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@jay Thanks, Jérôme. I appreciate you taking the time to comment. Which project is it? Would love to take a look.

@viktor I appreciate your interest, thank you!

It's a Firebase Admin SDK for PHP, including integrations for the two most popular PHP frameworks. Google doesn't provide an official SDK, so mine fills the gap for PHP developers. The reason why I'm sure it's mostly used by businesses is that I can't believe so many people use it for personal projects.

https://github.com/kreait/firebase-php

@viktor I also contribute to Google's official libraries to make them compatible with new releases of the dependencies they're using. I asked them if they were willing to sponsor me, but it isn't their policy to do so.

It's a win for businesses because they don't need to fund me, and for Google because they don't need to provide an official SDK.

I'm ranting about the situation every few months and promise not to do it again, and here you are, giving me opportunity to do it again

@jay Thanks for sharing. Very valuable information. I see you mention additional support for sponsors. Are you trying to do more paid support, or would you rather not do extra work?

Mongoose.js has been using GitHub Sponsors to get clients to pay for support, and it's been working decently for them:
https://fundedby.community/funding-open-source-projects/#5-paid-support-and-services

Not many want to do extra work offering paid support

@viktor That's something I introduced just a few days ago, together with the version matrix, mostly to protect me from myself, I can't not try to help people when they have problems. I started the library at a hackathon in 2013, open sourced it and was super excited when the first downloads trickled in. My reward was knowing that I did something useful. 10 years and 1000 GitHub issues later, it often just feels like work that *I* pay for with my time, and I'm expected to...

@viktor And I know: it was my choice to do it in the first place and to have a permissive Open Source license. I can't *expect* monetary signs of appreciation (I got some thank you's, though). But when I think about how many developer-hours businesses saved with my work, it's difficult to not get frustrated and feel unappreciated. I do want to continue, but I put a price tag on the things I don't want to do, well knowing that it will not be taken up

@jay Your open-source journey is all too common. It's difficult to get people to pay for free stuff out of the goodness of their hearts. At least businesses should make financial contributions to projects they use.

If you want to get more paid support work - 2 tips:

1. Make sponsor tiers actual support plans. Call them that. Ex: https://github.com/sponsors/mongoosejs

2. Add noticeable calls to action to your docs, Overview, Setup, Troubleshooting pages. That's where users might need help (see img).

@viktor Adding CTAs to the docs is a good idea, I will do that, thank you! I don't work on the project full-time as the Mongoose team does and calling it support plans will create expectations that I can't meet.

It's as you said: businesses should make contributions for the work - I would add "for work already done, not additional benefits".

I appreciate you for caring and talking with me , but I agree it's a common problem and me lamenting about it in my bubble won't change it .

@jay I'm trying to find ways to help maintainers get funded. Maybe I can figure out a way to get people to donate more

Let me know how it goes, when you get paid support sponsorships.

And if you have any marketing-related questions, don't hesitate to ask. Happy to help.

@viktor Thank you, just talking to you and being "heard" definitely helped .

One thing I've been considering is rewriting the whole thing and making it Sponsorware (making it sponsors-only until a given threshold of sponsors/monthly sponsorships). I saw this working a few times, but only for devs who already were high-profile .

Perhaps I'll have another popular project in the future, one that's not built upon a commercial service that people already pay for

@jay Glad I could help, even a little Do you have an example of Sponsorware? I'm curious to see.

You should also consider paid addons/components if it makes sense. For example, an integration with a service such as Sentry or Logtail. Or other frameworks besides what you already have. Maybe nativephp.com integration for desktop apps?

Ask yourself, how can I help developers save time? Build it, charge for it.

Example:
https://alpinejs.dev/components

@viktor I don't know of one currently running, but here's the documentation:

https://github.com/sponsorware/docs

and the story behind it:

https://calebporzio.com/sponsorware

I should at that Caleb was already popular when he did it

@jay Thanks for sharing. This is basically crowdfunding. Font Awesome crowdsourced over $1mil to build and release v5. Modoboa does feature crowdfunding, raising smaller amounts for specific features such as 2FA (€700). If you don't raise the amount you want you don't release or build it. If there's something missing from your SDK, you could see if users would crowdfund it, and then you would build it.

@viktor You're right, but there's a small difference, though: with Sponsorware, you already have built it (or at least an initial version) and give access to everyone who already is a sponsor, so they can immediately benefit from it. If the asked sponsorships are not reached, the sponsors can still use it. This way, I have a small income and don't have to give the money back if the goal is not reached .

@viktor I went into another direction and halted maintenance until funding is found: https://phpc.social/@beste/110943262127695483

@jay thanks for sharing. One thing I would recommend, which I found odd in WPCS announcement, is the lack of a funding goal. When exactly is "funding is found" reached? Creating a GitHub Sponsors goal would help reach a specific number. Fundraising drives with a goal perform better than those without a goal.

@viktor That's a good point, thank you!