Money -- Open Source & TW

#1

I write this merely because it needs discussing.

I think a very serious issue with “open source” is makers still need to make a living.

There is a kind of encultured blindness around “open source” I find unhealthy. Should “open source” = poverty?

WHY, for instance, here, on talk.tiddlywiki.org, are we are not advertising TW Consultants!

IMO, TW gets better with commercial involvement.

FYI, a LOT of innovation in TW has come from private work by @jeremyruston solving his clients issues.

You get my drift? I think this issue is worth attention.

TT

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#2
  1. The difference between open source, foss code, closed source is this: business model(purpose, license).
  2. As they are different business models, that can scare people. Why? For some people with the more traditional business model (closed license), it can be strange to receive donations from a project.
  3. The GPL, MIT etc licenses never said that open or freedom software should be something free(when I say free, I mean in the financial sense - you can receive donations for plugins etc you create, commercial partnerships etc or pay through donations projects in these licenses). This proves that people have not read the terms of the license as usual or most of the time they are not interested in a license of this type, as you usually don’t have accurate technical support. I, for example, when I’m going to use a distro on my server, I check if the distro has long-term support like Ubuntu, if it doesn’t, I don’t use it, it will make my life difficult.

reference

#3

Right.

And everyone needs money.

TT

1 Like
#4

Yeah, is true. So… Remember I said that the difference between foss, open source and closed source was the purpose?

  • I for example use Windows and use tiddlywiki. For my daily use linux is fine for servers and windows is great for my daily activities. Although I consider that android is a great mobile operating system made with linux.
  • In that sense, my life is something like foss, closed-source and open source.
  • What I mean here is to analyze the purpose of the tiddlywiki project.
#5

I doubt most users here know those differences.

My focus is more moderate: to ask if there can be a HOW? to help developers here get some cashback.

TT

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#6

I think this question is relevant and I’ll see if I can answer it accurately, quickly, coherently, logically and concisely. So… How to make money with tiddlywiki?

  1. Monthly/annual donation for plugins it you create, develop and/or keep
  2. Monthly/annual donation for themes you create, develop and/or keep
  3. Another way would be a commercial partnership with a company to develop exclusive themes or plugins and earn some money from it.
  4. Another way would be if tiddlwiki adopted a business model like open-core, part of the code was community and part of the code was closed. Closing here would just be themes, customizations, plugins and specialized technical support like GitHub, Bitwarden etc.
  5. Offer courses on how to use tiddlywiki, these courses you can create on Youtube or any social network in order to earn money with a tool as tiddlywiki.
  6. Another way is to be a tiddlywiki consultant and earn money teaching how to use tiddlywiki - unlike the video courses I mentioned. Tiddlywiki consultant would be someone on the technical team registered to perform this role/position. “Bitwarden has several roles so that Bitwarden is something community and at the same time paid for companies as frontend, backend, designers, engineers etc.”
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#7

Right. A subscription model.

I agree on it’s potential.

TBH, IF I could have found a dev when I started TW I would have.
$700 spent on them would have been easier and cheaper than three years of complexity.

Just a comment, TT

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#8

Rather than attention, it needs action.

Someone needs to take ownership of this, make a plan, get feedback, and suggest where and under what criteria this gets included.

I think it’s a great idea – can you take it on @TiddlyTweeter?

Should we maintain it as a category here on TalkTW, and get it linked to from TW main site?

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#10
  1. If you open a category, it would be interesting and with that you could have products/services inside tiddlywiki. People could leave their phone, email or bitcoin or paypal link to get paid for themes, plugins, etc.
  2. This can somehow increase the use of tiddlywiki as a marketplace, framework or even as I said earlier as a product/service.
#11

I think the commercial side of TW matters. You know I am not a TW programmer. But I’d be fine with handling organising it though.

But, aligned with my post, Who will pay me to do that? :slight_smile:

TT

1 Like
#12

concept

  • This can define the scope of tiddlywiki as a product/service or even project.

notes

  1. “acquitting everything is not always feasible.”
  2. Linux is used today for many things, but what makes linux free is the variety of companies that use linux.
  3. Part of the money that comes to linux is made by donations from companies or individuals.
  4. Also, there are linux certifications to make people more qualified to teach or install linux correctly.
  5. This is what gives linux its value, in addition to the dozens of articles telling the ins and outs of linux.
  6. In this sense, if there are donations from people and companies and also certifications for specialized people, it could make tiddlywiki more usable given the example I mentioned about Linux.
  7. I’m not criticizing Linux or tiddlywiki, just seeing what they both have in terms of the market.
  8. When I say “acquitting everything is not always feasible.” - there was a discussion about the characteristics of tiddlywiki if it would be a marketplace/framework or even a product/service.
  9. When I say “absolving everything is not always feasible”. - sometimes the product/service is defined by the market, developers or technology.
#13

We are all volunteers here. Which is why I am pushing back on things that people are asking for asking them to commit to volunteering and organizing. There are many non programmer tasks.

Absolutely not a problem if you (or anyone else!) doesn’t have time to volunteer, but the reality is that then things will not get done otherwise. This is the classic case of some need for self organizing and group collaboration.

2 Likes
#14

Github has a sponsorship technology (GitHub Sponsors · GitHub) . But the developer has to sign up, of course. Don’t know if GH takes a cut or invades privacy like PP does. But considering that almost all developers have a presence on GH, it might be worth investigating.

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#15

@Mark_S @boris @TiddlyTweeter Hi! This idea is great, it would be interesting to have a tiddlywiki sponsorship program. Volunteers could be paid by people that donating for tiddlywiki, or volunteers could be paid by companies that believe in tiddlywiki potential. This idea is similar to the aforementioned consulting program.

#16

Mozilla has a volunteer program for people who write content about Firefox, it’s a way for you to get people to commit.

#17

Yes, and that’s why I set up #projects:opencollective – which isn’t restricted to developers and Github but can work anywhere.

We have active donations through TW’s Open Collective. If other people want to volunteer to do more with it – we could.

Here’s what I wrote in the intro:

Unfortunately, I ran short on volunteering time and no one else had interest or time to do more.

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#18

This involves this topic:UX/Product questions

#19

Joplin(Joplin Cloud), Bitwarden has a subscription program

#20

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I can give you my thought process and experience as a user.

A few months ago I decided to try out LogSeq and ended up liking it a lot. I continued using it for a while, but I had an uneasy feeling about the business model. I knew that the devs wanted to monetize it, but I couldn’t find any clarification on how they would do that. I just wasn’t sure if certain features would be paywalled in the future, and I didn’t feel comfortable investing a lot of my time into it.

One of the main things that drew me back to TiddlyWiki was knowing that the sky is the limit with the software, and nothing will ever be locked behind a paywall.

While I think that it is important for the core product to remain free and open source, I think that there are some good ways to monetize it:

  • paid synchronization service
  • paid mobile apps
  • GitHub sponsorship
  • plugin/theme competitions with prize money (from donations)
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#21

Right. Wonderful people. Who never get paid anything.

That is what my OP is about! It seems people who do so much work just get no money back?

To try get the issue on “TW Open Source” in focus … WHY aren’t we at least Moderately Commercial?

TT

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