I have been thinking about this topic since a long time ago but didn’t got yet a clear solution. It seems NodeOS has got some interest to be used on production or it’s already being used for it, but for being this possible in the long term it would need to be dedicated some more time and not being only a “hobby” done in our spare time both for maintenance and development of new features (NodeOS has became a really big project with a lot of dependencies that need to be maintained, although I’m trying to automate these tasks the most I can), and since we are several here that would be interested on getting some revenues, I think it’s time to ask the big question: how to monetize NodeOS, so I’ve open this issue to discuss for alternatives and try to find solutions for this.
The main problem I think we have are:
- How to measure contributions
- There are collaborators from around the world in different timezones
- There are collaborators that don’t participate anymore
This makes it difficult to define a model fair for everybody beyond to use BountySource where anybody gets payed for the issues that he solve, but that doesn’t give promotion of NodeOS at big scale. It would be possible to create a company/association (I think Germany laws are easy for this, maybe @michielbdejong can give us some advice here, could you? :-) ) that give support, consultancy and expertise about NodeOS, but here the problem is how don’t give the feel that NodeOS is owned by that company.
A NodeOS Foundation would be the coolest option by putting the project in the first place and maybe would make it easier to get some sponsors and assists to events representing to NodeOS and not only just as individuals (as I have done on the keynotes and championships, but try to give on them the attributions to @groundwater for starting the project and the other collaborators as much as I can), but here we come again the the first problem: how to distribute the money in a fair way.
Another option, maybe the better, is to forget by the moment about the beneficts and create a non-proffit organization just to have some identity and to promote NodeOS itself, try to get some sponsors for travelling to conferences and little more (at this moment we don’t have any cost on servers or similar, only the website domain), and if things go well, maybe promote the organization to a foundation and dedicate those sponsor funds to pay a developer for one or two months working full or part-time or by objectives. I admit from start that I would candidate for that if we get to that situation (just to be clear and honest), but although I’m the most active one here and has a somewhat mind-map of how I want NodeOS to be, I’m not propossing this to “get all the money” but instead I’m very concerned and worried about how to make others to benefict for their work on NodeOS.
Also, there’s the big problem of promote NodeOS and nock some doors to get sponsors of the project and financiation… I think Node.js Foundation and NPM org would be the obvious candidate to ask for, but we would need to show we are not just some kids playing here, so adding native git support for npm with a pure javascript library instead of relaying on an external git cli command would be a really good presentation letter. Later we would consider other big players like Mozilla Foundation if we get a good integration with B2G OS (I know it’s community driven, but sure they are not unaware what’s happening on their community ;-) ) and if we got luck we could also ask to the Linux Foundation as an example of how powerful and easy to use Linux has became in the last years.
Opinions? Suggestions? There are some list here on GitHub about finatial mechanism for Open Source projects, it would be a good idea to reference them here too.
/cc @luii, @5paceManSpiff, @SpaceboyRoss01, @kskarthik, @Coretool, @lapineige, @lissyx, @Ryuno-Ki, @khanshakeeb
54 Comments