Corporate purchasing and policies make funding open source Literally Impossible. Nothing’s going to change until you make them pay you.
Someone filed a bug?
Support contract.
Someone wants a feature?
Support contract.
It’s literally easier to pay you $1500/yr than $25 once.
I want to donate $150 to this open source project.
“Do I look like a communist? Is that what you think of me?”
We need a $1.5k support contract rather than pay an on-staff developer $180k.
“Okay submit their IRS W-9 and Point Of Contact for vendor management to reach out to.”
I literally put this in a slide.
Either we pay this support contract, or you hire a full-time developer for a jazillion dollars and health benefits and yearly company barbecue raffle tickets.
If you’re paying a company $150 over PayPal that’s literally not worth the time it takes your Purchasing Department to open your fucking email.
A yearly $1.5k wire payment?
Now we’re talking.
Communists don’t accept wire payments. This sounds legit.
I can’t go around *telling open source developers to charge us money.*
You need to reply with a support contract, a quote on company letterhead, every imaginable contact point including a fax number, your incorporation documents, an IRS EIN, and bam.
I will send you 1.5 grand.
It might take 4 months but I’ll do it.
When a Purchasing Department sees company letterhead with a fax number, they excrete synthetic lubricant.
“Look at this company they have a fax number which means it’s not run by a millenial I’m signing the check right now.”
At my last company I said, “look either we send @MikeKaply $xxx to support configuring our Firefox installs with his open source tooling, or our sales people will randomly have their browser break.”
“Okay.”
If you say something will keep sales laptops running they will buy you anything.
They already buy those motherfuckers BMWs and tropical cruise tickets they don’t care.
Oh wow I’m going to regret this entire thread in the morning
The Emailed Quote, honoring Purchase Orders, and accepting Wire Payments is *very important.*
You have no friggen idea the nightmare it is to convince a purchasing department to use a credit card in PayPal after checking out a multi-stage online cart.
You will be poor forever.
I am dropping MAD KNOWLEDGE to SCALE YOUR REVENUE STREAM with LEGENDARY SENPAI BUSINESS HACKS and I get nothing. No favorites or retweets.
Twitter is the world y’all deserve smdh
I’m convinced that many Developers have NO FREAKING IDEA how business actually works and what Operations departments have to go through to make things happen.
Enrolling a new vendor is more than difficult - it’s DEMORALIZING. It eats souls. If you make it Easy you are a God.
I might get a scolding email tomorrow for this thread but in the meantime GET PAID CASH MONEY FOR YOUR SKILLS WITH THESE CORPORATE INSIDER LIFE HACKS.
Yes, make your support “contract” extremely submissive but also not very burdensome. Lawyers hate liability or risk or entitlements. That’s what they look for. You aren’t big enough to care about that. Just concede all that and say best-effort. Get paid.
Ultimately, a flimsy and weak software ecosystem hurts Establishment players. They make big bets on long timescales. Chaos is anathema to everything they need.
Make no mistake: Paying chump change to a few developers who need it is a small price to earn billions with confidence.
Which is why none of this is shocking or scary for me to say. You have no conceivable idea the inefficiencies generated by inability to compensate developers for simple easy requests, or the investment diverted to respond to supply chain issues.
Get paid. Save the world.
You need to understand, corporate contractors don’t win bids because they’re the best.
They win bids because they check all the boxes, know what policies purchasing departments require, and make it EASY.
That’s 80% of your job. Make it easy for hand-tied bureaucrats to pay you.
If every developer understood how corporate purchasing worked, I’d have so much more ability to send people money.
But they don’t, and these days I have so much else I’m required to work on immediately. I used to be “Helpdesk” and everything else was a passion project. Not now..
You can follow SwiftOnSecurity.
____
Tip: mention @threader_app on a Twitter thread with the keyword “compile” to get a link to it.
Enjoy Threader? Tell @jack.