232 karma · joined September 20, 2011
Companies who choose Ruby/Rails I believe do so because they want fast iterations, agile development, and small dev teams. I think this also applies to Python/Django and PHP/Laravel as well.
Good luck! It's a wild ride you are embarking on!
[1]
1. https://github.com/gitcoinco/code_fund_ads
This month (Oct 2019), we brought in approximately $75K in revenue. Of that, approximately $53k will be paid out to publishers next week.
If you follow our newsletter [2] you can see our MTD stats (including financials) each week.
Unlike the other ad platforms, our mission is to grow and sustain open source projects. We do this through ethical advertising (no cookies, tracking, collecting data, etc).
[1] https://codefund.io/advertiserkit2019q4.pdf
[2] https://us16.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=e95ff716114dbc939f...
Disclaimer: I'm the founder of CodeFund
CodeFund is what we consider "ethical" and different from Carbon Ads and other ad networks because (1) we do not allow 3rd party scripts, (2) no cookies accompany ads, (3) we are 100% open source (gitcoinco/code_fund_ads), (4) we only work with advertisers that provide relevant products and services that are good for the developer community, and (5) we literally do not store any private data, including IP addresses.
I recommend reading https://codefund.io/blog/countering-negative-press-how-ethic...
I invite any developer / blogger to check out https://CodeFund.io. We are a non-tracking 100% open source ethical ad platform that focuses on funding open source.
We all need advertising in order to enjoy the free services we all use. Cancer is something that nobody should have to live with. Advertising is something we can all live with if done ethically and responsibly.
This is a very interesting view of the current issues surrounding the funding of open source. I think there are also some assumptions surrounding the motivations of being a maintainer that may not be accurate.
As the founder of a company that's sole purpose is to bring funding to open source developers, bloggers and app builders, I do understand the issues with the "trickle economics" of generating funds for open source.
Let me first say thank you for your contributions. I do not believe that most people become open source contributors/maintainers for the money. They do it b/c they are good people trying to give back to their community.
The way I see it, maintainers need to be open to many different paths of generating funds. Open Collective and Patreon are incredible, however they often require an active effort in fund-raising to generate any significant amount of money. Tidelift is doing great stuff in this field as well by selling SLA contracts on open source projects, although it's difficult to qualify and the developers might not want to sign a contract. There is the promise of crypto-economics and how they might impact funding OSS (see https://oscoin.io). Finally, advertising (yuck?) has been a proven and more widely accepted form of funding as long as the user's privacy is protected. That's what we do. Fund open source maintainers through ethical advertising.
It takes a village to solve sustainable funding for open source.
I’m sorry, but I do not believe you can get more ethical than that. I stand behind our mission and our reputation.
I am the founder of https://CodeFund.app. We are an ethical ad platform that is focused on funding open bloggers, builders and maintainers. We also do not do any tracking of users nor allow 3rd party scripts.
I'd love to connect sometime and see if there's anything we can do to help. We also have a small group that meets each month to discuss ethical ads.
To start, you should check out Nadia Eghbal's Lemonade Stand (https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand). She lists many different ways to generate funding, along with the pros and cons. There is no silver bullet. I believe that real substantial funding must come from all directions. Also, funding sources vary based on the personality of the maintainers. Some may prefer to go the fund-raising path with Patreon or Open Collective. Some may prefer the TideLift SLA path. Some go the route of selling merchandise, training or books.
However, most paths of funding require the developer to take on the role of fundraiser, marketer, or even publisher. Developers may not want to do this and would prefer to focus on the code. This is why advertising fits most models. It provides passive, recurring and consistent income that does not require the maintainer to veer from their chosen path. It supports DHH's "fuck you" policy. The maintainer is not beholden to the advertiser with CodeFund, because there is no direct agreement.
CodeFund (https://codefund.app) is an open source platform that helps fund maintainers, bloggers, and builders through non-tracking ethical ads. We only display ads based on the context of the website, not the visitor profile. Our ads are relevant and non-obtrusive to visitors.
For example, go to https://jsbin.com or https://codesandbox.io.
There are other channels as well. Open Collective has been doing an amazing job as well as Carbon Ads.
I recommend the Lemonade Stand document by Nadia Eghbal (https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand) as well as the Sustain Report from the Sustain Summit last year (https://sustainoss.org)
Links:
- https://rollbar.com/blog/preparing-for-gdpr-privacy/
Here's an article I published on why funding open source is difficult: https://medium.com/@codesponsor/why-funding-open-source-is-h...