The goal of this document is to help open source maintainers fund their project. It includes explanations of some marketing concepts, a list of case studies of open source projects that successfully achieved funding , useful websites for funding and other learning resources.
Keep in mind i am just some dude on the internet and have no formal training on the subject, Feel free to open an issue If you found a mistake or have feedback or a suggestion.
Positive feedback could also be useful, It could help validate that what i am doing is useful (And therefore motivate and help me to decide to prioritize working on this), Maybe i could set up a "testimonies" that will persuade people to read this stuff and give it a try, So if you read something and got good results from implementing it please post about it here.
how attention is measured using heat maps, and how to direct attention to improve conversion rate.
basically how much time people pay attention to something, for web pages it is reported to be 8 seconds (so it is best to try to make them count).
for video it can be longer, so using videos can be a good way to show the attractive qualities of a project.
Expectancy-value Theory of motivation
fear appeals (fear based marketing)
A system in the brain in charge of handling rewards, rewards can be "Primary rewards" (which include things that are good for our or our offspring survival, stuff like food or parental involvement). "Extrinsic rewards" (like money or the good results of using a certain feature of some software) are conditioned rewards and their ability to motivates comes from being associated with Primary rewards (and can even become pleasurable).
Reward anticipation is linked to "wanting" and dopamine and is used in marketing.
thunderbird got 15 people hired in 2020, in 2022 revenue was about 6M (more then double the previous year), they explained the growth by saing:
Before we discuss that, you might be wondering what we did differently to generate such a significant surge of support last year.
At the end of 2021, we decided to make a bigger investment in communicating with you. That meant more frequent blog posts and newsletters, daily engagement across our social media channels, and expanding the number of places we interact with you (like our relatively new Mastodon account).
We also attribute this amazing uplift to the release of Thunderbird 102, as well as a first-of-its-kind, in-app donation appeal at the end of year.
In short, we learned that projects like ours can benefit greatly from simply asking for donations, while simultaneously explaining how those donations will benefit the project – and ultimately, how they will benefit you. So let’s talk about that!
(krita is funding two people using steam income)
basically you pay for downloaing the binary , a "subscription" of 1$ dollar a month can get all updates (as long as you are subscribed).
reported a income of about US$12922.00/month (on march 2021).
Vue.js (says how much "impressions" meaning basically how many people view something on stuff like the repository or the homepage )
How React Flow became a financially sustainable open source library
How JHipster’s Bounty System saved the project
Sponsers get a specific number of bounties per month depending on how much they give, by the end of the month the bounty is gone.
Mariab db uses the business source license for some components which converts to a open source license after a while but until then has additional restrictions , for example less then three server instances in production
Mitra - a open source microblogging service that is a part of the fediverse, and has an option to subscribe to exclusive content.
thank.dev and stackaid - software that automatically distribute funds.
I’m now a full-time professional open source maintainer
Authors makes a income similar to the one he had at google, by offering retainers to companies that benefit from his work , and using the reputation he acquired as a open source maintainer to offer consulting.
14 Rewards for Software Developers to Fund Independent Projects
I Just Hit $100k/yr On GitHub Sponsors!(How I Did It)
Business models for open-source software (wikipedia)
Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure
there are reviews and information on the goodreads page
To make money in FOSS, build a business first
creator of sway and sourcehut on open source funding
How does SourceHut's FOSS business model work?
Why the GPL is great for business
talk by the Founder of nextcloud and owncloud.
The Asymmetry of Open Source - A comprehensive guide to funding open source software projects
Post by a full time OSS developer
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent