OpenSource project can develop and make a profit?
For quite a long time, I wondered: "Can an open source project live and develop in our harsh realities?" This question periodically disturbs me, since I myself am the author of one such project - WysiBB. I asked a similar question on various resources, there were questions on the Toaster. But in essence, it all came down to the fact that in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet, the “Support the project”, “Donate”, etc. buttons do not work. and only projects with a huge audience and / or paid functions can develop.
But finally, one fine day, I came across an interesting idea how to get some financial investment in development and see which features are most in demand by users. I saw this idea on the Robomongo site (who doesn't know, this is a GUI for MongoDB). And its essence is as follows: the user is given the opportunity to choose from the list of issues (from the jithaba) his most disturbing and donate funds for its improvement. When a user makes a donation, the priority rating of this feature rises. So the author of the project receives funds for his wallet and sees which features have the highest priority (the most donations) and, accordingly, are the most popular. The author starts to develop them in the first place, the project develops, and the user gets a long-awaited feature. I liked this idea and I decided to implement a similar mechanism on my project, and when I started work on this service, I realized that such a service can be useful not only for me. So GitFund was born.
Sketches and unpretentious layouts of the site were quickly made, the basic functionality was developed and now the beta version is already available for all projects hosted on GitHub.
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Project registration consists of two simple steps:
1) Authorization via GitHub
2) Selecting a project from the list of available and filling in the wallet data for receiving funds.
After registering on the GitFund website, a project page is created for collecting donations and setting priorities. The author of the project can post a link to this page and send users to it.
Getting on the project page, the user is presented with about the picture. You can watch it live here.
The user chooses which feature he would like to see implemented first and selects it.
After that, the user enters the amount that he would like to donate to the selected feature and presses the “Donate” button. After that, the feature rises in the ranking and gets a higher priority than others.
With this mechanism, the project team receives funds for the further advancement and development of the project and sees which functionality is most in demand (or which errors need to be fixed in the first place). And users have the opportunity to influence the development of the project and get the implementation of the most important features for them. It turns out the mutual benefit of the author of the project and its users.
At the moment, you can only register on the site a project hosted on GitHub and as a wallet for receiving funds, you can only use PayPal for the time being.
Just want to say why now you can only add a PayPal wallet: Because the implementation of this mechanism is the easiest, since I really wanted the money to go directly to the project owner’s wallet . Otherwise there would be a lot of questions: How do we know that money is not stolen? How can we control how many donations have actually been, etc. In PayPal, it is possible to set up a notification on GitFund that the funds have arrived in the wallet of the author of the project and to what extent.
Just want to note that the site now has only English localization and one method of receiving payments. If the service is popular, then in the future it will be possible to think about adding localizations, ways of receiving donations, etc.
You can try GitFund for your project and talk about the results, impressions and ideas in general.
UPD: As it turned out in fact, the idea did not become popular and did not receive real development. Open Source cannot live on donations in our realities. The project has been closed.
What is the point?
But finally, one fine day, I came across an interesting idea how to get some financial investment in development and see which features are most in demand by users. I saw this idea on the Robomongo site (who doesn't know, this is a GUI for MongoDB). And its essence is as follows: the user is given the opportunity to choose from the list of issues (from the jithaba) his most disturbing and donate funds for its improvement. When a user makes a donation, the priority rating of this feature rises. So the author of the project receives funds for his wallet and sees which features have the highest priority (the most donations) and, accordingly, are the most popular. The author starts to develop them in the first place, the project develops, and the user gets a long-awaited feature. I liked this idea and I decided to implement a similar mechanism on my project, and when I started work on this service, I realized that such a service can be useful not only for me. So GitFund was born.
Sketches and unpretentious layouts of the site were quickly made, the basic functionality was developed and now the beta version is already available for all projects hosted on GitHub.
')
Project registration consists of two simple steps:
1) Authorization via GitHub
2) Selecting a project from the list of available and filling in the wallet data for receiving funds.
After registering on the GitFund website, a project page is created for collecting donations and setting priorities. The author of the project can post a link to this page and send users to it.
How it works?
Getting on the project page, the user is presented with about the picture. You can watch it live here.
The user chooses which feature he would like to see implemented first and selects it.
After that, the user enters the amount that he would like to donate to the selected feature and presses the “Donate” button. After that, the feature rises in the ranking and gets a higher priority than others.
With this mechanism, the project team receives funds for the further advancement and development of the project and sees which functionality is most in demand (or which errors need to be fixed in the first place). And users have the opportunity to influence the development of the project and get the implementation of the most important features for them. It turns out the mutual benefit of the author of the project and its users.
At the moment, you can only register on the site a project hosted on GitHub and as a wallet for receiving funds, you can only use PayPal for the time being.
Why is only PayPal used now?
Just want to say why now you can only add a PayPal wallet: Because the implementation of this mechanism is the easiest, since I really wanted the money to go directly to the project owner’s wallet . Otherwise there would be a lot of questions: How do we know that money is not stolen? How can we control how many donations have actually been, etc. In PayPal, it is possible to set up a notification on GitFund that the funds have arrived in the wallet of the author of the project and to what extent.
Just want to note that the site now has only English localization and one method of receiving payments. If the service is popular, then in the future it will be possible to think about adding localizations, ways of receiving donations, etc.
You can try GitFund for your project and talk about the results, impressions and ideas in general.
UPD: As it turned out in fact, the idea did not become popular and did not receive real development. Open Source cannot live on donations in our realities. The project has been closed.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/263721/
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