How about this as new life goal: Every major release of an opensource software that you use requires you to pay a cup of coffee to the devs.
Discussion
i have been doing this for a long time, but only if sats are accepted. otherwise i ask about the possibility, usually i don't get an answer
I think it would cost me about 120 rubles 🤣
Apple never open source their code , so that sounds fair . For a little cup of coffee would make dev feel
Appreciated .
My coffee usually costs around 10,000 sats
I prefer a subscription style. I'd be irritated if I had a bunch of software asking me for money at random times. Just let me pay once and then remind me in a year. I do this with LibreOffice. Except now it just bills me every year automatically using fiat. I have to manually do it for some other software and will use Bitcoin when it is an option. Also, what constitutes a major release? I can imagine a lot more release would be labelled as major this way. I much prefer to just pay a dev a larger amount for a year rather than release to release. It seems like this would give them more run way like a real salary if enough people do it.
What do you think about my way as a dev?
On the other hand, my model could inspire complacency, and yours less for honest devs. Any system can and will be abused. At this point I just want to be pestered as little as possible and do what I can to make that happen while paying devs. But an ask with every update is a great way to get uninstalled by me if I can't do things my current way and be left alone.
That's the issue. A subscription has weird incentives. If what you pay doesn't reflect how much you liked each release, it tells developers that you don't care about it. Which means they don't need to do anything to get your money.
That's why most subscription-based apps almost never improve. They never push for new things. Why would they...
I'm conflicted here because I may support you overall even if I don't necessarily care about a particular release. I guess it's easier for me to consider my overall value on a yearly basis.
I suppose I could just donate the same for every release to mitigate this issue for myself. I just think the metrics could be skewed by this. Is there any reason you can't offer both models? Maybe put it under an "Other ways to support" or something.
I just dont pay attention enough to fairly pay with frequent releases. It would drive me nuts to do this for many different devs. But Nostr apps are unique in that you could "bug me" in a way that is natural on the app. Like a notification that I simply zap. I do that all the time. It's the having to do a lot of work to go somewhere else and pay that would annoy me. There's pretty much no chance that I would do this often with how Amethyst requires individual zapping of each contributor. Just being honest. I wouldnt do it. But I will add a calendar and do it less often for larger amounts.
I'm probably a minority in how I use Nostr and zaps though. That should be considered. Zapping a list of devs for me is a lot of work since my external wallet opens and processes a payment for each one. My opinion may not matter so much for this issue. Implement it with an option to disable and people like me will probably be just fine. I may even change my habits. Never know. I accept your point about incentives though. I think your way is more sound in that regard.
The main issue is that on an yearly basis the list of devs to be paid would be bigger. We don't even track that much time, so it would be interesting to figure out how to do this.
Maybe with the integration with cashu the payment for multiple devs will be made easier. Would you load some amount into a Mint just to have a single-click pay-all interface?
Absolutely. I kind of already do this with a fiat bank for all the FOSS apps that only accept fiat. Mints are a very similar concept except have far better privacy.
My main concern for using Mints (in the US) has been the whole money transmitter thing. I'm skeptical of how that's going to play out, but that's a separate issue.
At the end of the day, I just want to be fair and support you guys long term. I tend to check out at various points and simply can't watch every piece of software to make sure I care about every decision. But that IS on me and I'm willing to pay however devs think is fair. I'll just have to adjust some of my habits and that's fine as long as it isn't too cumbersome.
Please sir, think of the lightning devs