Highlight Flattr, Paypal or Whatever Opportunities on Issue Pages

New PHP code should not be added to bluecheese, unless absolutely needed. These sorts of changes should be done in our customization modules. Since issues, and the GitTip profile value, only exist on Drupal.org, the best place is drupalorg (rather than drupalorg_crosssite).

Personally, this feels like a bit of clutter on issue pages, where screen real estate is valuable. This needs review from at least a few community members active in the issue queue before I'll think about deploying it.

So this is only for issue queue or projects pages as well?

I like the idea. Perhaps a good pilot would be to add Drupal.org support to Gittip-Everywhere, the official Gittip extension? I think the best bet would be to have a super-lightweight Heroku app parse the dom of each users' profile page (where they might have entered a Gittip or Twitter username). That way, drupal.org isn't being demolished with hits to the profile page of each commenter.

TODO:

1. Create simple Heroku service that takes a Drupal.org UID and spits out a Gittip username (if it exists) and perhaps some other data (depending on how nice we want to be to the Gittip servers :)
2. Submit a PR to the gittip anywhere browser extension repo to appropriately embed the flair on d.o.

Now we have Gittip support for the passionate Gittip users who want to start giving no-strings-attached anonymous gifts. It we see positive network effects, we can consider adding it directly into d.o infra.

My personal opinion is that Gittip spread should be a "pull" model, not a push. As in, I pull you into Gittip because I would like to show my appreciation of your efforts in some small way, rather than pushing Gittip on others because I'm trying to support myself. Both can make sense, but the latter is fraught with social faux pas's.

The way I frame it when I pitch Gittip is like this:

I realize you're not asking for it, but I would love it if you signed up for Gittip. I say that as I'm looking for the chance to share the love and express my appreciation for the people who make my experiences in this community better. If you don't need it then just pass it along to someone else doing good work, and it'll eventually get to someone who keeps it, and in the process, we've created a couple "hops" of love and "aw shucks" feelings :)

EDIT: Oh hey, this is what Gittip Everywhere integration looks like on Twitter (no screencap on extension page):
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s27/sh/57758dc2-09b9-4a91-ab6a-6b5979430a...

Great idea, but I'd question the decision to go with Gittip completely. I've blogged about that before and IMHO it'd be better to funnel everything via the Drupal Association. We're managing recurring memberships there and if we could implement a way to tip d.o. usernames this would be ideal, IMHO.

I support this idea in a general sense, and I think patcon's suggested implementation is the only way to go initially. If people start seeing Gittip pop up (because they have installed the browser extension), then we will achieve what we want to a wide enough degree that I think things could develop from there.

If we impose it on everyone before it's well-cemented in the social fabric of the community, we will get vocal, negative reactions from people who are ideologically opposed. vs. Gittip-Everywhere, which they would not even be tracking :) so it wouldn't bother them.

Should it make it to d.o proper, perhaps it should be default-disabled? Either that, or we should have a generic "support this developer" button, and Gittip could be one of the options. My initial thoughts on this was, "hmm, we're showing favoritism for Gittip, aren't we? I guess that's our choice, but I wonder if we could make better use of the space we'd be using for an icon).

@drumm Is correct that this could add a lot of clutter. Some ideas to reduce that would be, making it a gray icon (less noticeable), and moving it next to the name (so that we know what its being associated with). I do agree with the sentiment, that we should have more of a "support this dude/gal" button, than specifically Gittip and only show this for people who opted in and provided a support method.

Scope creep is a very dangerous with this though, I hope the coming D.O tools team will pick this up too. This is not something the DA should be involved with this a one-to-one relationship.

I agree with drumm that adding this information is a bit of clutter. However, I think there's a strong case to add several key pieces of information to the "submitted by" areas of nodes and comments to make it easier to have conversations:

* member since
* primary languages
* gittip profile

If I know someone has been a member of drupal.org for 1 week and has french as their primary language then I'm going to make a different set of assumptions about their tone and what content my response needs than I would if they've been on drupal.org for 10 years and list English as a primary language.

I suggest that we do a "hovercard" style display on usernames wherever they appear on drupal.org. And then...it's no problem to show gittip in there :)

There are lots of folks who just take from the Drupal community.

That's their prerogative.

I see this as a form of forced panhandling.

I have a gittip account, but I absolutely would not want an icon listed alongside my contributions, since I contribute regardless of how much is flowing through my gittip. A link on my profile page is enough.

Furthermore, I think gittip is completely the wrong model for this.

Let's make it easier to thank folks who give great suggestions

If someone was very helpful, I might consider making a one-time donation or something. Not signing up for a weekly payment.

Strong -1 from me.

For you a weekly micropayment isn't attractive.

Let's clarify something. I am both a recipient and a giver on gittip.
Gittip is a great model for me as a recipient.

But random interactions on drupal.org are not going to drive me to make a weekly contribution to someone.
If I feel strongly enough, I can click on their user profile and see what links they have.

Also, this integration would be at the detriment of those who use Flattr but not gittip. If you don't see a gittip icon after someone's name, you might assume that they don't need your patronage. But I know several contributors that use Flattr.

I agree with Tim. Random interactions aren't what is best for Gittip right now. It's a long-term funding model. Once Gittip supports one-time transactions (https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/5), I think this would have more merit for Drupal.org.

