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Comment by NickBusey | Hacker News Reader

Personally I think the problem with a lot of these kind of Patreon setups is they are generally pitched as "I once wrote some very useful software, and sometimes I maintain it."

While that's great and all, for me at least it doesn't justify why I should send them money every month.

I think the Open Source model needs to evolve, and if these people want monthly income, they should be "showing their work" a lot more. Put out a regular (weekly or more often) YouTube or blog series. Maybe stream your work on Twitch (like I do :) ). Provide some active community involvement. Then I would be far more inclined to donate to someone, rather than having to wonder all the time if I'm paying for them to work on this stuff, or if I'm paying them so they can go on an extra vacation next year for work they completed years ago and have mostly ignored since then.

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I had similar thoughts about how they could use YouTube or something equivalent to open access a little in return. Grow the cake and all that.

I then had quick Google and it seems a few years back some were seeing a conflict between ESR's Internet Civil Engineering Institute and something called the Core Infrastructure Initiative[1] which it seems is pulling in millions.

Perhaps it just lost out.

[1] https://www.coreinfrastructure.org

These people are not entertainers. Demand they post their work on YouTube makes as much sense as demanding architects use smoke signals to communicate their progress.

They're not entertainers, there should be no demands.

But I'd think talking a little about their interesting work might serve to better convey what they do to those who are aware of it and reach a wider audience. What ESR has tried obviously hasn't worked, would a half hour chat about their work once a year or a twitch session, or whatever else really make no sense under any circumstance?

They could just stream work sessions on Twitch, answer questions from a handful of viewers. It doesn’t need to be a big production.

This is morally equivalent to the pointy headed boss who demands people work from the office because work that is not done in his field of view does not exist.

Not really. The boss is being picky while getting paid, whereas OP is offering a donation while being picky. Pretty different from a moral standpoint.

I would say it’s morally equivalent to not buying a product because they haven’t updated their blog in a long time and you can’t tell if the company is still active.

A person should confirm the maintenance status of most of these programs by looking at the public interface of whatever source control system is being used.

> I think the Open Source model needs to evolve, and if these people want monthly income, they should be "showing their work" a lot more.

I think there should be a "like" button on Facebook so that users can communicate more positive vibes on the internet. Maybe even make it easy to "like" things by embedding some code on web pages so that the positive vibes spread to the web as a whole.

In both cases it seems we're ignoring important and obvious consequences of the concept between the quote marks.

Edit: clarification

There are some wonderful developers on Patreon. I tend to support those who explain their work, because it showcases the work and provides extra value. Granted, that extra value also means extra work. But I think it's more than worth it because more people will realize the value of one's work.

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