Slides: https://cmustrudel.github.io//slides/state-of-the-source.pdf
The donations study: https://cmustrudel.github.io/papers/overney20donations.pdf
In this talk, scientists show their findings from analyzing GitHub data.
Here is a summary what this talk says about Funding Open Source:
- Overall, 0.04% of GitHub repos ask for donations
- Most projects receive little funding
- Projects asking for donations are
- more active
- more popular (GitHub stars)
- smaller
- on personal accounts (rather than org)
- Projects that get more donations are more popular (more stars, more downloads)
- Developers plan to spend donations on Engineering, Community, Project Expenses, Personal
- Many projects save money
- Projects that spend money, usually those that get a lot, pay developers with it
- To raise donations effectively
- reputation matters (popular, more active projects)
- Awareness of need (projects that explain WHY they need donations, what they need it for)
- Efficiency of using funds. report how the money was used and if it was successfull (see also: effective altruism)