I think the best place to start on anything like this would be the user profile page. Replacing

with something better is more straightforward and would be a good place to potentially establish any UI patterns.

Wearing my technical hat: I want to get us off profile module because it is gone in D8 and isn't the most fun to work with. I'd like to postpone any issue with a new use of profile module on migrating that data to fields.

Personally: I agree with Dave and Tim.

I think the profile page is enough for listing your Gittip account.

A one time donation could be a good idea for issue queues but Gittip isn't right for that model yet as Dave Reid pointed out.

I'm someone whose Drupal contributions are 100% funded so take this opinion for what it's worth, but...

If I feel strongly enough, I can click on their user profile and see what links they have.

That's my feeling as well.

The focus on our community interactions should be on our interactions. The people involved, the technical arguments they're expressing, the help users are giving and receiving, etc. So user pictures, so I can see the face behind the keyboard? Yes! Random funding badges from this or that service that I may not even be able to use in my country? Not so much.

When I receive a really good answer, or when I read a really insightful patch review by someone, I frequently go to their user profile to learn more about them. I usually read their bio, follow them on Twitter, might connect with them on LinkedIn, etc. If there was a nice presentation of self-funding options, as drumm suggests in #22, that might entice me to send them some cash as well.

I think the user profile is the appropriate form for this type of fundraising, because it makes the operation "opt-in," contingent on someone generating helpful and insightful content on the site.

Then separately, from an overall "governance" POV, I'm also not sure why we would tie ourselves to one service specifically. It seems to me like we should offer a buffet of options (PayPal, Gittip, Amazon wishlists ;), whatever) and let people who want to reward contributors in some way choose, and similarly let contributors choose the system that works best for them/their country.

I do worry that modules aren't getting the maintenance that they need, so much so that there is a need for a site like http://www.comaintainer.com to try to raise the profile of some of the 20k modules out there that need help.

I've been thinking about this, a little bit off topic but, I thought some incentives for companies to sponsor modules a little further would be a good idea. Right now when a company sponsors a modules development they only get a logo or link at the bottom of the module page. Maybe they should get a more prominent position in the sidebar, automatically list the modules on their company page and even a mention on Twitter, "Thank you Company X for sponsoring the development of Module Y." A bit of free promotion is a lot easier to sell to company owners to get them on board.

Just a thought.

As gdemet said in #2177459: Highlight Supporting Organizations in the Issue Queue:

If the goal is to get more folks to use the issue queues, I'd take a look at the design and UX of the queues first before adding corporate logos.

I think that is good feedback. Let's revisit this after #2159409: [Meta] Implement first iteration to improve issue queue workflow, and after user profile pages establish a pattern for these icons, as I mentioned in #22.

Rather than focusing specifically on gittip, how about generalizing it - add multiple user fields for different sorts of sponsorship options, obviously including gittip, and then make the icon link to e.g. the #sponsorship section of their profile page with links to those services?

@mgifford: Initiatives to improve d.o are important, but that doesn't mean this idea would solve or help the problem.

IMHO the reason for the major drop-off on nodes & comments being created is that the new issue workflow makes it much more cumbersome to use, and many people have complained about it.

I support the idea that we should *not* focus on gittip, and allow other ways.

*If* we went with this, people should be able to opt-in to it with a "show my gittip icon on all my comments everywhere" option they can set in their account.

Pushing people (observers, folks not totally in the know about who is who and how contribution works) towards a persons *profile* is preferable to always showing icons next to a person's username on every comment.

Once someone is looking at the profile, it might not be obvious how to support that person, or what kind of support options there are. Maybe the profile could give a hint as to what gittip is (sustained weekly support), and if we have fields for other one time support, note those also.

An advantage of the profiles is they also have a free form field where people can *say* what they prefer (a job, gittip, onetime paypal, or whatever).

Some profiles are quite long and have lots of info, maybe we could work on the design/layout of the profiles in general.

... for driving people to the profiles, maybe a hover over the username could have a teaser? (but hover has issues). People who are familiar know there is great info there. But, consider someone who googled an error message, found an issue, and found a workaround, instructions, or a patch, how do *they* know to look at people's profiles? How do they know which profiles to look at? Should they thank (fund) the producer of the patch that was committed? All people who touched it? The review(s)? Hm.

I guess I would be more in support of something that drove people toward profiles, and also working on the profiles.

In terms of something visual to put next to each comment, (I'm getting off topic) I would more like to see a up/down or +1, and also something to add meta data like "this was a review", so that we could start having data about who does reviews and how many they do, in what areas. (can't find the issue for that)

Firstly, I agree with webchick's comment #26 that any payment/reward/tipping system should not favour any particular external system.

More fundamentally though, I'm completely unconvinced that this is going to make any difference. Most programmers are going to be earning more per day than they're likely to get in a lifetime of gittips or similar, so there is no financial incentive there. Sure, it'd be nice to get gittips, but I don't think it's going to make any difference to 99% of contributors. There are, I think, 2 basic reasons people contribute to Drupal:

1. they get personal benefit (e.g. pleasure of writing a module that lots of people use, just because they come up with a cool idea they'd like to implement, because they need the module and are happy to contribute it to the outside world (the contrib modules I own are all in this last category))
2. they are paid by their company to work on Drupal, whether for a part of their time (e.g. 1-day a week) or full-time (e.g. webchick)

I agree with Dries, that as Drupal gets bigger, we tend to be moving more towards the 2nd option.

