In a functional market economy, it’s approximately correct that things get produced when the cost of making them is less than the benefits that accrue to users[0]. This is an approximation–sometimes people don’t realize the benefits of some product, there are transaction costs, in some markets a powerful seller can extract too much value from consumers, etc, etc.
When I look at this case, I see a market failure hiding behind the apparent success. The fact that 6 companies are willing to fund Filippo’s work suggests that the value of his work is vastly less than the money he’s receiving. This might seem like a good thing–an entire ecosystem benefits from his work, without paying. That is a benefit, but it is also a bigger drawback. Filippo’s work is funded only because it is such an outlier.
Ideally, if your open source work produces $1 million for the entire ecosystem, you should be able to draw a reasonable developer salary based on that. In fact, it is unlikely that if you produce that much, there will be six companies that get enough value from your work that they will fund you.
Importantly, this is where it matters that the model isn’t pure open source maintainership. It has a high-touch sales operation. To fund the $1 million project, you probably need to collect $1000 from hundreds of organizations, not >= $50,000 from a handful.
So, congratulations! But I am still skeptical that this is the route towards supporting professional open-source maintainers.
[0] The users that have money. This is what one might call “a drawback”.
Considering the global distribution of open source software, and the network effects, I wouldn’t be surprised if the potential salaries of open-source maintainers resembled the power-law distribution you see for recording artists and athletes. Bruce Springsteen can earn hundreds of millions, but the vast majority of musicians need a day job to pay for their musical career.
I can’t imagine it’s a model that would work for new or emerging or poorly connected maintainers, etc.
I could see how a situation like this could be a first step towards a model where one high-profile developer could take on junior maintainers and build out a cooperative rather than remaining a solo independent. I don’t see any indication that this person wants to do that, but it could be a possibility for others who have interest in using their position that way.
That’s probably true, but I want to empahsize that it’s not my point. I think there are certain maintainers who will have more success, but I also think that many projects that are worthwhile can’t get funding this way.
So, congratulations! But I am still skeptical that this is the route towards supporting professional open-source maintainers.
Yeah, I also have a feeling that this is an outlier which is not (easily) reproducible. I mean, the guy ends the post flying over Central Park, so I assume he’s living in New York and affluent. He’s probably well-connected and has good marketing skills - not many companies are gonna spend money to keep someone on retainer. In fact, a lot of companies are trying to eek out as much value out of contractors as they can at a strictly hourly basis.
It seems like something within what you’re saying is that open source comes in a bunch of different shapes and sizes. Something like GitHub Sponsors can help people maintaining projects that need support from a lot of people (disclaimer: I work for GitHub, but not on the Sponsors team). Filippo’s model can work for someone who has a small number of projects that provide very clear value to companies willing to pay 5 figures, but that doesn’t describe a lot of projects. The proverbial left-pad is not generating $1 million of value in the ecosystem, but something like curl generates a lot more than that.
My view is that this is not the route to supporting open source maintainers, but it is one route among many. I do feel like there’s a lot of open source out there that is just plain not commercializable (just as there are plenty of products that never find their product-market fit).
For reasons not mentioned here, I suspect GitHub Sponsors (or anything that looks like it) can’t fill the gap, but I agree it’s aiming at the types of projects that can’t use Filippo’s model.
But what I meant was: 1000 companies getting $1000 value each can’t support Filippo’s model, you need six companies getting enough value to shell out $50,000 each. A project that’s collectively worth $1 million probably doesn’t have six users like that.
Where are you getting this valuation from? Of 1M for a project? Is this in the article?
Honestly, in a word where fucking juice pressing machines that are worse than a hand squeeze get valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, I bet the left cheek of my butt that there are several open source projects that generate as much value.
I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package,[1] which proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers.
It’s possible to fly to the moon, too. But most of us will probably never get there :-/
I work on open source as well. This is probably a good model. We can find lots of companies who will contribute $20K or $50K, or upstream a few features or remake the web site. But paying $300K+ for a full-time highly-skilled maintainer is a different story. So dividing the bill up between multiple companies makes a lot of sense.
I can’t agree with this. I think it is worse to take money from unethical sources than to give them money.
If someone is taking money from you, you have a financial incentive to figure out a way to not have to pay them money. If someone is giving you money, you have a monetary incentive to help them become more successful and wealthy so they can give you more money. This warps your incentives and tends to make you agree with, support and defend the entity you’re taking money from.
People are aware of this and will trust you less if you take money from an unethical source.
Disclaimer: I work for Protocol Labs, but they’re very unlike any other ‘cryptocurrency company’ I know - fully open source, fully open research (not about patents), and we develop and maintain plenty of other projects that aren’t related to cryptocurrency per se (IPFS being the prime example, libp2p, a bunch of other go stuff)
This is awesome for Filippo, and good for the software ecosystem as a whole. I’m happy to hear it.
I will say that reading this against his earlier essays, https://words.filippo.io/pay-maintainers/, https://words.filippo.io/pay-maintainers/, I am suspicious whether it will scale to funding open source in general.
In a functional market economy, it’s approximately correct that things get produced when the cost of making them is less than the benefits that accrue to users[0]. This is an approximation–sometimes people don’t realize the benefits of some product, there are transaction costs, in some markets a powerful seller can extract too much value from consumers, etc, etc.
When I look at this case, I see a market failure hiding behind the apparent success. The fact that 6 companies are willing to fund Filippo’s work suggests that the value of his work is vastly less than the money he’s receiving. This might seem like a good thing–an entire ecosystem benefits from his work, without paying. That is a benefit, but it is also a bigger drawback. Filippo’s work is funded only because it is such an outlier.
