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This article mainly introduces how the blockchain will affect open source, which has a certain reference value. Interested friends can refer to it. I hope you will gain a lot after reading this article.

Open source model

Open source is not only a method of software collaborative development, but also a mode of software distribution. Open source allows people with common interests to work together to produce things that no one among them can do independently. It makes the value created by the whole far greater than the sum of the parts. Open source is open through distributed collaborative tools (IRC, email, git, wiki, issue tracking, etc.), distribution and protection under open source licensing, and, of course, governance by non-profit foundations such as the Apache Software Foundation and the Cloud Native Foundation.

It has been said for a long time that the most curious thing is that the open source model is essentially lack of financial incentives. In the open source world, like other aspects of human society, there are many factions. For example, some of them think that when we talk about open source, we should not talk about money. Open source is supposed to be an internally inspired act of freedom and resources (such as "common ideals", "for great things"); others believe that open source needs external incentives, especially financial incentives. Although it is ideally romantic for open source projects to be completed only through volunteers in the world, as things stand, in fact, major open source contributions are done on a paid basis. Of course, there is no doubt that we have a large number of unpaid contributors, but these contributions are temporary, or some popular projects have attracted the attention of the world. The establishment and maintenance of open source projects requires enterprises to invest a lot of effort and energy to develop, document, test and fix defects, and it is continuous, as always, not on a whim.

Commercialization of open source

As we all know, the Apache Software Foundation survives through donations, as well as other income: sponsorship, conference expenses, and so on. But be aware that the money is mainly used to run the foundation itself, such as providing legal protection for the project, and ensuring that there are enough servers to run the build program, defect tracking, mailing lists, and so on.

Similarly, the Cloud Native Foundation CNCF charges membership fees, as well as more conference fees, which are also used to run the foundation and provide resources for the project. These days, the vast majority of software can no longer be built on their own laptops, and they are run and tested on hundreds of servers in Yunping Taichung. These are the daily expenses of the foundation. Others, such as marketing activities, brand design, and distribution of small promotional materials, are also the responsibility of the foundation. The foundation's core task is to implement the right processes, interact with users, developers, and control mechanisms, and ensure that available financial resources are allocated to open source projects for common benefit.

Everything seems to be working well, doesn't it? Open source projects can raise money, and foundations can distribute them fairly, so what's the problem?

What is not stated here is: direct, transparent, credible, decentralized, automatic two-way links for value transfer between open source producers and open source consumers. For now, all links are one-way or indirect:

One-way: a developer (in a broad sense, can be any role in software production: programmer, maintainer, distributor), uses his ingenuity, racks his brains, and spends countless hours developing open source projects. and the submission contribution shares this value for all open source users. But it's basically wishful thinking.

Indirect: if bug appears in the software, affecting a specific user / company, there are several situations that occur:

It is ideal for internal developers to fix bug and then submit a pull request (PR). These companies are not always able to hire developers for specific open source projects, because companies typically use hundreds of open source projects.

Hire freelancers who specialize in that particular open source project and pay for the services. Ideally, freelancers are also submitters of open source projects and can change the project code directly and quickly. Otherwise, the fix may never enter the upstream project.

Close to companies that provide services around open source projects. These companies often hire open source submitters to influence and gain the credibility of the community and to provide products, expertise, and professional services.

The third option is to maintain the successful model of many open source projects. Whether these companies provide services (training, consulting, workshop), technical support, packaging, open core, or SaaS services, there is no denying that they all need to hire hundreds of full-time employees to work for open source. We can see that there are a large number of such companies, they have successfully established an effective open source business model, and more companies are joining this camp.

Companies that support open source projects play an important role in this ecosystem: they act as catalysts between open source projects and users. Companies that can really create value for users are not only able to package great software; but they can identify the real needs of users and have insight into technology trends. the ability to create a complete stack or even an ecosystem of open source projects to meet these needs. They can devote themselves to a lonely and boring project, and will support it for many years, just to stick to its value. And if a part of a software stack is missing, they can always start an open source project from scratch and build a community around it. They can even buy a closed-source company and open source the project as a whole (yes, many readers may have guessed which company they are talking about here, yes, the features here are owned by Red Hat. )

To sum up, the commercial-based open source model is like this, in which the project is managed and controlled formally or informally by a small number of individuals or companies that ensure the successful release of the project and have the ability to commercialize it. And effectively feedback to the open source ecology. For open source developers, management companies, and end users, this is a beautiful situation with no losers. This can be a good substitute for those dying and expensive closed-source software!

Self-supply, decentralized open source

There is no doubt that if you want the project to win a good reputation, you have to meet some people's expectations. For example, both the Apache Software Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation need to incubate and graduate, and in addition to all technical and formal requirements, the project must have a healthy number of active submitters and users. These are the key to the formation of sustainable development open source projects. Having source code on GitHub is fundamentally different from having an active open source project. An active open source project refers to the submitters who write the code and the users who use the code, and the two groups continue to grow in a spiral by exchanging values and forming an ecosystem that benefits everyone. Some project ecosystems may be small and short-lived, while others may contain multiple projects and competitive service providers, where very complex interactions last for many years. But as long as there is a value exchange and everyone benefits from it, the project will be developed, maintained and sustainable.

