As an experiment into different models of funding open source development, I'm soliciting "directed donations" for feature development on my open source CLI tool for validating GitHub actions and workflows, action-validator.
The general idea is that I'm now actively asking for donations specifically in support of action-validator development, via my Ko-fi page. All donations will be "tallied" into the table below, and when the total donations received reach a threshold (I'm starting with AU$150 -- or about US$100 -- and we'll see if that needs adjustment later), I'll implement one of the open action-validator issues tagged "code-fund". If you want a particular issue implemented, you can "direct" your donation to that issue, otherwise your donation will go into a "general" pool that will be used for the implementation of new features in action-validator.
I don't know if this will work. But if we never try anything new, nothing new will ever happen.
First off, let me be clear: this is an experiment. Everything here is subject to change, at any time, for any reason. But here's how the experiment will work for now.
Both once-off and recurring donations are gratefully accepted, and as an incentive for those willing to make a recurring donation, I'll be counting monthly donations as double the monetary value each and every month.
See the Foreseeably Anticipated Questions for more clarity on various aspects of this.
Here are the donations currently received by the code fund. You, too, can support this experiment. Remember you can nominate a specific action-validator issue to contribute to, or pay into the "general" fund. Either way, your donation will go to help support my open source development work.
All the money you donate, less transaction fees charged by Ko-fi, Stripe, etc, will end up going to me, Matt Palmer. I've been an open source contributor for approaching 30 years now, and have released an awful lot of open source code of my own over the years, in addition to by now probably thousands of contributions to other open source projects.
From a legal perspective, your donation will go to my personal company, Tobermory Technology, which is based in Australia. Your credit card statement will show a payment to that company, which then pays me.
If this experiment doesn't reach AU$150 in total donations, I won't commit to implementing any particular feature. Nevertheless, action-validator -- and all my other open source projects -- still take a certain amount of my time to maintain, so your donation will be gratefully received as a contribution to my on-going maintenance efforts.
Apart from expending effort implementing features and fixes that people donate towards, I intend to continue maintaining action-validator in much the same way that it has been already. I'll review PRs as-and-when I get the time and inclination, and triage bug reports and feature requests as I have been doing.
Any donations over AU$150 marked for a specific issue will "roll over" into the "general" pool, which will go towards funding the implementation of another issue. That also applies to donations for an issue that gets fixed in a PR submitted by someone else -- if there are (say) $100 in donations for an issue that someone else fixes, I'll move those donations to the "general" pool.
As I envisage it, people who donate in support of action-validator in general are making a donation that says, "I want action-validator to improve, but I don't mind what exactly gets improved". So, the way I plan on respecting that decision is that, when the total donations in the "general" pool, plus those for a specific issue (presumably the highest-funded issue), add up to AU$150, then that specific issue with the highest donations will get implemented. If, somehow, there is AU$150 in the "general" pool, but no issues with any directed donations, I'll pick an issue that looks interesting to me that day and implement that.
The initial issues I've chosen as eligible for specific donations are ones that I've hand-wavingly estimated as requiring "reasonable effort" to implement. I haven't carefully assessed the effort involved and put individual price tags on everything, just looked at it and gone "yeah, that isn't going to take me a month full-time to do".
As an example of one issue that isn't on the list, implementing a parser and validator for the entire GitHub actions expression language is a significant piece of work, that I'm not confident committing to implementing in its entireity at this stage of the experiment. If all goes well, I might expand out to having different "thresholds" for different issues, or something like that. (As an aside, if there's an issue not on the code-fund list you'd like to see implemented, I'm happy to take commissions)
As an experiment, I'm trying to keep things reasonably simple and manageable. However, if there's another of my many projects you'd like to see a feature implemented, feel free to reference those in your donation message. I'm not guaranteeing it'll make anything happen, but it would be a very strong signal that there's interest in my expanding this program, and as always, I'm extremely grateful for all support.
I have looked at a number of "open source funding" platforms, but they all fall into one of three categories: they're implementing a very different model, they seem moribund, or they give off some sort of "shady" vibe. Since this an experiment, I'm looking to do "the simplest thing that could possibly work", and if it takes off, I'll undoubtedly switch to (or build) something more "formalised". If you have any suggestions for a vibrant, compatible-with-my-model platform I could use, feel free to let me know.
I guess at the end of the day, you kinda don't. But if I'm running some sort of scam here, it's a mightily unproductive one. Spending three decades building a reputation and career as an open source developer, just to do a rug-pull on donations to support development of just one of the many programs I've already publicly released, seems like a really inefficient way to fleece people out of their hard-earned.