[feedback] Developers pay

zero · 2007-04-27 11:28:32

Anyone know how much Google or Microsoft developers get paid?

At the end of this thread Zem mentions unpaid volunteer developers. I’m staggered. I imagined that since Joyent took over TextDrive that developers got paid. After all Textdrive was built on the back of Textpattern and with thousands of customers on each server, they must be making plenty of money by now?

Textpattern is arguably the best software in the world, definitely the best for the price that I know. Can anyone who has used txp really imagine static websites any longer? I don’t think so. The whole web has gone dynamic, and txp is at the forefront of making it easy for the everyday web designer to create easily managed blogs or flexible websites.

I thought the developers showed exceeding patience and strength to deal with all the pressures, as mentioned on the same thread above. But now I discover they are not getting paid either – well, that is truly remarkable! They must have a really deep down love of what they are doing to put so many hours in whilst having to cope with flak and abuse at the same time.

ramanan · 2007-04-27 14:08:44

TextDrive and Textpattern really have very little to do with each other besides the people involved. Textdrive is a hosting company, and to say it was built on the back of Textpattern is a bit silly. I don’t see why Textdrive would want to fund Textpattern development, as Textpattern really has no place in the TextDrive business plan — as far as I can tell anyway. I mean, Dean seems completely absent from Textpattern development now, and had been for quite some time before TextDrive came out.

And yes, the developers here are way more patient than I would be.

zero · 2007-04-27 14:32:16

I thought the success of TXP and the community spirit was used to get TXD started. TXP was pre-installed on each new domain and expansion grew through ‘word of mouth’ of the TXP community. From my point of view, TXD owes a lot to TXP.

marios · 2007-04-27 14:37:29

10% of all the early Venture Capital Hosting Deals went in to Software Development. When you signed up, you had a choice, wether you want to fundraise Textpattern Development or one of the other choices. ( According to the signup procedure )

ramanan is probably right, when he says, that Textdrive and Textpattern hasn’t much to do with each other anymore apart from the fact, that its domains are hosted there.

Textpattern wouldn’t be there, where it is today without Zem, Mary, Sencer and Pedro. That’s for sure. It’s also evident that funding Core Devellopment is a top priority matter right now.

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2007-04-27 14:41:33)

ramanan · 2007-04-27 14:45:04

Interesting Marios, I didn’t know about that initial fund raising stuff. The initial TextDrive push probably has a good deal to do with this forum and community, yes, but you must not forgot Dean and Textism were popular in and of themselves. When Dean announced TextDrive and the VC200 stuff, it was linked to by all these popular bloggers probably because of who made the announcement.

marios · 2007-04-27 15:15:26

Textile still remains very popular. I see it beeing used on the web all the time in all kinds of places. It is probably even superior to markdown, allthough I am having still a lot of trouble with it.
I discarded it at some point. Recently I started to use it again.

What is missing, is a thorough documentation ( Syntax manual )
Would be great to have a txp geared Textile Bundle as well. ( With Zem’s Syntax additions. Not the one that ships with TextMate )

Those two things are sortof on my todo list.

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2007-04-27 15:18:28)

Jeremie · 2007-04-27 17:07:50

zero wrote:

At the end of this thread Zem mentions unpaid volunteer developers. I’m staggered. I imagined that since Joyent took over TextDrive that developers got paid. After all Textdrive was built on the back of Textpattern and with thousands of customers on each server, they must be making plenty of money by now?

Joyent/Textdrive has money, no question about it.

However, beside free hosting and maybe access to hosting data ; there’s – as far as I know – not much or even nothing going on between TXD/Joyent and TXP.

At the beginning of Textdrive, a customer could select an open source project. This project would have 50% of the money spent by the customer. Doing some very pessimistic and quick math, that’s thousands and thousands of dollars going to TXP (and others, such as Wordpress, PunBB, etc.), especially given the amount of the various VC plans and the percentage of people coming from TXP buying those plans.

However, this seemed to have ended some time ago (I don’t know exactly when, maybe 6 month or a year ago). I can’t find any reference to that program anymore on TXD, so it might very well be dead.

Textpattern is arguably the best software in the world, definitely the best for the price that I know. Can anyone who has used txp really imagine static websites any longer? I don’t think so. The whole web has gone dynamic, and txp is at the forefront of making it easy for the everyday web designer to create easily managed blogs or flexible websites.

To be honest, Textpattern isn’t alone, or even the first. Small CMS, oriented text and publication, with typographic aid, and a lot of freedom (and no PHP) in the template building, off the top of my head SPIP was there years before TXP (however it lacked the strict, semantic, html capability of TXP). And I won’t quote the zillions of small F/OSS out there.