To clarify my post #43, the list of 2 reasons was not

1. they get personal benefit... AND
2. they get paid

but rather:

1. they get personal benefit... OR
2. they get paid

for #d8rules we also put the logo on the project page.

on the broader topic i have posted an summary of the #d8rules crowd funding campaign at our blog:
http://drunomics.com/en/blog/d8rules-reaches-100-drupalfund

It's now Gratipay.

As Dries says, they tried crowd funding and it doesn't even pay for a single developer. That's probably a kind way of saying it. I doubt it even pays for a weeks pay for a developer. if you listen to the previous 1 hour of Dries' talk, you'll see that Drupal is more as far away from gittip funding as building motorways is.

Drupal is a multi million dollar business now. People are either paid to work on Drupal core and contrib etc. by their company, or they do it for free for whatever other motive drives them (glad to give back, recognition, etc.). Stuff like gittip is nice, but largely irrelevant.

I agree completely with #51.

I'd also quibble with this:

Alex didn't manage to make it work for his appeals to focus on Core

It did extend the amount of time he was able to work on core prior to starting at Chapter 3, even if it didn't become a self-sustaining thing on an ongoing basis.

#51++

As Dries says, they tried crowd funding and it doesn't even pay for a single developer.

To put this in persective : in the "discussion" part of the "Funding Drupal core" session in Amsterdam, Dries clarified that what he meant in his keynote : "We tried crowdfunding *at Acquia with LSD*, and it doesn't work" - which is kind of debatable, given the specific conditions of LSD (minimal entry ticket of several thousands of dollars).

He also said that different approaches and attempts can totally coexist.

I am *very* grateful to Dries for dedicating a full keynote to the funding issue, and visibly giving quite some thinking to the topic. I agree (even though it took me a couple days in Amsterdam) that the plan he came up with is shooting for the right, sustainable and scalable solution. But I still don't think we can brush off crowdfunding as "doesn't work" as long as there hasn't been an "official, one-stop d.o-endorsed, in-your-face on the front page" crowdfunding initiative.

I agree that without trying d.o integrated crowd funding, we haven't really tried.

*picking this up and dusting it off*

Hello there! :)

I've been tasked in recent months by Acquia to look into blockers for D8 adoption. One big reason (though thankfully steadily declining) is "there's not a [stable] module for that yet!" Another is "core feature I need isn't done!" (ex: the D8 migration path). And you talk to the people working on core features, and they say "Committers aren't looking at my stuff fast enough!" Another is "documentation!" but the entire documentation team is volunteer. And so on down the line.

When you dig into why, for example, the Feeds or Webform module isn't stable yet, or why some committers have far less time than others, they're nearly across the board because these folks are doing this stuff in their nights/weekends time, and doing work on their module or on their documentation or their core patch at the expense of earning income, sleeping, and having family time, etc.

We are working on promoting the core committers who are in this boat, since increasing core committer velocity has a net effect of increasing velocity everywhere, decreasing burnout across the board, etc. so is a great target for funds, as well as a high-impact place for sponsors to put their $. But that's only a small part of the overall picture of Drupal's health, and it would be much, much better if everyone on Drupal.org in the position of wanting to contribute more but also wanting to, like, you know, eat :P had the ability, in an actual "official" Drupal.org-sanctioned capacity, to raise funds for this purpose.

I spoke to Tim Lehnan / @hestenet about this general concept and he was very +1 to looking at this again, so... "bump." :)

These efforts have gotten derailed in the past by some of the following factors:

• We have a highly international community, so trying to find a provider that handles all the various currencies has been a challenge.
• We have a highly FLOSS-minded community, so trying to find a provider that meets our ethos has been a challenge.
• If we pick multiple providers, this presents both a usability (to donators) and a theming challenge (to not clutter things up).
• Should we make this a revenue stream for the DA as well while we're at it?
• Probably other things I forget.

I would highly recommend we start with defining the simplest thing that can possibly work and work from there iteratively to improve over time. I'm not sure if 56 replies into a ~5 year old issue is the best place to do that, but starting here for now.

----

One thought on how this could look:

1) A field on the user profile (generic text?) with "Fund me" that contains whatever: Paypal email address, Patreon URL, etc.
2) A second, long-text field on user profile with "What you pay for" that talks about the person's contributions: "This money helps me to maintain the Foo module" or "This money allows me to mentor more contributors" or what have you.
3) If those text fields are present, then wherever the user's name shows up, a little '$' shows up next to their name and when you click it you're taken to a page that has those two fields printed out. That'd hopefully take care of modules, issues, forums, and (maybe) case studies and documentation?

Not married to any of this, but again... let's go for the simplest thing that could possibly work. :)

-----

If we want to go the "standardize on a provider" route, I also did a bit of digging on that. https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding has a very comprehensive breakdown of almost every funding model/provider out there (it even includes the, sadly, now-defunct Drupalfund.me).

It recommends (and I agree with this, based on past experience with other approaches such as bounties and ransoms) a subscription-based model, since there is accountability built in. If you're not consistently doing good work, people can choose to stop sponsoring you. Vs. a bounty-based system where someone else can bid to do the "port your module to Drupal 8" project, or a Kickstarter-esque thing where funds are raised in advance but then there's no guarantee the work gets done. Subscriptions also lead to more sustainable income / dedicated time from contributors which is important for longevity; "burst-mode" contributions that don't line up with others' bursts are not as effective.

