Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Open Source Economics (is not what you think)
Search
Sponsored
·
Ship Features Fearlessly
Turn features on and off without deploys. Used by thousands of Ruby developers.
→
Mike McQuaid
October 27, 2021
Technology
0
230
Open Source Economics (is not what you think)
What open source economics aren't, are and the solutions for open source economic problems.
Mike McQuaid
October 27, 2021
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Mike McQuaid
See All by Mike McQuaid
Package Management Learnings from Homebrew
mikemcquaid
0
230
What happened to RubyGems and what can we learn?
mikemcquaid
0
310
Ruby on (Guard)Rails
mikemcquaid
0
190
Workbrew - Homebrew for Mac Admins
mikemcquaid
1
220
Using "modern" Ruby to build a better, faster Homebrew
mikemcquaid
3
5.1k
Homebrew's Evolution
mikemcquaid
0
230
Open Source: boundaries, burnout, business
mikemcquaid
0
600
Homebrew’s Great Migration: moving to GitHub Packages with zero downtime
mikemcquaid
0
570
Building effective relationships
mikemcquaid
0
240
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
マーケットプレイス版Oracle WebCenter Content For OCI
oracle4engineer
PRO
5
1.6k
GitHub Issue Templates + Coding Agentで簡単みんなでIaC/Easy IaC for Everyone with GitHub Issue Templates + Coding Agent
aeonpeople
1
260
ECS障害を例に学ぶ、インシデント対応に備えたAIエージェントの育て方 / How to develop AI agents for incident response with ECS outage
iselegant
1
120
Bedrock PolicyでAmazon Bedrock Guardrails利用を強制してみた
yuu551
0
260
Why Organizations Fail: ノーベル経済学賞「国家はなぜ衰退するのか」から考えるアジャイル組織論
kawaguti
PRO
1
180
StrandsとNeptuneを使ってナレッジグラフを構築する
yakumo
1
120
SchooでVue.js/Nuxtを技術選定している理由
yamanoku
3
180
30万人の同時アクセスに耐えたい!新サービスの盤石なリリースを支える負荷試験 / SRE Kaigi 2026
genda
4
1.4k
クレジットカード決済基盤を支えるSRE - 厳格な監査とSRE運用の両立 (SRE Kaigi 2026)
capytan
6
2.8k
日本の85%が使う公共SaaSは、どう育ったのか
taketakekaho
1
240
Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift
tamemiya
0
130
We Built for Predictability; The Workloads Didn’t Care
stahnma
0
150
Featured
See All Featured
The Hidden Cost of Media on the Web [PixelPalooza 2025]
tammyeverts
2
200
Music & Morning Musume
bryan
47
7.1k
Highjacked: Video Game Concept Design
rkendrick25
PRO
1
290
First, design no harm
axbom
PRO
2
1.1k
How to Grow Your eCommerce with AI & Automation
katarinadahlin
PRO
1
110
Building Experiences: Design Systems, User Experience, and Full Site Editing
marktimemedia
0
410
Product Roadmaps are Hard
iamctodd
PRO
55
12k
Abbi's Birthday
coloredviolet
1
4.8k
Digital Ethics as a Driver of Design Innovation
axbom
PRO
1
190
End of SEO as We Know It (SMX Advanced Version)
ipullrank
3
3.9k
VelocityConf: Rendering Performance Case Studies
addyosmani
333
24k
Making Projects Easy
brettharned
120
6.6k
Transcript
Open Source Economics (is not what you think) 💷👩💻🌍🧘🥳 @MikeMcQuaid
Staff Engineer in Communities (GitHub Engineer 2013 – Present)
Project Leader on Homebrew (Homebrew Maintainer 2009 – Present)
👎 What aren’t Open Source Economics 👍 What are Open
Source Economics? 👩🔧 What are some solutions?
What aren’t 👎 Open Source Economics?
Economics: how 💵💶💷💴 flows around an economy?
OSS Economics: how 💵💶💷💴 flows between projects?
GitHub Sponsors
OSS problems: Solution: 💵💶💷💴 fixes all problems?
What are 👍 Open Source Economics?
Economic problem: Allocation of limited resources (💵💶💷💴)?
OSS Economic problem: Allocation of limited maintainers (👩💻👪🧑💻)
The Open Source Contributor Funnel https://mikemcquaid.com/2018/08/14/the-open-source-contributor-funnel/
Maintainer allocation: Help 🌍 or help 🙋?
Nadia Eghbal, Working in Public A tragedy of the commons
occurs not from consumers over- appropriating the content itself, but from consumers over- appropriating a creator’s attention.
Maintainer time: More 💵💶💷💴 means more ⏰ ?
Maintainer income: How much 💵💶💷💴 to work full-time?
What are 👩🔧 some solutions?
How to Focus 🧘 🧘
GitHub Actions
actions/stale
GitHub Discussions
Issue Forms
Maintainer focus: Enjoyment! 😍🥰🤪🥳
How to Spend Money 💵 💶 💷 💴
Pay maintainers: GitHub Sponsors == 💵💶💷💴 for their work
Outreachy
OSS Economics: 🧘 🧘 + 💵💶💷💴 == 😍🥰🤪🥳 https://mikemcquaid.com/2021/10/27/open-source-economics/