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Open source software has taken over the world.
For almost anything productive that is being worked on, whether at a company, artistic work, music or a side project, you are relying on open source software at some layer of the stack.
Since this footprint is so large the value created by open source developer is huge.
The problem is that almost none of the value created is passed onto the teams behind these open source projects. This is true even of ecosystem critical projects. Creators find themselves pleading for enough to sustain their work.
The current solutions to the problem are the following
- Raise - donations and sponsorship
- Build a business around the project
- Change the license to capture value from the largest consumers as elastic did
Three valid solutions.
The point of this article is to explore a fourth.
notes
- Build an ecosystem surrounded derived from a token.
- Allocate a portion of tokens to project creators (e.g. 15% with a 2 year vesting period).
- Choose a set of rule on how tokens will be distributed based on pull requests
- pull request token rewards
- maintainer rewards over time
- Voting.
- Non transferable credentials which unlock voting on certain issues.