Create and document process for paid community contributions

[gusaus]

Problem

Unlike other open source communities like WordPress and Drupal, Open Collective does not provide the same opportunities for volunteers looking to gain experience by contributing to their open source project. Experienced contributors rarely have time/incentive to spend time on projects not directly related to their job. Even those that would benefit the most (like open source projects with collectives) from improvements to the platform rarely contribute - simply because most don't have time to do anything beyond maintaining their own projects.

Without the traditional open source contributor incentives, the majority of work is reliant on the relatively small Open Collective platform team. Which results in unresolved issues or must have features several collectives need in the backlog. Even in a community that as an aggregate is the largest, most talented, and well funded on the planet.

Solution

The solution is pretty simple - enable paid contributions for community contributors (including individuals and organizations).

Open Collective already provides the mechanism so the main need is a well-defined, documented process. And considering others have paved the way (with open source documentation we can incorporate and build on) this should be a relatively quick task.

To do

• [ ] Research/Analyze the current Open Collective contribution process
  • [ ] Open Collective Bounty Program
  • [ ] Open Collective readme
  • [ ] Contributing (Open Collective docs)
  • [ ] Roadmap (Open Collective docs)
• [ ] Research/Analyze existing programs that already leverage Open Collective (and GitHub!)
  • [ ] OBS Project Bounty Program
  • [ ] Mautic's RFP process
• [ ] Analyze the Open Collective issue templates (in our fork) to see if there are any we could incorporate or extend
• [ ] Make some suggestions (in the comments) about specific templates we could use as a starting point
• [ ] Discuss recommendations with the Open Collective team

I'm filling in for the project manager we don't yet have, so there's probably more to it.

That said, it should be enough to start (or at least discuss further in the comments)!

[ShaneCurcuru]

The other ways to encourage open source code contributions are:

• Be building code tools that other people might want to directly use. Are there any modules or feature sets within the OC world that other companies might want to use as actual open source products?
• Provide a governance model for the open source code you build, that makes clear how code contributors could become (over time and positive contributions) maintainers or technical leaders of your codebase or specific modules. Does OC want to build this kind of community? If so, are there modules or parts of the code here they'd be willing to invite contributors to become maintainers for?

I see there's a CONTRIBUTING.md file, but it just points to the documentation, and doesn't really talk about having an active contribution model with shared governance.

[gusaus]

Be building code tools that other people might want to directly use. Are there any modules or feature sets within the OC world that other companies might want to use as actual open source products?

You mean addons and integrations that plug into other open source platforms? If yes, I'll just reference the Drupal Funding module as one example. Problem is - even in a huge, volunteer-first community, its extremely difficult to develop something like that as a volunteer or even employer sponsored project. We're hoping to remedy by pooling resources with a collective consisting of multiple projects that extend/integrate Open Collective https://opencollective.com/funding-tools

[gusaus]

Provide a governance model for the open source code you build, that makes clear how code contributors could become (over time and positive contributions) maintainers or technical leaders of your codebase or specific modules. Does OC want to build this kind of community? If so, are there modules or parts of the code here they'd be willing to invite contributors to become maintainers for?

I'd forgotten I went long in the issue description trying to describe the community/contributor dynamic. Maybe I should surface some of that in this discussion https://github.com/orgs/communitycontributorgroup/discussions/2

With regards to contributing/extending the open source Open Collective platform(s), there have been several discussions and attempts at enabling community contributions in #opensource (the channel set up for Open Source Collective and collectives they host https://discover.opencollective.com/opensource

Problem is... at least until there's a clear, obvious entry point for new contributors...nothing happens in a timely fashion without funding.

Even OSC (who employs Richard to spend part of his time on community https://www.burntfen.com/projects/open-source-collective/) has a hard time following through with their strategy https://blog.opencollective.com/open-source-collectives-strategy-2022-2025/

Which is why they were warm to the idea of enabling and joining a working group. They still have not provided funding - mainly because they need help defining clear goals in https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/7

[gusaus]

Ok - I've filled out the Todo items in the issue description with links to existing docs, processes, and templates. Considering our fork already has all the Open Collective issue templates (https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/new/choose) we can extend them (using a proper Git development flow) and also use as a staging area for creating very detailed, well-scoped issues.

[gusaus]

Just want to again point out that Open Collective already has a foundation to build on (see the issue description for more detail) -

• Open Collective Bounty Program
• Open Collective readme
• Contributing (Open Collective docs)
• Roadmap (Open Collective docs)

They have a process and templates to extend - they have a team - they most likely will fund projects on their roadmap and/or aligned with their mission, current goals, or focus.

Again we have a template we could build on (or just use) https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/new?assignees=&labels=project&template=project.md&title=%5BPROJECT%5D

Considering Ben (OSC ED and OC head of product) has already shown interest - it's quite possible this could be an entry point for paid contributions if we had a team member we could count on to write clear requirements and work alongside the Open Collective team to complete priority projects and tasks.