Ideally, if your open source work produces $1 million for the entire ecosystem, you should be able to draw a reasonable developer salary based on that. In fact, it is unlikely that if you produce that much, there will be six companies that get enough value from your work that they will fund you.
Importantly, this is where it matters that the model isn’t pure open source maintainership. It has a high-touch sales operation. To fund the $1 million project, you probably need to collect $1000 from hundreds of organizations, not >= $50,000 from a handful.
So, congratulations! But I am still skeptical that this is the route towards supporting professional open-source maintainers.
[0] The users that have money. This is what one might call “a drawback”.
I think it could be a good route for established careers and long-term maintainers with good networks.
But yes, I can’t imagine it’s a model that would work for new or emerging or poorly connected maintainers, etc.
Considering the global distribution of open source software, and the network effects, I wouldn’t be surprised if the potential salaries of open-source maintainers resembled the power-law distribution you see for recording artists and athletes. Bruce Springsteen can earn hundreds of millions, but the vast majority of musicians need a day job to pay for their musical career.
I could see how a situation like this could be a first step towards a model where one high-profile developer could take on junior maintainers and build out a cooperative rather than remaining a solo independent. I don’t see any indication that this person wants to do that, but it could be a possibility for others who have interest in using their position that way.
That’s probably true, but I want to empahsize that it’s not my point. I think there are certain maintainers who will have more success, but I also think that many projects that are worthwhile can’t get funding this way.
more! …vastly more! That’s one hell of a word to get wrong.
Ahaubauahauahajais shit, mate, I was questioning the whole fabric of reality here!
Yeah, I also have a feeling that this is an outlier which is not (easily) reproducible. I mean, the guy ends the post flying over Central Park, so I assume he’s living in New York and affluent. He’s probably well-connected and has good marketing skills - not many companies are gonna spend money to keep someone on retainer. In fact, a lot of companies are trying to eek out as much value out of contractors as they can at a strictly hourly basis.
He is both a brilliant coder and also an excellent communicator with a large personal following online. This is a very rare combination.
It seems like something within what you’re saying is that open source comes in a bunch of different shapes and sizes. Something like GitHub Sponsors can help people maintaining projects that need support from a lot of people (disclaimer: I work for GitHub, but not on the Sponsors team). Filippo’s model can work for someone who has a small number of projects that provide very clear value to companies willing to pay 5 figures, but that doesn’t describe a lot of projects. The proverbial left-pad is not generating $1 million of value in the ecosystem, but something like curl generates a lot more than that.
My view is that this is not the route to supporting open source maintainers, but it is one route among many. I do feel like there’s a lot of open source out there that is just plain not commercializable (just as there are plenty of products that never find their product-market fit).
For reasons not mentioned here, I suspect GitHub Sponsors (or anything that looks like it) can’t fill the gap, but I agree it’s aiming at the types of projects that can’t use Filippo’s model.
I think I’m missing something. I don’t understand your argument at all.
This points, specifically:
I’m trying, but I can not interpret them as anything other than paradoxes? It’s like your saying that if A > B, than of course B > A?
Update: I made a typo, the comment I’m replying to made a typo, so I kept the one point I’m still not clear on
Did you mean to have two quotes in your comment?
Yes, for two different phrases I’m quoting.
Update: Ah, shit, now I get what you mean. Yeah, it was supposed to be two different quotes
Hmm, poorly phrased on my part.
But what I meant was: 1000 companies getting $1000 value each can’t support Filippo’s model, you need six companies getting enough value to shell out $50,000 each. A project that’s collectively worth $1 million probably doesn’t have six users like that.
Where are you getting this valuation from? Of 1M for a project? Is this in the article?
Honestly, in a word where fucking juice pressing machines that are worse than a hand squeeze get valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, I bet the left cheek of my butt that there are several open source projects that generate as much value.
It’s possible to fly to the moon, too. But most of us will probably never get there :-/
Interesting article. But I don’t know, if I’d hire a cryptography expert that thinks being cautious about cryptography in relation to secret agencies, filing FOIA requests is on the same level as conspiracy theories, or thinks that Dan Bernstein is a conspiracy nut. Acting like secret agencies never bribed or otherwise manipulated people or that it’s a good idea to trust NIST or any organization blindly is naive at best.
It’s as if the DES cracker or PRISM never happened. And even if they wouldn’t have happened, discrediting a renowned cryptography expert that helped making sure strong cryptography is the standard everywhere in first place for being careful doesn’t seem like the best biography.
I work on open source as well. This is probably a good model. We can find lots of companies who will contribute $20K or $50K, or upstream a few features or remake the web site. But paying $300K+ for a full-time highly-skilled maintainer is a different story. So dividing the bill up between multiple companies makes a lot of sense.
Taking money from cryptocurrency companies is not what I would call ethical behavior :(
I mean… if you hate crypto companies, presumably it’s a good thing to funnel money out of those companies and into charitable causes.
Presumably, they gain more from employing you than you charge them. So working for them helps them grow.
I can’t agree with this. I think it is worse to take money from unethical sources than to give them money.
If someone is taking money from you, you have a financial incentive to figure out a way to not have to pay them money. If someone is giving you money, you have a monetary incentive to help them become more successful and wealthy so they can give you more money. This warps your incentives and tends to make you agree with, support and defend the entity you’re taking money from.
People are aware of this and will trust you less if you take money from an unethical source.
Disclaimer: I work for Protocol Labs, but they’re very unlike any other ‘cryptocurrency company’ I know - fully open source, fully open research (not about patents), and we develop and maintain plenty of other projects that aren’t related to cryptocurrency per se (IPFS being the prime example, libp2p, a bunch of other go stuff)
Sounds ethical to me. Better than the
peoplescammers at the top of the pyramid scheme walking away with all of it, as usual.