Anyone interested/built in the space of Open Source sustainability?
I have been thinking of various products and services around making Open Source more sustainable for everyone. It's been very interesting looking into these issues but also challenging.
However, I also feel that maybe there is little money (RoI) to be made in that niche where most often everyone takes everything for granted (and for free).
Do you think it is still worth the effort and time to build in that niche?
Tagging people who have written about this on indiehackers and may be interested in this discussion.
I think it is impossible to create a platform a single person that can solve the OSS monetization problem. Monetizing OSS requires satisfying free users and then finding paid users. Also, typically the software is not for the end users, but developers that have to use the OSS to create money... my 2cents
thanks for your reply!
Does it count as sustainable development if the project itself provides long-term benefits to the developer even without the project making any money?
This would still require some other way to get money/food etc, such as another job.
Theoretically it could be worthwhile to develop open-source projects even without receiving any money for them, in hopes of receiving contributions from others that also help you with the same problem for which you started building. In practice I haven't yet reached the point of getting contributions in the form of source changes for my projects yet, so I can't confirm that it could be a very strong motivation.
My main open source project in particular involves tracking and analyzing my life to improve my motivation, happiness, and efficiency, and what makes it sustainable for me is basically just that I think it makes enough of an improvement to my life to be worth the effort spent on it.
Maybe another option could be that the open source project could be free but connects users to the option to spend money other things.
Sure, money isn't the only way to make a project sustainable. Yours can likely benefit your life because that's its main goal after all :-)
Like many OSS devs, I work mostly on developer tools and libraries. Recurring funding would help get some compensation for the many hours spent on the project for free, or even hire someone to help.
Donation just don't work. And GitHub Sponsors is nice, but not integrated to their whole product in a meaningful way. They also encourage individual to individual donations by taking a cut when an org makes a payment (which is the wrong approach IMO).