> > 1. We can all afford to volunteer our discretionary time as we see > fit. Not just rich or retired people have discretionary time. > 2. Employers can support OSS communities by allowing their employees to > contribute as part of their jobs, but not in a "job shop" or directed way. > 3. Employers can support OSS by allowing their people to scratch itches > directly.
I personally think there is a 4 th way. I discovered it ~4 years ago in Polidea, the software house I co-owned, worked on and sold and eventually turned it successfully into my personal "business model". This is is not at all obvious why it would work and it was a bit of surprise for me when I discovered it and when I successfully made living from it (and also successfully helped with upp-ing the value of the company I co founded so that it could be acquired) - at the same time contributing a lot to the success of Apache Airflow project which became the most contributed (in terms of numbers of contributors) project of the ASF. The model is: 4. Organization and stakeholders in the project, rather than paying their own employees, pay independent third-parties to contribute to the OSS (software houses or individuals). This all with understanding the limitations it brings in influencing direction of the project and recognizing value of the parties who are intimately familiar with not only code, but also community and simply are the best to "make things happens" - all according to the rules and limitations of the ASF and (unlike the models 2. 3. ) increasing vendor neutrality in the project rather than decreasing it. I think this model makes it possible to kill two birds with the same stone: * make the model when you can make living from open source contributions * increase vendor neutrality in the projects It is largely described in the article which I wrote a few years back in Polidea and reposted it after Polidea has been acquired. Since then I learned (and tested on myself) that this is a sustainable model not only for 3rd party software houses, but also for independent contributors like me. https://medium.com/@jarekpotiuk/the-evolution-of-open-source-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants-db22dcdbca04 I really wish we could together find some ways to replicate that and make many individual contributors to follow this model. J. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@community.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@community.apache.org
