Why Funding Open Source is Hard
summary
An account of building Code Sponsor (reincarnated as Code Fund) that adds one line of code to a README to run an ethical advertisement for open source projects, showing traction (impressions and clicks rising, monthly payouts growing from ~$2.5k to ~$4.7k) and $11,000 paid out in Q4 before shutdown for compliance. Covers funding options, the 65% of top‑100 repos with truck factor <2, why GitHub refuses the approach, and what actually works and fails.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction
- 4:44Open source value and scale
- 8:00Hidden costs of maintenance
- 11:13Should open source be free?
- 14:33Funding models
- 23:10Developer resistance to change
- 26:00Advertising as funding
- 31:03Limitations of funding platforms
- 36:06GitHub funding status
- 41:26Q&A
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