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beeware / paying-the-piper

A project for discussing ways to fund open source development.
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A funding "wall of superpowers" #37

Open cjrh opened 9 years ago

cjrh commented 9 years ago

Based on a mixing together of some strands in other issues: what about a "funding wall of superpowers"?

Imagine something loosely like the Python 3 wall of superpowers, but where you have a list of companies. Then you have these columns:

The strategy is to easily show which companies are contributing back, as a means of peer pressure.
The hypothesis is that companies that stand out as really bad community members might want to protect their reputation and will therefore contribute back. Something like this may already exist, I have not looked around much.

You could add a column that displays the current funding shortfall for the open source projects in question, so it could be quite compelling to see the company profit side-by-side with the open source project funding shortfall. There are probably other metrics even better than this, I haven't thought about it too deeply yet.

There are complications, e.g., some companies contribute employee time, which would have to be costed in order to make a fair comparison against other companies that contribute only funding. This sounds like the kind of thing that some companies which currently make huge contributions would support, as it would represent them in a good light.

Thoughts?

seiyria commented 9 years ago

A lot of companies don't care, and I don't see how this will compel them.

freakboy3742 commented 9 years ago

It's an interesting idea. How are you proposing to get the raw data to populate this chart? How do we know which open source software difference companies are using? The Py3 wall is all based on public data; the same wall for open source contribution would need to interpolate from public sources (like speakers at conferences) and educated guesses (like reading web server headers for telltale signs).

Regarding @seiyria's comment - if this wall got any sort of traction, I think it would compel certain companies. If you're in a competitive hiring environment, you want to stand out - but in a good way.

I'd be more concerned about whether "public shaming" like this would backfire. Is there any potential for companies to react badly to being listed, and pull support that is already being provided?

seiyria commented 9 years ago

The companies that I can see reacting are potential ones (ie, possible benefactors) and ones on the "good wall" if you will. They probably think that if they slip up even a little bit, they make it to the bad list, thus making them not want to participate at all (or withdraw support if they have some already). Or, they reject the idea of public shaming and do that anyway. It's never wise to cast groups in an overtly negative light when it comes to funding, so it may be wise to keep this list internal, if at all.

cjrh commented 9 years ago

All good comments, I don't have ready answers for any of them ¯(ツ)/¯

Public companies have to publish their financials, so getting profit figures will not be hard. There should also be a paper trail for companies that fund open-source projects, and the projects themselves would have these figures? And of course the companies themselves could give input to correct omissions where they do contribute and it isn't captured.

Would it make sense to filter by market cap or some other valuation? Say > $100 MM or something like that? The top 50 companies alone could probably satisfy the funding shortfall on all the most popular open source projects without even a blip on the balance sheet. The Fortune 500 is a ready-made list, but I don't know whether it makes sense to group tech and non-tech companies, even though it's extremely likely they all use open-source to some degree.

nanuxbe commented 9 years ago

I don't mean to be a buzzkiller but what about potential legal issues? Can't a company sue because they don't like what they see? Like inaccurate data that they claim cost them some business?

nayafia commented 9 years ago

I like the idea of using data to tell a story. I wonder if there's a slightly different data set that would accomplish that goal without coming off as negative or inflammatory.

For example, instead of % net profit contributed to open source (honestly, this is probably a tiny # for even the biggest contributors), what about quantifying the % of websites that use certain open source projects that are currently underfunded?

Ex. "jQuery is used by 65% of the top 10 million sites on the Web" "75% of websites with a third-party commenting system use Disqus, which is powered by Django" "Two-thirds of all web servers use OpenSSL"

If we can tell some positive stories around open source's widespread usage, then provide some stats on the lack of funding (X full-time people and $Y budget/yr, which we know ourselves), people will draw the right conclusions for themselves.

I know http://libscore.com/ provides data on JavaScript library usage; wonder if there are similar resources elsewhere.

FagnerMartinsBrack commented 9 years ago

I know http://libscore.com/ provides data on JavaScript library usage; wonder if there are similar resources elsewhere.

I did a fast look in libscore.com and it doesn't seems so reliable.

There's meanpath though...

nlhkabu commented 8 years ago

I've been pondering on a similar idea recently... Similar to what has already been discussed, but with a big emphasis on gamification:

It would need to start with open source projects and conferences listing their sponsors... And with companies creating pages, ala LinkedIn.

My idea was to only highlight those who are making contributions, not focusing on those who are not... my hope is that the gamification aspect will create enough traction to inspire other companies to pick up their act.