The "king/queen" of subscription services du jour seems to be https://www.patreon.com/, and you can see there are people earning multi-thousand dollars a month with this service at https://www.patreon.com/explore/science and the like (though we should set our own expectations very low :)). They keep 5%, another ~5% goes to transaction fees, and creators keep the other 90%. All donations are handled in USD (which is sub-optimal), handled through Paypal or credit/debit cards handled by Stripe (which covers quite a few [50+] countries): https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204606275-Do-you-support-i... Also looks like There's A Module For That™ https://www.drupal.org/project/patreon (for both D7 and D8!)

---

So. How are people feeling about this issue these days?

Very happy to see in 2) that the field to describe what the payment goes towards is free text which allows “non code” contribution options.

@webchick thanks starting this again and providing the context.

I like simple idea of textfield as a MVP. As the issue shows we could spend years finding a perfect solution but meanwhile I am sure there are a lot people that would love to contribute more or starting contributing if was in any small way financially feasible.

Perhaps if we decide later to add an "official" way to ask for money for contribution we could add a checkbox "Opt in to Patreon(or whatever) integration" that would then override the simple textfield. But waiting on some sort of official method seems like a mistake.

People could use this textfield for any kind of sponsorship like they want, subscription based, one-time, crowding, whatever. We then could survey the community after a year or so and see if any successful models emerge which might inform a decision on a more official integration if that is still deemed necessary.

We could use in meantime highlight success stories of people using this link to raise funds, maybe in on drupal.org home page or Drupalcon sessions(driesnote?).

UPDATE: +1 for @rachel_norfolk's comment about the textfield being able to highlight what the money would support code or otherwise. I was actually going to write "highlight success stories of developers" above but change it to "people" because there are a lot areas that could use help that funding might enable

A couple of points from the Twitter discussion hinging off https://twitter.com/webchick/status/923972699939995648:

1) @davidhernandez noted that companies will probably find it much easier to fund a "group" (e.g. "Drupal Core Committers") vs. an individual person. That's indeed probably the case, esp. for larger sums of recurring money.

2) https://opencollective.com/ is apparently a tool other open source projects are using for this kind of fund distribution, as it provides line-item transparency into how money is spent. At first glance their requirements for open source project collectives seem to leave most of Drupal out in the cold; it requires a GitHub repo with 100+ stars and 2+ contributors, which would be maybe Drupal core + Drush + Commerce but probably not much more. And eliminates non-code contributors, obviously. However, @gusaus was saying that you can also set it up for an "organization" as well (e.g. Drupal Dojo), so maybe some play there...

3) Gábor also pointed out that we actually already have a text field for https://gratipay.com/ on Drupal.org profiles (which I did not realize), however the uptake on those seems pretty abysmal, probably at least in part given it's just a tiny link on the user profile that doesn't stand out in any way. (See e.g. https://www.drupal.org/u/kylebrowning) vs. the proposal above is to promote sponsorship opportunity next to all of a user's contributions. Gratipay also doesn't seem to have nearly the reach of Patreon; https://gratipay.com/browse/projects shows like $10/week and the like, which is something, but not enough money for someone to really focus on what they want to do.

Last time I looked, Gratipay has an application process that requires you be an organization doing at least some accounting. Maybe it's changed since then (and maybe I'm getting it all wrong).

I'd suggest that D.O needs a better way to present issue credits for individuals and companies so that it becomes more meaningful to anyone looking. You could get a nice spreadsheet of who's really paying for things.

And there could also be an automatically-generated block on D.O saying something like: "Thanks to Acquia for having the most commits this week, with Lullabot having the most diverse set of commits across different projects. And congrats to [someone] for their first commit to Drupal core!"

This would encourage Drupal companies to directly fund contributions and seek out issue credits.

Because while it's nice to have Gratipay and Patreon, that's not how this should work.

How about adding two fields to the user profile for (1) Bitcoin address and (2) Ethereum address.

These are the two most popular cryptocurrencies today. A company that wants to sponsor someone can easily, and legitimately, buy some currency from e.g. Coinbase.com.

I think many contributors would be quite exited about the opportunity to be paid in crypto. Instant payments, very low fees and good appreciation on the value.

Those options might be worth considering. From an "end user" perspective, though, that sounds like it introduces a pretty large barrier to entry. I think for most people, they just want to stick their PayPal address and/or a credit card in and voila... people get paid.

How about also a profile field on Organizations that lists how many, or the $ value for contributors they are funding?

That is a very good idea, and another place where picking a single provider that had an API for querying such things would be beneficial. I can't think of a meaningful way to do it other than "honour system" otherwise...

Really glad to see this and hope we can move it forward. While me too has many ideas, i absolutely support @webchick's MVP ideas.

Well, an API would be a great way. Another way, that might be less effort for the dev team would be to give us a multi value reference field on our profile where we can tag organizations that are funding us.

~G

https://liberapay.com/ is an interesting new services with an open source focus.

Please not promote bitcoin or other currencies with "proof of work". It's an environmental desaster.

I'm not sure if this will work, I recently tweeted about @mglaman's patreon profile - according to twitter's analytics that tweet saw the most traction (views/clicks) I've ever had on a tweet but no one has stepped and actually sponsored him: https://www.patreon.com/mglaman. People like sebastian bergmann and sara golemon are also on patreon and are getting ridiculously low amounts compared to the work they're doing (https://www.patreon.com/s_bergmann, https://www.patreon.com/sgolemon).

