A plan for open source software maintainers
Patreon is a perfect example how people are willing to support good works. Currently, the Vue's creator is receiving $10k monthly for his works [0].<p>I was happy recursively paying for Pycharm even sometimes I didn't use it for months. I see many people do that with Adobe products. If I had an option to pay Postgresql, Flask, VSCode developers a small amount every month , I would be happy to pay it.<p>One thing I would love to see is to have an option to <i>pay</i> the OSS developers. There works are worth not only donations but payments. In the other side, I've seen enough higher managers refuse to use OSS. Their reasons are really understandable: "Who I'm gonna call if the software has some bugs?". Contracts, and sometimes expensive prices, are what they need before invest in new softwares.<p>So how these contracts should work in a Patreon-like site? If I had implemented the site, I would shamelessly copy the Patreon's tiers model. The cheap tier would require the developers just keep doing whatever they are currently doing. More expensive tiers would be for support contracts. I pay this developer for that project, and I'm guaranteed that I'll receive email support within 24h. If I pay more, I may have access to phone support. What kind of supports and how much are they worth is the OSS developer's decision.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/evanyou" rel="nofollow">https://www.patreon.com/evanyou</a>