I thought the developers showed exceeding patience and strength to deal with all the pressures, as mentioned on the same thread above. But now I discover they are not getting paid either – well, that is truly remarkable! They must have a really deep down love of what they are doing to put so many hours in whilst having to cope with flak and abuse at the same time.

An, at least, decent amount of love (or insanity) is required, but as Zem said several times, he’s not in this for the spirituality of open-source or anything close to that vaporware.

Do you know how much it would cost to develop, localize, test, debug, document, expand, evangelize, a product such as TXP? An insane amount of money. And that’s all done for free, by the community.

So, basically¹, the dev team write code for themselves (for things their personal clients need and pay for), and get a full community to polish it afterward. TXP is not a community driven product, it’s a dev’s client driven product.

On top of that, the product get them money by itself. If you go to a client saying “yes you can hire the first coder/webdesigner you see, but I’m a core developer”, that not a small thing on a resume.

As to know if this is a sweet, or even balanced deal, for the core dev team, only they can say. If I were to guess, I would say that they could make more money outside of TXP, even if we include in that math the “price” of being free.

¹ Of course, this is what Zem says. In fact, the dev team does listen a little, and hear the community, and spend time on things without money in it in short term. Some dev do that more than others; and there certainly (one way or the other) more going on than we know from outside.

zem · 2007-04-28 00:55:43

At the beginning of Textdrive, a customer could select an open source project. This project would have 50% of the money spent by the customer. Doing some very pessimistic and quick math, that’s thousands and thousands of dollars going to TXP.

However, this seemed to have ended some time ago (I don’t know exactly when, maybe 6 month or a year ago).

$0. Textdrive provides free hosting services and occasional advice, but that’s all. The dev team never received a cent from the “open source funding” arrangement.

Last edited by zem (2007-04-28 01:05:55)

Neko · 2007-04-28 01:11:32

So you didn’t get my funding via TXD? That’s pretty surprising! :O

I also recall Dean writing (on this forums or on TXD’s ones, forgot, have to check) that, at some point in the past, he was able to pay TXP devs (only Pedro refused to accept money ‘cause he found it insulting). That’s what I recall.

Last edited by Neko (2007-04-28 11:56:39)

zem · 2007-04-28 01:20:34

There were a number of plans to pay the developers that never eventuated. Pedro now works for Joyent working on Rails stuff. Textdrive hired me early on for a couple of weeks work unrelated to Textpattern. At one point I worked for several months on Textpattern under the incorrect impression I’d be paid for it.

I’m not aware of anyone on the dev team being paid by Textdrive or Joyent for working on Textpattern. I could be wrong.

The TxD open source funding as it was explained to me: we receive 50% of the profits, which amounts to 50% of $0. I don’t speak for Textdrive, you’d have to ask them if you want a definitive answer.

Last edited by zem (2007-04-28 02:22:37)

nardo · 2007-04-28 03:17:58

I think many of the VC200 at Textdrive would have been Txp users (and people from this forum)… I was. There is a Textpattern way of doing things (maybe Maniqui can define, he is elegant & eloquent from that point of view!) that inspired confidence in the Txd venture (which is now something else, but I don’t say better or worse). It is disappointing if $$$ never came thru to Txp or were not distributed because certainly many people chose to ‘support Txp’ when signing up.

Philosophically – don’t give to get. Applies to users, contributors & devs. I think this philosophy is reflected in Txp and the way it has progressed. This is a fantastic project & a testament to everyone who is a part of it!!

Personal preference for supporting Txp is simply to pay a subscription fee to devs and/or commission projects where possible from Team Textpattern or other coders – with plugins/patches returned to the open project… i.e. real dollars should be spent – who owes you a publishing framework?

Reminds me on Txd forums where people complain of shared hosting issues (not saying some aren’t valid!) – if you’re a business & require stability, uptime, etc – you got to pay for it; if you can’t, your business model ain’t right.

TheEric · 2007-04-28 03:23:06

Who is the lead, when it comes to Textpattern? I thought it was Dean, but as he’s been AWOL for quite a while, I doubt that.

Under whose direction is TXP placed?

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2007-04-27 11:28:32

[feedback] Developers pay

#2 2007-04-27 14:08:44

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#3 2007-04-27 14:32:16

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#4 2007-04-27 14:37:29

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#5 2007-04-27 14:45:04

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#6 2007-04-27 15:15:26

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#7 2007-04-27 17:07:50

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#8 2007-04-28 00:55:43

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#9 2007-04-28 01:11:32

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#10 2007-04-28 01:20:34

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#11 2007-04-28 03:17:58

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#12 2007-04-28 03:23:06

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

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