While most of us here would like to see something like patreon take off and help the open source community be more sustainable - I don't think it will happen because the examples of people already using it and actually getting enough money to make a difference are really the outliers. The only one I know making it work is the Vue.js creator: https://www.patreon.com/evanyou. I'm not sure if this is because he offers actual rewards or if this is for another reason.

I do think that something like patreon or gratipay is a better solution than bitcoin/paypal because it's a recurring solution. That is a bigger step for sponsors but as a maintainer it's a preferred solution, it would make it easier to scale back at work and actually spend time on projects during the daytime.

While onetime solutions (like paypal) would also help - that makes it a lot harder to rely on the income - I'd prefer to see more community effort put into the recurring solutions.

Regarding Gratipay:

After 5+ years, we are shutting down at the end of the year

sources:
https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981
https://twitter.com/Gratipay/status/925835194610876416

Agreed with @borisson_. The problem is that it's mostly individuals who feel compelled to support other individuals. But individuals (natural persons) can only send money on which they paid income taxes. Whereas for companies this can be an expense. We need more companies to step up.

Personally, I feel that getting an MVP solution out there in the Drupal universe is very important. Hopefully, we can also get people to give feedback about whatever solution is implemented.

Personally, I think there needs to be a change of in mindset of people in the Drupal and Open Source community who are using the software and think it is "free." People need to understand that everything that they are using costs time and money. Right now, I am more driven to get this message out then specifically; please donate X dollars to this or that module.

I think the most immediate message that needs to be made clear to every single person using Drupal is that they should join the Drupal Association which helps support Drupal.org and the Drupal community. Once people start understanding this concept, they will be more open to contributing back to the Drupal community by sponsoring an individual module, maintainer, or issue.

In conclusion, whatever 'technical' solution is agreed upon will be making a statement to the Drupal community; there should be a message that goes with it.

Yes, we should raise conciousness. And yes, getting recurring cashflow is the gold medal.

OTOH, often there's quite some drive in "Who can fix this PITA?"

So i think these are 2 different and both valid "user stories".

There has been a "big" stir recently about patreon https://www.cbsnews.com/news/patreon-angers-artists-content-creators-wit... mostly about how it would influence the $1-5 supporter.

A neutral MVP sounds like a good idea.

If we get fancy, some quarterly reminder would be nice: your profile says funds help you X and you prefer to receive funds via Y. Update at [Change link]

While most of us here would like to see something like patreon take off and help the open source community be more sustainable - I don't think it will happen because the examples of people already using it and actually getting enough money to make a difference are really the outliers.

This is a great reason for transparency. So that we can all learn from each other and from others (and they can learn from us) how to make it work. What starts as outliers can become more widespread when the information is open. From http://magazine.ouishare.net/2017/04/open-collectives-transforming-our-c... :

This really highlights what we want to do with Open Collective. By being transparent, each collective is helping the next generation of people wanting to create a similar project. For example, if you want to organise a Hackathon or help refugees in your city, you can look up at all the groups already doing it, learn how they are being financed, how much it costs, etc. So thanks to the access to that information, without needing to contact directly the people involved, you can already learn a lot! That’s what we are trying to do in Brussels with BrusselsTogether.org. What if instead of having each initiative operate in a silo in their own 20th-century association (in France we call them “Associations de loi de 1901”, that’s almost 100 years BI, Before the Internet), they were all operating as open collectives? We could then all learn from each other and easily reach out to potential contributors, backers and sponsors for any new initiative that needs support!

Also, this report from https://sustainoss.org/ is a good read.

My humble opinion is that developing for Drupal impoverishes you, unless you are developing tools for your own project or business. Because entering the ecosystem is hard and unfair, this is just an observation and I may be wrong.

I believe this because if you are a recent graduate developer, or as in my case self-taught, no one will hire you unless you have a certain professional prestige, or what is the same thing to prove that you are capable of doing certain things, and that in Drupal involves participating in the community, creating modules, patches, documentation, whatever and even if you do that with a lot of effort does not guarantee anything.

From an external perspective, it doesn't seem very attractive to enter the community, especially when as an independent developer you are encouraged to create an organization and relate the credits to it. But even if you make a lot of effort to gain visibility by creating modules or participating (visibility you need to get projects and jobs), it is more important to pay for membership as an organization than your participation.

And if you're poor and you can't pay, you fuck off. It's a vicious circle, because it takes money to pay for memberships, but if you don't have money, and you're new to the community, you'll need visibility to get jobs and have money, but to have more visibility you need to pay for membership organization, for someone new and without money it gets complicated, the only option would be to gain visibility by participating, investing time and without any guarantee that it will work, while in the process you get poorer.

Not to mention all the effort that needs to be put into learning to develop in Drupal 7 or 8. My comment moves away from the issue, but I wanted to share how I feel about the perceived benefit of participating in the community, as I am beginning to participate and this is the perception of someone new.

I think some combo of Open Collective, a transparent, open source fundraising platform + Drupal Association as host (fiscal sponsor) + a working group that focuses on sustaining Drupal events, projects and community initiatives would be a huge step in the right direction. With groups like Drupal Mentoring, Drupal Dojo, Drupal Open Learning, already or potentially using OpenCollective, there would be several additional ways the DA could help facilitate community based contributions and sustain the Drupal project.

