elkinthewoods

Thanks for the debate on this. I work at Tyk and lead the team running this initiative so find it really useful.

This is the first 'cohort' for the fund, and we are open to increasing the grant size in future. However, keeping it smaller means we're able to make a difference to more projects.

Tyk also started as a side project ourselves, with founders initially working around their day jobs, before bootstrapping for a few years. Because of our own experience we believe there are viable, exciting projects out there that could benefit from this type of small scale help. Applications received seem to suggest this too.

Once we've finished this round there will hopefully be a blog sharing some of the projects helped if you're interested to see. In the meantime, thanks again for the feedback which we'll take on board for next time.

Emma at Tyk

I'm afraid I can't speak to intellectual property law, but someone else may be able to. I work for Tyk though, and lead the team for this particular initiative. Thanks for your interest in it.

I can confirm that we do not - and will not ever - ask for any Intellectual Property rights, equity, or 'ROI', in return for the microgrant. The only thing we ask for is the opportunity to share the stories behind the projects we fund. And if winning applicants said no to that too, we'd be fine with that :)

Why are we doing this? We started as a side project ourselves. This new initiative is our way of paying it forward to help others working in their spare time to create open, innovative projects.

Appreciate the point your question raises, so I'll make sure our FAQs are updated to make our position on this clearer. Thank you! Tyk

Full disclosure - I work for Tyk :)

One of our users recently did a write up on their experience using us with particular focus on plugins: https://bitsofinfo.wordpress.com/2018/06/28/migrating-to-tyk...

Author: https://github.com/bitsofinfo