[clug] Donating to FOSS. What do people do?

[Arjen Lentz]

Hi Steve

> Free and Open Source Software - often 'community supported' - is what
> we do on this list.
> So I'm wondering if people would put their hands up and share how they
> contribute back, in kind, time and $$$ - and perhaps why you do what
> you do, or "why this one/way".


> One of the perennial problems of FOSS is raising money.
> Not obvious how to do this when your business model seems to be "give
> it away"...

That's not a business model, but a personal choice of action.

In an AUUG keynote years ago, I introduced the phrase "a tarball is not a product" and I think that still describes the situation pretty well. Writing code is important, but it's not everything of what's needed for a user to do what they want to do. It generally requires bundling in a larger context, possibly more UI, easy of installation, configuration and first use, documentation, etc. Each of those things need to be done also, and each adds value.

Red Hat is a good example of this, it's turned a bunch of tarballs in to a product - adding many additional things (both tangible as well as intangible) into the mix. And they sell that, successfully. It's not for everybody, but what product is....


I derive great benefit from OSS, both privately and in business. I tend to document the things I discover (problems solved) on my blog, to help others in a similar situation. If I went to the trouble of figuring something out and correlating various sources of public info, why not put it up in public as well. That's contributing back, but it just makes sense as well as people often have additional insights (which still benefits me).

Now, when it comes to my business I don't hoard info either. The value of what we do is not in any secret knowledge we keep. When we build a tool, we tend to publish it. We get additional benefit out of doing so (feedback, bugreports, fixes, enhancements). When doing a talk somewhere, or answering someone's question at a user group meeting or BarCamp, there are no secrets. The chat is also public for others to participate in, they can derive knowledge from it and also make their own contributions.
If someone wants highly specific assistance (requiring time away from the group) or wants to keep anything about the scenario secret, then that's not a freebie suitable for that time/place and instead they should talk to me in a work capacity. It's a simple delineation to explain to people.

So for all the actions and approaches you can easily see mutual benefit in not keeping things secret. Business opportunity lies in other factors - sharing knowledge and code of course also has a marketing benefit, in a way it shows off your skills. That's good.

What is an issue is that some people have a sense of entitlement, and that's clearly the wrong perspective. But it's interesting to consider how those people come to have such a viewpoint.


On the $ end of things... I have in the past $sponsored events (OSDC, LCA, DrupalDownUnder, BarCamp) but I see less benefit out of that. Yes it can cover essentials, but I personally don't get as much of a feelgood out of it, compared to other forms of contribution. Being there, interacting with people, is much more fun - and that irrespective of any potential business. That can just be a personal thing for me, I'm still on the fence regarding the general concept. My original reason for contributing $ was that I reckoned lots of small businesses could help fund good events, just as much as a few big corps. After GFC time that was quite relevant.

Then again, the budget requirement for OSDC (introduced since I ran it in 2007) states that the conf needs to run at balance or surplus without taking sponsorships into account - that really focuses how people organise things, and it's worked. Sponsorship has funded extra things, as well as helped OSDClub undertake other initiatives and have sufficient seed-capital for each next year (as things like venue deposits come before attendee payments) but that's mostly a fixed kitty that comes back towards the end of a conference.


Regards,
Arjen.
-- 
Exec.Director @ Open Query (http://openquery.com) MySQL services
Sane business strategy explorations at http://Upstarta.biz
Personal blog at http://lentz.com.au/blog/