Let's take a look at Attic, a project of the Apache Software Foundation, which has completed its historical mission and is moving into later stages of its life cycle. This is a very normal phenomenon: when a project is no longer technically suitable for its original development purpose, it usually ends naturally. Similarly, at the ASF incubator, you will find that many projects have never graduated but have retired from the stage of history, and often these projects cannot build large enough communities, either because they are too biased or replaced by better solutions.

But more often, projects with high-potential technologies cannot sustain themselves because they cannot form or maintain an effective ecosystem for value exchange. The current open source model and foundations do not provide a framework or mechanism for developers to be paid or informed of their requests, so that no one has a common commitment to value. In this way, the result is that some projects can only sustain themselves in a commercial open source environment, in which the company acts as a middleman and acquires value between developers and users. This also adds another limitation and requires service provider companies to maintain some open source projects. This seems to be a long way from our ideal situation: users can fully and directly express their expectations for the project, and developers can fulfill their commitments to the project in a transparent and quantifiable way. this is a community with common interests and intentions to exchange values.

Now, as you can imagine, there is a model with working mechanisms and tools that enable open source users to deal directly with developers. This is not only reflected in things such as contributing code by pulling requests, sending questions using mailing lists, the number of stars on GitHub, and the stickers on laptops, but also that users have more ways, more self-control, and transparent behavior to influence the direction of the project.

The model can include incentives for:

Direct funding for open source projects, not through the Software Foundation

Influence the direction of the project by voting (through token holders)

Functional requirements driven by user requirements

Timely merge pull request

Reward those who submit defects

Reward for better test coverage

Reward those who update documents in a timely manner

Timely security repair

Expert assistance, support and services

Prepare an appropriate budget for the project's evangelists and promoters

Budget for regular activities

Faster email and online chat help system

Have a comprehensive understanding of the status of the overall project, etc.

Smart watchers may have guessed that, yes, the above is about using blockchains and smart contracts to achieve positive interaction between end users and developers. Smart contracts can give token holders real power to influence the direction of the project.

The above figure shows the application of block chain in open source ecosystem

At present, in the existing open source ecosystem, it is possible to use abnormal means to influence the direction of the project, such as the financial commitment of service providers, the more limited way through the foundation, and so on. But adding blockchain-based technology to the open source ecosystem opens a new channel between users and developers, which does not replace the commercial open source model; because most companies that use open source do a lot of things that smart contracts can't do. But smart contracts can lead to a new type of open source projects that provide second life opportunities for overburdened projects. It can encourage developers to claim boring pull requests, write documentation, test program code, and so on, providing a direct channel of value exchange between users and open source developers. Even if corporate support is not feasible, blockchain can add new channels to help open source projects grow and be self-sustaining in the long run. It can create a new complementary model for self-sustaining open source projects-a win-win model.

License open source

In fact, there are many implementations aimed at certifying open source, some of which focus only on the open source model, while others are more generic (also applicable to the open source model). Here is a list I have collected:

GitCoin, which grew up in open source, is one of the most promising open source projects in the field.

Oscoin, for open source cryptocurrencies.

Open collaboration, a platform that supports open source projects.

FundYourselfNow, crowdfunding and ICO platform for the project.

Kauri, which supports open source project documentation.

Liberapay, a regular donation platform.

FundRequest, a decentralized market for open source collaboration.

CanYa, recently acquired by Bountysource.

OpenGift, a new mode of open source cash out.

Hacken, a white hat token for Hacker.

CoinLancer, a decentralized labor market.

CodeFund, an open source advertising platform.

IssueHunt, a fundraising platform for open source maintainers and contributors.

District0x 1Hive, crowdsourcing and curatorial platform.

District0x Fixit, GitHub defect reward system.

This list is still growing at the time of this writing, and it's pretty fast, and some of them will definitely disappear, and some of them will shift targets, but some of them will be integrated into things like SourceForge, the Apache Software Foundation, and GitHub. These platforms will not and do not need to replace these platforms, but the token model is a good complement to these platforms, which can enrich the open source ecosystem. Each project can choose its distribution model (license), management model (foundation), and incentive model (token). Either way, it will be for the open source world such as fresh blood!

An open and decentralized future

Software is devouring the world.

Every company is a software company.

Open source is a fertile field for innovation

The fact is right in front of us, open source has developed into such a huge industry, it will not fail easily, and open source is too important for the world. It cannot be manipulated by a small number of people, or abandoned by the world and fend for itself. Open source is a shared resource system that is valuable to everyone, and more importantly, it can only be managed in this way. All companies in the world want to have leverage and say in open source. Unfortunately, however, we do not have a tool or habit to do so. Our expectation for tools is that these tools will allow anyone to express their appreciation or neglect of software projects. It will create a direct and faster feedback loop between producers and consumers and between developers and users; it will promote a dual innovation model driven by user needs and is tracked and measured by tokens.

Thank you for reading this article carefully. I hope the article "how blockchain will affect open source" shared by the editor will be helpful to everyone. At the same time, I also hope that you will support and pay attention to the industry information channel. More related knowledge is waiting for you to learn!

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