Funding Django is not an act of charity, it's an investment

I think this comment by patio11 is very relevant here:<p><i>&quot;We don&#x27;t donate to OSS software which we use, because we&#x27;re legally not allowed to.<p>I routinely send key projects, particularly smaller projects, a request to quote me a commercial license of their project, with the explanation that I would accept a quote of $1,000 and that the commercial license can be their existing OSS license plus an invoice. My books suggest we&#x27;ve spent $3k on this in 2015. My bookkeeper, accountant, and the IRS&#x2F;NTA are united on this issue: they don&#x27;t care whether a software license is OSS or not. A $1k invoice is a $1k invoice; as a software company, I have virtually carte blanche to expense any software I think is reasonably required, and I think our OSS is reasonably required.<p>I would do this more often if OSS projects made it easier for me to do so. Getting me to pay $1,000 for software is easy; committing me to doing lots of admin work over the course of a week is less easy. Take a look at what e.g. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sidekiq.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sidekiq.org&#x2F;</a> , which is an OSS project with a commercial model, does. Two clicks gets me to a credit card form. If I actually used Sidekiq, Mike would have had my credit card on file the day that form went up.&quot;</i><p>(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10863939" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10863939</a>)

&gt;&gt; &quot;...a solid, stable, secure and powerful web application framework...&quot;<p>I think this quote sums up Django very well. I would guess that a large chunk of externally facing and internally facing web apps use django (e.g., apps at Mozilla [0]). Anyone have a link to numbers? It would be neat to quantify the prevalence of frameworks on the net. Someone must have done this already.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.djangoproject.com&#x2F;weblog&#x2F;2015&#x2F;dec&#x2F;11&#x2F;django-awarded-moss-grant&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.djangoproject.com&#x2F;weblog&#x2F;2015&#x2F;dec&#x2F;11&#x2F;django-awar...</a>

It&#x27;s like chipping in $10 for a bag of artisinal coconut chips on Kiskstarter, but instead of getting a bag chips you get a mature web framework. And maybe artisinal coconut chips.. I don&#x27;t know, I&#x27;ve never been to DjangoCon.

An indirect way to support Django is to use products and&#x2F;or services of its sponsors: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.djangoproject.com&#x2F;foundation&#x2F;corporate-members&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.djangoproject.com&#x2F;foundation&#x2F;corporate-members&#x2F;</a>

Kind of unrelated to the topic.. but I recently checked out Django for the first time ever recently (I know, 5 years late) - and was impressed. It has a lot of the things I like in web development with mostly sane defaults (most insane thing found so far: Closing database connection after each request, really?). Edit - Yes I know you can change config to keep connection open, but as a default for prod mode it seemed rather weird ;)<p>Still fighting the internal battle that I know I like better compile time checking (ala Scala), but having changes happen so fast in dev is pretty freakin nice...

It&#x27;s amazing what the Django Software Foundation was able to accomplish with the recent fundraising. It has greatly increased the project&#x27;s reliability and stability. Let&#x27;s keep it up. :)

If you rely on Django or another open-source project, can you afford not to help fund it?

I&#x27;ve been pondering corporate roles in modern OSS projects for a few months, especially those in projects that have no single owner.<p>Supporting developers or community members of an OSS project your company uses through employee time or financial means is less of an investment, and more of a hedge. You&#x27;ve picked up a product off the shelf, however that product has a future direction decided by a number of people in a community.<p>A company that chooses not (through inaction or action) to participate in the project is relying on the existing powers-that be, and their existing influences, to make decisions that will benefit the company. This is a risk.<p>A company that chooses to participate cannot <i>control</i> a decentralized project, but they can absolutely influence the software and community by choosing what projects to fund, what kind of roles to hire for, what projects to sponsor, and what to publicly talk about. This influence nudges the community in directions beneficial to the company, and ensures the project doesn&#x27;t head in a different direction.<p>For example in the last year the Ember.js community has seen an influx of larger companies hiring positions that include OSS time for employees. Large companies sponsoring OSS work is becoming more common. This means the parts of Ember that benefit large company needs (lots of devices, big dev teams) are getting more focus. The transition is exciting and fascinating to observe.<p>Support OSS projects important to your company, or accept the risk that comes with allowing foundational parts of your business to be managed by others (without your needs in mind).

Developing software means you&#x27;re standing on the shoulders of the opensource giants. Let&#x27;s feed them from time to time :-)

Wagtail is one of the most interesting Django projects at the moment (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wagtail.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wagtail.io</a>).<p>A great attempt to make CMSes as useable as humanly possible, which can&#x27;t be said for WordPress, Drupal, and the usual fare.

I can&#x27;t help but wonder if Django wouldn&#x27;t do better with a multi-licensing strategy like MongoDB uses. Asking for donations typically doesn&#x27;t work out so well.<p>I see a lot of underfunded open source projects. The whole internet seems to run on them. OpenSSL was one prominent example. I don&#x27;t think it is coincidence that they are almost always BSD type licenses.<p>To me BSD licensing just seems like the starving artist living on the good will of a few wealthy donors. Donors who frequently end up steering the project. Multi-licensing seems like a healthier approach.

I dont see the point, Rails already solves the problems that Dj-ango is trying to solve again. Rails&#x2F;ruby combo already solves the problem in a very elegant way. There is no need for another half baked solution that tries to solve the same problem.

Food for thought - As a prospective employee, I&#x27;d more likely want to work at a company whose name I saw on the corporate sponsors page (of Django, or whatever framework they use).

I approve this message :-)

Can we see the Django Software Foundation&#x27;s latest Form 990?

I&#x27;d like to see something like celery built in. But easier to use and doesn&#x27;t need a separate db. Is it possinlble to fund that like south was?