108 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
108 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
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# fosspay
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Helps you get paid for your open source work.
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[](https://drewdevault.com/donate)
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## Rationale
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I write a ton of open source software, but almost none of it is on the scale
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that I can expect reliable income from donations, or the sorts of projects that
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a business would be likely to fund. It's very unlikely that I'd receive enough
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donations from random folks to support full time open source work, but full time
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is the best way to make serious progress on your projects.
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So - here's how this works: supporters give you one-time or recurring donations,
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and after a while you get enough to take a week off from work to spend on open
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source work. Since I have several projects, I also ask supporters to tell me
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what project they're donating towards, and I distribute the load based on which
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projects receive the most support.
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## Before you start
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Talk to your employer. The way that this is designed to work is that you
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continue working full-time at your job, and collect donations. After a while,
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you should have enough donations to take some period of unpaid leave - a week, a
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month, or whatever works.
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* You keep your current job and job security
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* You get paid to work on FOSS even with flaky or inconsistent donations
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* Everyone wins
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There are a few things you need to talk about with your employer:
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1. Make sure you own the IP for the things you write during your open source
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sprints.
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1. Make sure that you have a job to come back to afterwards.
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1. Research the tax implications of accepting these donations.
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### Stripe
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Payments are taken through Stripe, which is pretty headache-free for you to use.
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You need to set up an approved Stripe account, which you can get from here:
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https://stripe.com/
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### Mandrill
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You will need a mail server of some sort. If you don't want to go through the
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trouble of setting one up, you can use Mandrill:
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http://mandrill.com/
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You can probably also use your existing mail server, which is what I do, which
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makes it easy for people to email you questions and such.
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### SSL
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You will need an SSL certificate for your website (you also need a domain name).
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You can get a free SSL certificate from [StartSSL](http://www.startssl.com/),
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but they've always felt pretty... bad to me. You can pay for one instead at
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[RapidSSL](https://www.rapidssl.com/), which is what I use personally. You can
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also get one for free from [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/) if that
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ever happens.
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If you need a domain, you can use my referral link for
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[Namecheap](http://www.namecheap.com/?aff=84838) and that'd be super nice of
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you. Here's a link to Namecheap without the referral link:
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[Namecheap](http://www.namecheap.com).
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## Installation
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Install these things (Arch Linux packages in parenthesis):
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* Python 3 (python)
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* PostgreSQL (postgresql)
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* scss (ruby-sass)
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* Flask (python-flask)
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* SQLAlchemy (python-sqlalchemy)
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* Flask-Login (python-flask-login)
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* psycopg2 (python-psycopg2)
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* bcrypt (python-bcrypt)
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You'll have to configure PostgreSQL yourself and get a connection string that
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fosspay can use. Then you can clone this repository to wherever you want to run
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it from (I suggest making an unprivledged user account on the server you want to
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host this on).
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### Configuration
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Copy config.ini.example to config.ini and edit it to your liking. Then, you can
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run this command to try the site in development mode:
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python app.py
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[Click here](http://localhost:5000) to visit your donation site and further
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instructions will be provided there.
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### Production Deployment
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To deploy this to production, copy the systemd unit from `contrib/` to your
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server at `/etc/systemd/system/` (or whatever's appropriate for your distro).
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Use `sytsemctl enable fosspay` and `systemctl start fosspay` to run the site on
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`127.0.0.1:8000` (you can change this port by editing the unit file). You should
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configure nginx to proxy through to fosspay from whatever other website you
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already have. My nginx config is provided in `contrib/` for you to take a look
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at - it proxies most requests to Github pages (my blog), and `/donate` to
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fosspay.
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