I hope you will all be pleased to hear that one of my first jobs at the Drupal Association has been to start working on making this happen.

We have been in discussions with the lovely people at OpenCollective, looking at how we can create a sustainable solution that places the least burden on both users of the system and the Association’s Financial staff.

We also need to consider that not all potential projects on the system will share the same 501c status.

We are getting somewhere. Indeed, as of today, the infrastructure exists though it is hidden from view until we can work out all of the guidelines and procedures required to make it work in our community. Some of these guidelines, I will need to create in conjunction with OpenCollective and it might very well be I’ll be calling on the community here to work on others.

I need to read, a lot, before I can plan the next stages. Let me do that and we can move forward.

Hi Rachel,

After Holly, it’s going to be hard to do anything wrong...

That said, you have the un-lovely task of cleaning up years of ‘bad decisions,’ and if you’re not completely open and transparent the DA will again take more huge public image hits like it did over the intentional destruction of the Jobs group for the self enrichment of the DA, the abandonment of the D.O forums, and the continual lack of any relevant advertising options for us ‘little people.’

Over the last ~5 years, the impression I’ve been left with from DA/D.O/etc. is, “If you’re not a huge player, shove off.”

The number of modules not migrated to D8 is a fairly clear indicator I’m not alone in this feeling.

Since you said you needed to do some reading, here’s some links that might help show why a large number of the original user base is sorta pissed off at the DA and the direction Drupal in general has been going.

https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/blog/drupal.org-2015-advertising-initia...
https://www.drupal.org/forum/general/general-discussion/2015-12-27/the-f...
#2536122: Push to get the Drupal Organization to update the Drupal forums
https://groups.drupal.org/drupal-jobs [1]

(@webchick) None of the above addresses that the decision to change from procedural to object orientation removes 50 - 80% of the programmer base, who USE to work on Drupal code. (Again, modules not being ported to the next major rev shows this clearly.)

Now before you label me a some sort of malcontent, here’s a quote of mine from February 2015 (Nearly 4 years ago).

I personally would love to use Drupal.org for 100% of my advertising needs. I'd give Drupal 10s of thousands a year, if I can make even a half way decent ROI on the purchase.

It still stands.

We, the small users, are willing to pay you $10s of thousands a year, each!, and the DA has done nothing to tap into that market for years.

In closing:

• Open
• Transparent
• Adds value

Otherwise… Same ‘ol, same ‘ol...

Best Regards,
Michael

[1]
The Drupal Jobs group was closed on December 19th, 2014. Since then groups.drupal.org has lost the capability of tracking posts? You'll have to dig up where Holly's post and subsequent user discussion has disappeared to. Unless it’s one of my groups subscriptions that is now ‘Not found,’ so it’s probably been deleted?

Humorously it also seems the Jobs group still gets used, but subscriptions no longer work? Or at least I’ve never received a Drupal Groups notification for Jobs since then.

@roberto_araya in the current Drupal environment, your statements are completely accurate. The only suggestion I can give to a new coder having to chose between Drupal and WordPress at this time is, do WordPress...

Well, that certainly left a bad taste in my mouth :-/

I feel like it should be noted that Megan Sanicki became the DA Executive Director after Holly Ross, not Rachel.

It also seems a bit odd to rant about openness and transparency right after that's exactly what Rachael did by providing an update.

I can definitely understand the frustration of the past actions from the DA, but I don't think it's appropriate to dump that baggage on an unrelated issue.

I'm sure there's a lot of unclaimed baggage that Rachel will have to sort through over time and we shouldn't automatically transfer said baggage just because of [Drupal] association ;)

Anywhos, for good or bad, Drupal is a large community and it's hard to please everyone all the time.

I'm just glad that the DA recognized that it needed a Community Liaison :D

I'm also thrilled that it's @rachel_norfolk!!!

As someone who has had a decent amount of online interactions with @rachel_norfolk over the years, we couldn't be in better hands! I cannot wait to meet one day :D

---

I'm also thrilled that this topic is picking back up :D We need to provide better mechanisms that allow developers the opportunity to feel they don't do everything for nothing; for both core and contrib alike. Not everyone has a job that supports their Drupal "habit" hehe

Hi Mark,

Why would it leave a bad taste in your mouth? What I wrote is not a rant, it’s a simple summation of some of the problems the DA Community Liaison is going to have to deal with. [1]

Do you want Rachel blindsided because she doesn’t know the pre-history she’s going to have to face, and overcome, as part of her job?

I’m glad you’ve worked with her before, and I’m glad you have a positive experience with those interactions. We, the entire Drupal user base, need someone who isn’t in the ‘pocket’ on a single demographic of the Drupal user base, like has happened to the DA in the past.

# # #

Hi Rachel, @rachel_norfolk

Consider going bigger than just what this tiny issue is trying to achieve. The entire Drupal sphere (D.O, DA, D.Groups, etc,) would definitely be best served by a unified, single ‘contribution’ system.

D.O account (User)
Drupal Sphere (DS)
DA as clearing house (Bank)
User’s account at Bank (Account)

The DA basically has to be the ‘clearing house’ not some third party [2]. In simple terms:

• The DA is the Bank.
• The Bank gets 5% off the top of all deposits. This 5% is non-refundable, never shows up in the User’s Account, and the DA can spend it however it wishes.
• Any User can deposit money with the Bank.
• A mechanism is provided for the User to extract money from their Account.
• Only deposits are charged 5%, transfers in the Bank system are costless.

