Ask HN: A company wants to pay me to write open-source code
I wrote a moderately popular (800+ stars) open-source project on Github a few years ago. Recently, a startup contacted me because they want some additional features and want to pay me to build them. They are happy to keep all improvements I make as open-source. For me, this is a fantastic opportunity to improve my project for everyone while making a little bit of money.
They sent over a contracting agreement that won't work for what they are asking. Basically, it is designed for proprietary contracting work and has clauses referring to the "Assignment of Innovations", etc. To their credit, they themselves suggested that the contract was not good and that I send something over if I had a better one.
Well, I've scoured the internet and I can't find anything - but I'm also not a lawyer. What kind of contracts are available for this sort of work? I assume it's been done before.
In short, I'm looking for a contract that says something like:
1. Consultant will add agreed-upon features to the project
2. Company will pay consultant upon completion of features
3. Company agrees that the code will remain open-source and retains no ownership
4. No warranty is implied
21 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 55.3 ms ] threadI just looked at the Github sponsors program and AFAICT, they only offer a recurring monthly plan which is probably not what either myself or the company are looking for. I'd be curious about more options though.
We do have quite a few open source projects running bounty programs.
Here are some examples:
* https://www.jhipster.tech/bug-bounties/ * https://www.mautic.org/blog/community/funding-mautic-communi... * https://docs.opencollective.com/help/contributing/developmen...
You can connect your GitHub Sponsors to your Open Collective and use both channels to fundraise and resource bounty payments.
More on that here: https://docs.opencollective.com/help/collectives/github-spon...
Even if they're open source religious - still they want at least their name probably listed along the lines as a creators
We do this kind of thing all the time for projects under our umbrella. We have lawyers on tap and lots of experience in this area, and we take on all the responsibility for tax reporting, legals, compliance, banking, invoicing etc etc.
If your project has >100 stars you can set up a Collective instantly.
[1] https://oscollective.org
You say that you can form a contract with the payer. I can't find anything mentioning that on your docs. Do you have the ability to make a contract which provides specific payments for different milestones?
And it looks like OSC only disburses money when it's a "valid expense" according to OSC and a 501c nonprofit. All extra money seems to be held in an account that OSC keeps the interest for, and funnels elsewhere upon termination of the agreement. So it seems that entering into an agreement with OSC involves losing control over who I can contract with, losing control over the donations and not having access to the money anymore except in very specific circumstances, and likely losing all of it should I decide to leave. On top of that, should I feel myself wronged by OSC, I essentially take on HUGE financial risk for legal action because you have a clause that the loser pays all fees of the winner (which basically means that the small guy loses always, because you can just drown him in paper until he gives up, broke, and then owes you hundreds of thousands on top of that to pay for your lawyers doing that to him - and you have a perverse incentive to do that because it will net you profit since your lawyers are in-house).
All of this is on top of the 10% fee you charge.
Companies and individuals can sponsor you for your work, and you can coordinate feature requests or ongoing support right on your repository.
Open Source Collective or Open Collective can be helpful in tandem with Sponsors if you don't want to set up your own business bank account or legal status.
Sponsors currently supports monthly recurring payments, and we're in the middle of a staged rollout for one-time payments. If that would be helpful for you here, feel free to email me bdresser@github.com and we can get you set up :)
Asking developers to commit tax fraud is not cool.
Take their contract and strike out all the wrong terms and conditions. Easier than coming up with your own. Their lawyers are probably completely incompetent. Coming to terms with them would be much easier with just striking out their wrongs. Eg they will certainly not agree on the general "Company agrees that the code will remain open-source and retains no ownership". They paid for so it's their copyright. But under your copyright terms. So they will get their copyright line added, but under a open source license.
Second, the here cited sponsor or bounty programs will not work good enough, compared to what the company offers you. Like factor 1000. Unless you got 100.000 stars and over 2.000 sponsors stay with the company offer.
[1] https://www.codeaurora.org/