#poll Have you ever paid for software when it was optional to do so?
EDIT: If you only occasionally pay for software when it is optional, please reply with what sorts of software you typically do and don't pay for.
I think it is probably safe to call it here. The overwhelming majority of you support the development of software you use to varying degrees of "sometimes", which is pretty cool.
From the replies to this thread, I gather it's relatively common for people to only support projects that are already relatively mature and popular, which is an interesting chicken and egg problem. Also you don't get anything if you don't ask, but it works better if the asking doesn't feel extractive. Not surprising
Lots of people also unsurprisingly strongly prefer one-off donations or payments instead of recurring ones to support long term development, but are also often vocal about how they are entitled to updates and improvements long term. That seems to imply that "growth" is the unsaid expectation of how a project should be funded long term.
It seems like applications that people interact with directly have the best shot at being funded through a pay-what-you-want or donation based model. Within that, games have a bit of an advantage over regular applications by more commonly having an end date to their development without being considered "abandoned".
Not a lot of mention of funding libraries, middleware, and critical infrastructure though. I guess most folks just assume that's someone else's problem
@aeva I find that there's generally very little acknowledgment of the concept of a 'software commons'; not just in the sense of making things usable broadly, but also in terms of feeling an obligation to *support* that commons, particularly the invisible parts.
Most folks seem to think about "supporting software by donating" as a sort of "purchase-lite" where you compensate someone for their work on a thing that you, personally, use. That works to a point, but logically means that libraries and underlying infrastructure go underfunded (or often entirely unfunded), because end users never interact with them and potentially aren't aware of there even *being* a public commons to support.
I think we'll need an actual culture change to fix this problem. To change the narrative and framing from "donate to express your gratitude" to "donate to support the commons", so that the funding 'pitch' for things without direct end users becomes easier.
@joepie91 worse, I think lots of people figure it's the responsibility of the application developers to support the libraries they use. Trickle down economics doesn't even work when the person at top has money lol.
@aeva I think that might be optimistic in some ways :)
I've had a lot of conversations about this over the years with people, and I'd say that "never thought about it" or "didn't even realize libraries were being used" is overall far more common than "thought about it and concluded the application developer would do it". Not that it doesn't happen, just not very often from what I can tell.
@joepie91 it's a shame there isn't, like, some kind of open source advocacy organization that takes donations and uses the funds to make sure the commons gets the material support it needs including the funding of promising new projects
@joepie91 or maybe a cooperative or something idk. I don't have all the answers, but I can at least see that the status quo clearly isn't working and is just going to result in more status quo if left to its own devices.