Hi, I’m new here. Glad to join this community. Hope I could find support here with my idea about the future. I was thinking for the last three years about an underlooked idea. It’s an idea that
the future where I want to live in, and all the decentralization, and data issue problems could be solved if we create a new social interaction.
In the future where I want to live, imagine a new form of social life on Internet, where open-source devs and ordinary users hang out together and build together.
Open-source devs build the projects for the people. And in return they became like an influencer.
To test this concept, I’m currently developing CascadeFund.org. It’s a no-charge, first PR, and monetization platform for the open-source maintainers. It’s still under the development.
But I already pushed the landing page describing the vision, and the project aiming to reach that goal. I need any feedback, and criticism as well about the idea, and is it defined clearly, is it honestly, not needed or not interesting for this community? But if it is interesting, then I would be glad if you join the wishlist, as I want to use it when I apply for the grants.
Landing page describing the Idea and Project: https://cascadefund.org/
Some draft pages from the project interface:
Actually interesting as a fellow open-source dev like you and got me onto the waiting list newsletter. Might consider having a fediverse and/or Atmosphere (via Bluesky Social) account for project updates since X/Twitter is considered a toxic cesspool lately.
Maintainer’s time is scarce. Users have two options, either public contact, just like how the default GitHub issues work. The other one is rating issues, that has some Voting Power. Users who needs maintainer’s time in exchange for the fiat obtain voting power let’s say 1$ = 10 VP.
And can distribute them among 1 or many issues. If the bug is critical, and needs more priority, other users can add more Voting Power to the issue. But with the voting power, the issue turned into a quest system, and for dev it becomes faster to pay.
Who is going to pour money into the system? Funding means there is some degree of guarantee in the result. US and EU grants fund only new development or adoption. There is no such things as maintenance and support funding. So if people want something Open Source, we can collaborate to get it (if the gameplay is fun enough), but then how much does the maintenance cost? If it arises from the need, the how much time is needed to get into project - the statistics is not there, so who is willing to cover that too? In the end won’t it be another platform where people compete for peanuts?
Initially, maintainer’ sponsors, or donators are the funders for the project. Think of CascadeFund as the alternative of Patreon or GitHub sponsorship.
With many active projects, as the first goal, I’m thinking to add more features for the maintainers to help with branding, to help updates in the engaging manner for their users. Eventually with many such projects, and few thousand donating users, our next, goal is to make it as the social network, where donaters of the projects are staying at the projects and engaging with the maintainers. Additionally, to discover and gather together for new projects. Here then we can talk about the full funding coming directly within the platform.
As for the funding at that stage it also depends, and would be done by third party services, who act as guarantee, if the country requires, then this third party services to open up legal papers.
I like the inverted pyramid approach. Instead of begging for donation, maintainers are the guys who give out the money. It is a game worth playing, with “sustainability” goal being the final achievement. Whoever needs quality software, pour money into the system, and maintainers (or AI) distribute it, according to (either):
Demand (how much a person needs money per month, from total cost of one’s life owership)
Effort (how much time it took to deliver stuff)
Weight (core value improvement for business(es))
The goal is not the profit, but human support network. The “Effort” is very specific set of items that anybody can claim and sponsor. Like I did some tickets, left some comment, it is publicly visible (like feed in my profile in GitLab), and companies/people can claim some items to sponsor/fund/back them. Then a person profile would be like a racers coat, with labels and stuff, and if there are media campaign, the sponsors/funders/backers get media coverage according to some rules.
So it starts with maintainers, but if you want to play, you need to sponsor/fund/back something. Maybe it will be your own workers, but the code would be Open Source. Because we want quality software. That way the maintainer from the organization gets credits. No organization gets credit - only maintainer. Organization can only get points while the person is hired by them. So on the platform people are artifacts to the company. Not resources.
People will find a way to outplay the system to get money, but as long as maintainers own the flow, the impact of exploiting the public funding will be less than in QF projects like Gitcoin etc. Or not. Only gameplay will tell.
I am not sure how it aligns with your platform, but I hope some of these ideas will be useful. If the platform is Open Source and distributed (can be locally deployed), then people inside Inner Source companies could also play and enhance the logic inhouse, with valuation and distribution of budgets to maintenance and support. And in a few years the system will be able to switch from manual supervision to AI saviour.
Yep. If there is no money in the system, then there is no sustainability. If the money do hot help to cover life expenses (spent), then there is no sustainability.
More maintainers are struggling to find funds to spend, more would need funding.
Additionally, in the future I planned to add your case, but I think it needs more serious approach. Reading codebase written by other person is not a liked experience for contributors.
I want to make it as level based. And goes directly with the maintainer who consults or gives more hints about exact file or other nuance. So, besides sustain project by redirecting funds to contributor, maintainer also teaches the contributors the entire codebase that they can continue and maintain as well.
Exactly. And over the last 10 years nothing changed. We have SustainOSS, a lot o talks, but that’s it. That’s why the pyramid needs to be inverted. It should start with the money flow. So you need to give money to maintainer, somehow, if you want to get something back.
I don’t appreciate any assumption that blockchain and coins are fine. That entire world is so filled with scams and speculation and zero-sum games. So it takes some significant acknowledgement and explanation about why this is different in order to get people over some skepticism that naturally arises when these things are brought up.
From my skeptical perspective, the type of thing that looks more intriguing to me is something like Holochain. The articles at Unenclosable Carriers and the Future of Communication - Holochain Blog and related show a deep level of systemic understanding and how this is aiming at truly being something without some first-mover / early-adopter or centralized power imbalance. I don’t really understand Holochain, but I’m just saying it gives me a different impression than “just another blockchain-is-the-answer assertion”. So, I’m offering it as a contrast to get the idea of how to stand out and reach skeptics.
I don’t like the idea of strictly working with GitHub or the way the assumption looks to be that GitHub is synonymous with free/libre/open development.
I also don’t get from the landing page what the incentives or differences are in terms of how this would support the issue of getting more people to fund OSS development.
Hey, sorry for a long reply. I decided to rebrand and first put the demo. It’s now called Ara. Blockchain is the tool here, for tracking the core principle. Users fund, and get the coins. Then collaborate on project release with the maintainers and split the coins with them. Once it reaches the certain coins, coin owners has the right to get the ownership of the project. For example stake the coins to prevent function or API deprecetaion in the uprade.
Can we close this? I opened a new post, as I rebranded and released the testable version that is possible to test and try out yourself. Need your feedback.
Explanation of the project updates in the new post:
Could you please add your open-source project as well there?
Let’s move to the other post.