and loving parts of the human experience. To think they're some artificial bolt-on is the derogatory implication.

I don’t disagree with you and I’ve just learned they specifically avoid monetisation to keep their incentives aligned with the community’s. Thanks everyone for pointing that out.

(…but you couldn’t call me capitalistic, that really doesn’t suit me.)

I just hope they can continue to develop the product, because I’m using it daily and don’t want it to go away.

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