Found on proggit: Nim receives funding from a company (D should be doing something like this)

[Joakim]

On Tuesday, 14 August 2018 at 02:49:58 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote:
> On Monday, 13 August 2018 at 09:50:29 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Announced last week, the Nim team will be adding two full-time 
>> paid devs and setting up grants for needed projects with this 
>> new funding:
>
> :jealous:
>
>> However, there are other ways to raise funds. Companies using 
>> D could use the existing bountysource page to put up bounties 
>> for features/fixes or projects they need, to which community 
>> members who need some particular feature/fix could also donate:
>>
>> https://www.bountysource.com/teams/d
>
> I think bountysource would work if the bounties were 
> significantly higher, but there are also the funding options at 
> https://opencollective.com/dlang

Yes, some of those bounties are too low for the amount of work, 
but nothing stops others who find them important to increase the 
bounty incrementally.

> Looking on the right column of the page there are several D 
> enthusiasts contributing their hard-earned money to D.  Maybe 
> there's a better option for the masses, besides a T-shirt and a 
> DConf discount, that might encourage more donors.  For example, 
> I might contribute somewhere between $100 or more if I could 
> get some attention on some bugs/features that I care about 
> (assuming I couldn't implement them myself).  Maybe I'll post a 
> bounty in the near future and see how it goes.

A variation on that appears to be in the cards, as they've said 
there will be more funding targets:

https://forum.dlang.org/post/orvcznlvraunkksjdgez@forum.dlang.org

I don't really care which website is used, bountysource or 
opencollective or whatever, but the community is unlikely to 
contribute unless they have a clear idea of where the money is 
going, which bountysource does a better job of showing right now.

> Right now, I'm the only one I know of working on the #dbugfix 
> stuff, but I'm finding the bugs submitted this round 
> exceptionally difficult.  I don't know if I'll succeed with a 
> fix this round (Sorry!), but contact me directly, or post an 
> announcement on the forum, if you have a bug that you're 
> willing to motivate with a financial contribution to the D 
> Foundation, and I'll personally take a look at it.  I'm 
> generally only capable of fixing some of the more simple bugs, 
> as my skills and understanding of DMD are quite limited, but I 
> promise I'll try.

This is not about me: I personally don't have any blocker bugs 
that I'm worried about. I'm concerned about the general pace of D 
development: I don't think we're as focused or organized on 
gathering resources as we should be. My preferred model is to 
turn D into a partially proprietary product, but I guess the core 
team doesn't like that approach:

https://forum.dlang.org/thread/okuzksqzczprvuklpzaw@forum.dlang.org

Back when I was a little kid decades ago, I had a neighbor who 
used to build model trains in his garage, what he did in his 
spare time. I remember seeing it then and being thrilled that it 
snaked all over his work area. 99% of open source projects are 
the "model trains" of software devs, something they work on for 
fun in their spare time, and never get used widely.

To get into the 1% of OSS projects that are actually widely used, 
you need some way to gather resources to grow the project. 
There's the linux model where you get a bunch of consulting and 
support companies to use you. There's the llvm/clang model where 
you become a product in a large company, part of their portfolio 
alongside proprietary products or modules that pay the bills. 
There's the Firefox model where you sell ads alongside the OSS 
product. There's new models where you use crowdfunding sites like 
kickstarter or opencollective.

D has so far used very little of any of these models. This 
project can give off the impression that it is simply a big model 
train for Walter and Andrei, a hobby that they've retired to work 
on. Instead, I'd like to see D much more widely used, which means 
work needs to be done on gathering resources beyond what the 
project has now.