Many open source projects lack the active funding sources. A lot of them eventually give up due to lack of funding. Many projects require the commercial adoption of the code before they can expect any form of financial compensation.
There are some of the online services which choose to address this issue with the projects like - Bountysource and Liberapay. However these service require the project maintainers to make use of the bank accounts and paypal account.
Possible Issues with OpenSource Projects using Fiat Funding
Here are some of the funding issues that you can notice among the open source projects.
- Paypal often blocks the account of open source maintainers unless they explicitly mention the purpose of the transaction.
- Banks around the world charge the high amount remittance fee.
- Banks also require the disclosure of the remittance transactions.
- Paypal and Banks both may require open source projects to establish as an entity.
As you can see forming entity and fulfilling criteria for the non profit or for-profit opensource organization requires a lot of efforts. In such case open source projects can benefit from the STEEM funding.
Where STEEM Blockchain Fits into this Scenario?
Projects like Utopian allows open source project owners to reward the contributors and the maintainers. Open source projects do not remain unpaid hobby or side hustle for programmers anymore. STEEM benefits contributors and maintainers of the projects in many ways.
- Project maintainers can fund the premium features for the project using STEEM.
- Contributors can be rewarded regardless of any geographical and bank limitations.
- Project can be funded from diverse pool of contributors on a recurring basis.
- Projects can convert the STEEM (and Steem Dollars) into bitcoin or other cryptocurrency for future budget allocation without having to worry about market price changes.
- Project can be kept sustainable for longer life cycle.
How you can help both STEEM and Open Source Projects?
Ask your favorite open source project to start accepting STEEM or any other altcoin. Ask them to establish a foundation and governance. This way they can make use of the funding the right way. Tell them how their project publishing visual content on the steemit platform can help. Reach out to such projects which are beneficial to the large set of users. And then ask their team members to post the proejct progress and the announcement on platforms such as Steemit, DTube etc. You can help many open source and GNU projects this way using STEEM platform.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors