AutoMapper and MediatR Going Commercial
Yes, another one of "those posts". But tl;dr:
In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of my OSS projects, I will be commercializing AutoMapper and MediatR.
I did not post this on April 1st for obvious reasons. But first a little background on how I got to this point.
How I Got Here
These two projects originated at my time at Headspring, a consulting company I worked at for over 12 years. About 5 years ago, in January 2020, I decided to strike off on my own and give solo consulting a try. Although it was a scary leap, it's been more rewarding than I could have possibly hoped for, in almost every area.
The area that it didn't work out well, and not at all intentionally, was OSS work:
You can see exactly where my contributions cratered and flat-lined. And that's just commits—issues, PRs, discussions, all my time dried up. This wasn't the intention but was a natural side effect of me focusing on my consulting business.
At Headspring, my time on OSS was directly encouraged and sponsored by them. I could use time between projects to invest back in existing OSS or new OSS, because it benefited the client, the company, and the employees (me and my coworkers).
With me leaving that company, and that company then selling to Accenture later that year, I had no direct major sponsor of my OSS work anymore. My free time was being spent growing and ensuring the success of my consulting company, which being solo, is...kinda important.
Taking time to see how things have been going on all fronts, I had a bit of a shock looking at my OSS work. I realized that model is not sustainable for the long-term success of these projects, which I still endorse and believe in. I need to be able to pay for my time to work on these projects, and get direct feedback from paying clients, like I had earlier at Headspring.
What Will This Look Like?
The short answer is "I don't know exactly". I'm working out those details now and will share them when I figure it out. I have lots of examples of what does and doesn't work well, at least from my perspective, as well as what I consider will work well for these projects.
Short term, nothing will change. I'll still be as (un)responsive on GitHub issues, and I just pushed out a couple releases of any existing work.
My goal is to be able to pay for the time to spend actually improving these projects, building out communities, helping more users, and in general, doing the things that people have asked me MANY times over the years that I should do, but I didn't, because it was not my job. OSS was/is/never will be a hobby for me. I want to change it to at least be part of my job and to fund real work.
I can’t rely on donations, I don't want to make developers pay anything or do anything to punish/annoy them, and I certainly don't think it's Microsoft's job to "pay me the money." Past that, I'm still figuring it out.
When Will This Happen?
I don't know, it's still just me that owns everything. It's still using my free time to sort it out, as my day job is still a consultant. But I plan to be open with this whole process. I'm sure I'll surprise someone but the goal here is to be transparent.
Personally, I'm both filled with excitement and dread—doing these projects for so long has been incredibly rewarding, especially as this is code that came directly out of many, many long-lived production-deployed projects at Headspring. But I don't want these projects to wither and die on the vine, I want them to grow and evolve and thrive. But not just these projects—I want ALL my OSS projects (Respawn etc.) to thrive. This is how it needs to happen.
Final Thanks
Thanks to all that have contributed over the years, and especially to Lucian Bargaoanu who really helped pick up the torch with AutoMapper after I more or less fell off the map. Also thanks to my GitHub sponsors, as many a pint has been purchased with your generous support. And finally thanks to the community, I never hoped anything I built would help anyone beyond my clients, coworkers, and company, but it's always nice to hear that it has.