"Put your money where your love is." – The Grateful Dead Open source maintainers do the work that makes our awesome apps, websites, and projects possible! Many authors devote countless hours to open source. Let's help out authors and make the software we rely on healthier at the same time!
Hey everyone!
🙌 I just released a neat little tool you can use with npm (the package manager for Node.js). It's called `thanks` and it helps you donate to the open source maintainers you depend on! ✨
Here's how to use it:
1. Run `npx thanks` in your Node.js project
2. See which of your dependencies are seeking donations! 💸
🌟 If you're an open source author, add yourself to the list so people will know you're seeking donations for your open source work: https://github.com/feross/thanks
I'm really excited by the opportunity to solve the crisis of "open source sustainability". If you haven't heard here's the tldr:
"Our modern society—everything from hospitals to stock markets to newspapers to social media—runs on software. But take a closer look, and you’ll find that the tools we use to build software are buckling under demand." – Nadia Eghbal (from https://www.fordfoundation.org/m...)
Lots of the open source that we use to build the awesome products that we share on Product Hunt every day are in dire need of help. We need more people to maintain code and triage issues. But also more funding so we can justify spending more time on open source instead of working for clients/working at traditional jobs. I know maintainers who even need funding to feed/shelter themselves (this is not an exaggeration).
We have a lot more work to do. `thanks` is just one attempt to help, but it's only the beginning.
For now, take a look and see if any of the software you depend has authors who are seeking donations to continue their work.
Happy hacking!
Way to go @feross! This awesome. Integrating something like the BAT tokens similar to what Brave did to automate payments every time thanks is run might be an interesting option to enable. Supporting open source development is a problem that definitely needs solving.
@frantzlight I punted on solving a lot of hard problems like handling payments, deciding how much to allocate to each maintainer, etc. The tool is deliberately simple -- it just tells you that a maintainer is asking for donations and directs you to their donation pages where you can read more and decide how much to donate.
I think it's a simple first step. It raises awareness that you may have dependencies looking for donations, but doesn't prescribe how much to donate or whether to donate at all.
I've seen other efforts that tried to do too much and never got off the ground because of all the uncertainty. I valued shipping a V1 product more than it "solving all the problems". ❤️
@feross I don't blame you! I've worked on similar problems and eliminating steps for the user to accomplish in order to contribute is always the hardest part. This definitely raised awareness though and I hope there's a V2. 🙂
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