[@OKau] How can we fund important Open Source projects?

Mon Nov 23 21:46:16 UTC 2015

heya Rosie,

There are lots of people on discuss.okfn.org who can add to such a
discussion. Open Knowledge operates in dozens of countries so it is a bit
tough for Paul to answer on behalf of everyone's experience.

The CKAN site is referencing Open Knowledge Services, which is a service
group setup to provide project and support for a fee. They recover the cost
of wages on funded engagements.

Cheers,
Steven

*STEVEN DE COSTA *|
*EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR*www.linkdigital.com.au

On 24 November 2015 at 08:21, Rosie Williams <BudgetAus at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks,
>
>
> I apologise in advance if I am asking difficult questions but I have to
> make decisions about whether or not to continue my own projects which is
> why I'm interested in this thread, what defines a project as successful and
> how financial sustainability is achieved- particularly in projects that
> contribute to transparency given that has been my area of interest to date.
>
>
> Due to Steven mentioning that he can't afford to fund developers for the
> product he installs, I assumed CKAN relied on volunteer developers but
> according to the CKAN site 'A full-time professional development team at
> the Open Knowledge Foundation maintains CKAN and can provide full support
> and hosting with SLAs. ' However CKAN code also appears to be free to use
> so it is interesting to wonder where the money is coming from to build it
> and whether CKAN owes it's existence to grants or is in some way
> self-sustaining. I'm having trouble determining such things with the
> information provided by OKFN as the financials do not go into that kind of
> detail.
>
>
> The OKFN financials list a number of sources of income so I guess that
> together with these donations & consultancy fees, volunteers also
> contribute to the worth of the projects listed in the annual report though
> the extent of that contribution does not appear to be measured or collated
> in the reports.
>
>
> Paul, you mention earlier in the thread that OKFN projects rely on public
> use and interest to continue (as opposed to the contribution of volunteer
> labour). Which data does the OKFN rely on to measure public use and
> interest and is that publicly available?  With a standard business it is
> a bit easier because you have customer numbers as one measure of interest
> but the OKFN does not rely on user pays so I'm curious to know what data
> forms the basis of the decisions taken.
>
>
>
>
> Rosie Williams BA (Sociology)
> ________________________________________
>  NoFibs.com.au <http://nofibs.com.au> - Open Data Reporter | OpenAus
> <https://openaus.net.au> - Founder and Developer
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* okfn-au <okfn-au-bounces at lists.okfn.org> on behalf of Paul Walsh <
> paulywalsh at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, 12 November 2015 6:18 PM
> *To:* Open Knowledge discussion list for Australia.
> *Subject:* Re: [@OKau] How can we fund important Open Source projects?
>
> Hi Rosie,
>
> I think the question of how open source projects can become
> self-sustaining is a large area of research and diving in, you’ll find that
> there is no single answer, as "open source project” is a signifier for a
> huge range of efforts with diversity in motivation, funding, corporate
> backing, and so on.
>
> Stats on contribution to any OKI open source projects can be found using
> GitHub’s APIs for repository activity - all our code is there. Although, I
> think that your interest is less in “open source projects” and more in
> “open data projects that use (and build) open source software to achieve
> social goals”, in which case I’m not sure that will help greatly.
>
> There are around 20 paid staff at OKI, and a range of additional
> contractors on some projects - usually for development.
>
> "Reliance" on volunteers is something that is hard to measure and reason
> about. Reliance, as a term, suggests to me that you want to understand if a
> project lives or dies based on volunteer contribution alone. In general,
> the answer to that is no.
>
> Best,
>
> Paul
>
> On 12 Nov 2015, at 12:28 AM, Rosie Williams <BudgetAus at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi and thanks for the comments.
>
> The conclusion I've come to wrt to discussion of the more general question
> of how important open source projects can become self-sustaining  (OKFN
> projects among them) is that there's limited scope for that discussion
> because there doesn't seem to be easily accessible data to inform it.
>
> The OKFN seems to be making ends meet but how that relates to specific
> projects is unclear.
>
> Having stats on the number of paid staff, even an estimate of the number
> of volunteers working on each project, the money coming in to fund each
> project and where it is coming from would be useful and what I would expect
> to see in an annual report. I also think it would be useful to know who the
> visitors to each project/site are so evaluations can be made about
> engagement to learn from what works or does not. Perhaps the reliance on
> volunteers prohibits expectations of gathering & reporting this kind of
> data.
>
> I will probably end up blogging about this to have something more
> comprehensive to pass to the appropriate person.
>
> Rosie Williams BA (Sociology)
> ________________________________________
>  NoFibs.com.au <http://nofibs.com.au/> - Open Data Reporter | OpenAus
> <https://openaus.net.au/> - Founder and Developer
>
>
>
>
>
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