• Every element of everything in the DS has a ‘pay them from my Account’ link.
• Any User can then transfer as much money as they want to any other DS entity.

• Provide a formalized Bounty structure.
• Any User can define criteria for successful completion of their Bounty.
• Any DS entity can fulfill and claim any Bounty.

• Implement an automated advertisement system [3].
• Advertisements can only be paid for from an Account.
• Add a non-refundable balance line item to the User’s Account.
• Define, and openly publish, what the ‘profits’ and ‘costs’ are. [6]
• The profits are added to the User Account’s non-refundable balance line item. [4]
• Openly publish, and pay, to whom the ‘costs’ are going to.

I’m also sure I’ve missed multiple somethings that should be added, but once it’s a unified system, adding extra pieces won’t be significantly hard.

And seriously, lets do the math:

1. No one’s going to bitch about the DA getting 5% off the top. [5]
2. The DA is going to get more from the 5% than they’ll ever get from donations or memberships.

Okay, enough ‘ranting’ :)

Best Regards to All,
Michael

[1]
Ironically what I’m about to say could be considered a ‘rant,’ but let’s give it a shot anyway...

Please consider that people who you are considering writing a ‘rant,’ are most likely in the same boat I am. To whit, “I do not get paid to write ‘rants.’” They’re writing it to make the issue better, and they believe in the product enough they’re willing to cost themselves money to write it. tl:dr If unpleasant truths are presented, how is that a ‘rant?’

[2]
We being open source software, not being able to role our own solution is kinda heinous. Besides which we already have two different e-commerce solutions for Drupal...

[3]
Real world, not something like was presented in 2015 (see prior link).

[4]
Why? Openness and transparency. They paid the money in, they should get to determine where it gets spent.

[5]
Again, of deposits only. If applied to transfers, the whole system will never be used, as it then becomes an egregious money grub.

[6]
While the costs of serving ads is fairly negligible, they do represent a cost to the server, as such they need to be identified and distributed transparently.

Edit: Clean up formatting. Add [6].

Gentlemen,

this issue is going to remain on-topic and that topic is how we can highlight whatever project financing tools we can arrange for projects.

Let’s remember to keep it there

Thank you

Rachel

Rachel,

How is a unified, single ‘contribution’ system off the topic for project financing tools?

It's not, but you posted #82 (on topic) after #80 (off topic). Which is why I originally responded the way I did and also why I labeled #80 a rant... because it has nothing to do with this issue. Now this reply is, again, off topic because I'm choosing to answer #84, a question that is passive aggressive and only continues to create more conflict.

"How is a unified, single ‘contribution’ system off the topic for project financing tools?"

It's out of scope for this issue, which relates to adding a link to crowdsourcing or contribution services to issue pages.

Others have gone out of scope, too, including me a little bit.

Turning the DA into a crowdfunding platform is probably not what they signed up for.

How is a unified, single ‘contribution’ system off the topic for project financing tools?

I agree it's out of scope for this issue, however, to clarify what I think Rachel meant is that the extended commentary about the DA's past was off-topic for this issue, moreso than the comments about how we can create a great funding model for the community.

That said, in fairness to @Michael-IDA - I think we can use this particular issue as an MVP - crowdsourcing funding for maintainers/projects/highlighting on issue pages is a good test case. We can maybe file a follow up that can be expanded to additional funding scenarios for wider elements of the community. (Camps, local user groups, initiatives, etc).

Also, to put in my two cents in terms of the 'use an open solution' argument - I wholeheartedly agree with that philosophically. But just as we often use Drupal as part of a larger open-source Stack (i.e: LAMP on the bottom end, or decoupled with a JS framework at the top-end) we can be part of an 'open stack' of funding opportunities.

Open Collective is speciallizing themselves specifically for handling the financial element of funding collective organizations. And they're expanding the way they do that.

From their recent newsletter:

We[Open Collective] created a foundation to host non profit collectives in the US!

The Open Collective Foundation is a 501c3 created to become the fiscal sponsor of collectives that have a charitable purpose. Donations to collectives under this host are tax deductible. Find out more and apply here: opencollective.com/foundation

And hopefully they'll be working on some international options as well.

I think it will be much more effective to specialize in what we do best, and partner with an open organization specializing in what they do best. (even if they are still getting themselves off the ground).

I've been thinking about this from a fundraising / donor psychology point of view.

Subscriptions are definitely ++, even if they are harder to get, their aggregate value should be much more.

But I think that simply having donors make a subscription to an individual contributor will not really go anywhere. There's a lot of contributors I appreciate, but I don't know anything about their needs or what they're planning to work on next, and have no reason to single one or two out from all the rest. In other words, I lack motivation to make a subscription to one in particular.

I think what we need is a kudos system:
- a little kudos icon on each comment that each user can press once per comment (it's just a flag)
- divide up each user's monthly subscription between contributors in accordance with the recent kudos they've been given by that user
- if we want to siphon money towards core comitters, we can have a tickbox "Give 20% of my subscription towards core committers (recomended)"

What this gives us:

- a culture of appreciation on the issue queues. Right now, it's easy to write a patch or spend an hour testing something and get very little feedback. Writing a comment simply for appreciation is too much hassle, over-the-top, and creates noise; a kudos icon provides an easy way to express appreciation.

