Dear Open Source, let’s do a better job of asking for money
E144 | Fri 14 Jul 11:30 a.m.–noon
Presented by
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John Robb
@johnrobbjr
http://johnrobbdesign.com/
John is a community manager at React Flow, where he helps with all things un-code. Before React Flow, John was a UX Designer and Researcher, puzzle game designer, pizza delivery biker, and immersive event organizer. He is based in Berlin and likes looking at birds, listening to tabletop RPG live plays, improv comedy, and making music.
John Robb
@johnrobbjr
http://johnrobbdesign.com/
Abstract
It’s common knowledge that many open source projects are underfunded. We think one reason for this is that the open source world is doing a bad job of asking for the money that it deserves. By telling the right organizations exactly why and how we want them to financially support our work, OSS projects can be compensated for more fairly, and result in a healthier open source ecosystem.
In this talk we will review our experiences at React Flow of making our MIT Licensed library financially sustainable. This includes:
- Insights from user research about why our subscribers pay us
- Inner workings of our thin-crust open-core model
- How we used patterns from the SaaS world to more directly ask companies for money
- How slow, intentional growth of our team lends to financial sustainability
We hope that folks leave this talk with practical methods to ask for money in their own OSS projects, as well as insights into the role of money (and the lack thereof) in the open source ecosystem.
It’s common knowledge that many open source projects are underfunded. We think one reason for this is that the open source world is doing a bad job of asking for the money that it deserves. By telling the right organizations exactly why and how we want them to financially support our work, OSS projects can be compensated for more fairly, and result in a healthier open source ecosystem. In this talk we will review our experiences at React Flow of making our MIT Licensed library financially sustainable. This includes: - Insights from user research about why our subscribers pay us - Inner workings of our thin-crust open-core model - How we used patterns from the SaaS world to more directly ask companies for money - How slow, intentional growth of our team lends to financial sustainability We hope that folks leave this talk with practical methods to ask for money in their own OSS projects, as well as insights into the role of money (and the lack thereof) in the open source ecosystem.