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I got infected in a hospital while already suffering from an autoimmune flare. I was isolated for a week, hazmat suits, the works. Lost 15lbs in the hospital and had to take antibiotics for 3 months to make sure any resistant spores were killed. I’ve heard that fecal transplants have a very high success rate in curing Cdiff but didn’t have that option at the time.
Unfortunately a number of those APIs are still not available on iOS and have seen little to no traction[1]
Yes, we do hold payments for projects and pay them out monthly. However if you don't want to claim your funds on StackAid but do accept donations elsewhere, we will use those service to pay you out instead. Running the tool offline would be challenging because we a large index of dependency->repository mappings across various ecosystems so we can resolve your dependency tree. You would also still be stuck manually paying out to possibly hundreds of projects. FWIW we are completely transparent about the payments we make to each project as well as how much goes to us.
Sure, but you (maybe not you specifically) _solve problems_ by using a lot of open source. Your ability to do your job and get paid depends on the labor of others. Why not compensate them for it.
I see a lot comments here suggesting the he should just pack his bags and get a corporate gig. How many other great open source projects will we miss out on because developers see this advice and not even bother in the first place.
At this risk of some self promotion, we developed StackAid (https://stackaid.us) to help fund the long tail of open source because of the exact problems you mentioned. People only tend to remember the popular/direct dependencies.
But the thing is he DID ask for help, quite a few times and was only met with the hate and vitriol you mentioned. Depressing indeed.
Obviously I’m biased because I have skin in the game but articles like this really do a disservice for getting maintainers paid, something the author purports to support, because it gives people yet another excuse not to fund maintainers and maintain the status quo. I have yet to see illustrative examples in posts like these that show well funded projects doing worse because they got money.
There is another, opposite incentive at play which is to reduce the number of dependencies you have so that you receive more funding.
That is effectively what happens. Unclaimed funds are reallocated after a few months to projects that have been claimed. Like you said, that's a good incentive to sign up sooner rather than later.
To answer your first question, you give StackAid access to repositories that you own (private or public) and we discover the dependencies you use automatically. Those dependencies are what is funded by your monthly subscription. Let's say you give us access to 4 different repositories with a total of 50 dependencies, then your subscription is divided equally among them. Hope that's helpful.
Hey, we are located in the US based in Seattle and San Francisco and incorporated as an LLC. Our other founder has more of a social media[1] presence if that's helpful.
We use Stripe to process credit card payments as well as to pay out funds to projects that claim their funds. US based recipients who receive above a certain amount of money will be required to give the required information for 1099 income.
1. https://twitter.com/dudley, https://www.linkedin.com/in/dudleycarr, https://www.linkedin.com/in/wescarr
Fair point. There will be a longer grace period initially while we work on the awareness of StackAid.
There is no Stackaid dependency to install. We are treated as an implicit direct dependency for the purpose of calculating the fee we collect. If you have 19 direct dependencies, StackAid will be the 20th, and get 5% of your total subscription.
Anyone with admin access to a repository can register to be paid by StackAid and the total allocation for a project will be split amongst them equally. We plan to allow adjusting the percentages each maintainer receives in the near future.
StackAid founder here. There are a couple of questions that keep coming up that I thought I would address in one place.
- People don't want to give money to Stripe, Meta, etc since their projects are already well funded by corporations. We agree! Right now, those projects can just not claim their funds which would then be reallocated, or they can pass their funds on to their dependencies instead. We are exploring other ways to allow you to exempt certain organizations/repositories from being funded.
- People will try and game the system. They can try but they largely will not succeed because ultimately many developers will still need to be convinced to use and depend on their projects. How funds are allocated and what dependencies an open source project has is public knowledge and the community will rightly punish bad actors.
Thanks for all the responses and feedback.
We thought long and hard about how people could game the system but ultimately it will be quite difficult because you still have to convince a large number of developers to actually use and depend on your project. And since the flow of donations and dependencies is public, the community will not look kindly one individuals trying such tactics.
For a $10/month donation yes our max take would be $0.75. The example on the homepage is for a $20/month subscription.
Appreciate the feedback. In case you didn't see it already, we take a different approach to getting paid[1] that we think is more equitable.
You can also use our GitHub action to publish a stackaid.json file with your dependencies to a new repo just for the purpose of giving us access. This was your repos/source say private to us, but your dependencies can still be funded. It's a bit more effort on your part but hopefully addresses the concern.
If stripe doesn’t want to participate (likely) their funds are reallocated. They also have the option to pass on funds to their dependencies
On an individual level allocation may seem a bit lopsided but, in aggregate, useful and popular projects will receive more funding.
Commercial projects can either not claim their funds (which will be reallocated), or elect to pass their funds through to their dependencies.
You also always have the option to explicitly list your dependencies.
I don't think it will be a major concern. A couple of thoughts:
- We built a simulation[1] of the NPM ecosystem to see how funds would be allocated. Frivolous projects did not see any significant funding.
- As I mentioned in other comments, you would still need to get many developer to actually use your new packages as either direct or second-order dependencies. Note that 2nd order dependencies receive quite a bit less allocation than direct ones.
- You can always manually manage your dependencies if you see a project engaging in this behavior.
Yes, projects with unclaimed funds have a notice at the top of their page. I think there is also an opportunity for us to show you which of your dependencies have been claimed in your dashboard.
Absolutely. We'd like to support GitLab and Bitbucket next but had to pick a starting point and GitHub was an obvious choice. If there are other providers you think we should pursue, let me know.
Are you thinking of Flossbank[1]? We are currently structured as an LLC. Are there specific concerns you have that would prevent you from using StackAid because of that choice? Our hope is that our actions and being good stewards of funding open source will help earn and keep your trust long term.
Thanks! You can follow our other founder on twitter @dudley or our official account @stackaid. If you sign up for an invite we'll keep you posted on new developments as well.
Good question. There are a few factors that I think will mitigate this concern.
- You still have to get developers to use and depend on these new projects.
- Allocation happens on a per subscription basis, so to realistically take advantage of this scheme, you will need many developers to adopt your new projects.
- Subscribers who notice maintainers doing this will be incentivized to vote with their dollars and change their dependencies to projects that aren't engaging in this behavior.
Yes you can create one manually. If I'm understanding you correctly, private organizations you add to a stackaid.json file will be ignored. Our focus is on funding open source.
But if you mean, can you commit a stackaid.json file in a private repository, yes absolutely. As long as the GitHub app is given access to that repo, we will discover it and fund dependencies specified in the stackaid.json file.
We do support a number of other languages/ecosystem via a GitHub action[1] which generates a stackaid.json file we use to fund projects.
All the package.json file we discover in your repos are actually automatically merged together, de-duped, etc before funds are allocated. In the app you can manage which set of repos/files you want to be included.
1. https://github.com/marketplace/actions/stackaid-dependency-g...
Yes, we have a GitHub action[1] that uses the dependency graph API to generate a stackaid.json file which will list your direct and indirect dependencies.
1. https://github.com/marketplace/actions/stackaid-dependency-g...
Projects like TS, React, etc that are already well unfunded most likely won't claim their funds which means they will be reallocated to your other dependencies after a few months.
They will also have the option to be pass-through organizations which means that funds allocated to them will instead go to their dependencies.
We are also exploring the idea of being able to declare a list of repos/organizations to exclude from being funded.