- greater interaction. Most of us in the community read far more issues than we we interact with, which is a shame because interaction engenders a feeling of engagement and empowerment. Kudos provide a simple way to engage, and that can be a "gateway drug".

- a stepping stone towards subscriptions. Once I've got in the habit of giving kudos, and got a page showing me who I've recently given kudos to, it becomes easier to sell me on making a subscription. That page can urge me to set up a subscription to show my appreciation; targeted emails can be sent to me; banners can target me.

- an emotionally compellingdirect link between appreciation and giving. The allocation of my monthly subscription is directly and immediately tied to my giving kudos. Every time I feel appreciation for a contribution, I give a kudo and know that a little money will flow to that person. When I think of my subscription, it brings to mind the feelings of appreciation I've recently had; this encourages me to maintain my subscription and make it bigger.

- a source of raw data. If we have a database of who has given kudos to who, kudo by kudo, we have a huge source of raw data that we can one day use to build a good reputation system. And a really good hard-to-game reputation system can be used to make Drupal contribution a valuable marketing tool for both agencies and freelance developers. #2489964: Reputation system for Drupal.org

Given that Github now has a concept of a FUNDING.yml file:

What is the D.o equivalent of a FUNDING.yml?

For the projects that mirror on github maybe adopting a file format similar to FUNDING.yml would make sense.

I'd also say making a PHP library that could parse a FUNDING.yml would be a good start and could be used by multiple projects (Symfony, Laravel, WordPress, Joomla) in addition to Drupal.

This doesn't necessarily solve the people working on single core issue but would be a boon for contrib maintainers.

I'm really happy to see more interest in this subject and, I think, the environment is beginning to be ready to make a change here.

The number of organisations and projects making use of OpenCollective is beginning to build, as can be seen with a simple search there: https://opencollective.com/search?q=Drupal

And I've noticed that a number of modules have added a link to their module homepage to thesis collective. For example, Webform, with their collective at https://opencollective.com/webform#updates and homepage with link at https://www.drupal.org/project/webform.

What I would like to see next is a community-agreed format for that link and an understanding of whether we need to only consider OpenCollective or other options for project funding. I'm inclined to the latter.

If a small number of projects can show that a reasonably consistent link in the project description to their funding host is working for them (and it is entirely up to them to say what "working" means!) then I think we would have something g that we could take forward into a "built in" field or something - maybe even allowing the backers to be displayed on a tab or something funky.

So, how about this as a rough plan:

1) encourage a number of maintainers to use consistent links in the project description to test. I would love to work with jrockowitz and others to write a blog post and social media to help this
2) those maintainers to feedback on how that works for them
3) we look to build something in to d.o to make it easier for all projects to follow

Relying on a third-party provider requires user and credit card registration, they take a cut of donations, they might decide to raise their fees, they could out right close, etc.

These issues could be avoided by using a decentralized solution, like a digital currency such as Bitcoin, or alternatives like Dash or Litecoin.

Drupal users who accept funding in a digital currency, should add their address to their profile on drupal.org, or it could be added as an optional field in user profiles.

Highlighting companies who fund Drupal development and maintenance could be done through a new module ("Funding"?) which scans the Bitcoin blockchain for a keyword like @DrupalFunding in transactions done during the last 365 days. To register transferred funding, a string like this should be added to the transaction. Bitcoin is used in this example, but it could be any other digital currency with a public ledger:

@DrupalFunding: CompanyName funded drupal.alias

The new Funding module would extract this info:
From: CompanyName (the bit before " funded ")
To: drupal.alias (the bit after " funded ")
BTC amount: 0.1

... and tally up the amount of Bitcoin donated per company, listing them under fx https://www.drupal.org/funding/

Funding

Bitcoin

Companies who funded Drupal users during the last 365 days

1. CompanyName: 2.1 BTC
2. CompanyNameX: 1.5 BTC
3. CompanyNameY: 1.2 BTC

etc.

Drupal users who got Drupal work funded during the last 365 days

1. drupal.alias: 1.3 BTC
2. drupal.aliasX: 0.5 BTC
3. drupal.aliasY: 0.2 BTC

etc.

Dash

List of Companies and Developers, as above

Litecoin

List of Companies and Developers, as above

Of course, a company might try to game the system, and transfer Bitcoin to themselves, to raise the amount artificially. There should probably be a blacklist option in the module for such companies.

We're thrilled to see renewed interest in our Drupees offering, and we're happy to share some mock-ups of our latest prototype with the community.

I personally strongly oppose featuring "digital currencies" on d.o. If singular developers like to accept these, fine.

For me, the most important Drupal value is to keep up the collaboration spirit and avoid competition. Monetary incentive is not the way to go.

Nobody can pay a fair price for the value the core contributors bring on the table anyway.

Also, digital tokens with "proof of work" are an environmental desaster. We don't need that, we have a central database and should trust each other.

There's been some recent progress on some of the good ideas and discussions over the past couple years since @webchick dusted off this issue.

A funding module is in development that will accommodate multiple providers and use cases described in this issue.

Also trying to revive/refocus a community working group to help projects and initiatives acquire tools, talent, and resources to sustain.

Please track the issue queue https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/funding or join #sustaindrupal in Slack if you'd like to participate or have a project in need of resources.