79 lines
		
	
	
		
			3.8 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			Markdown
		
	
	
	
			
		
		
	
	
			79 lines
		
	
	
		
			3.8 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			Markdown
		
	
	
	
---
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title: "Sponsoring Jekyll's development"
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date: 2018-08-01 15:00:00 +0200
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author: oe
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categories: [community]
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---
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_(TL;DR: We're open for sponsorships on our [OpenCollective page](https://opencollective.com/jekyll))_
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Hi Jekyllers,
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As you may know, Jekyll is a completely free and open source project. We offer
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our software and its related plugins and documentation at no cost because we
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believe that good software should not cost anything. We're not planning on
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changing that, but today I want to talk about a different monetary aspect of
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open source.
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Open source developers being paid for the work they do is a rare sight. Most
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open source software is effectively the result of hundreds and thousands of
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hours of free labor provided by individuals who are passionate enough to work
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outside of their day job to create software that, ironically, is being used by
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almost every company that offers digital services. It's a problem that has
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gotten more attention in recent years, with the open source community becoming
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more diverse and more and more companies actively investing in providing
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monetary support for open source developers.
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Jekyll has always been a product of volunteers. Rarely has someone been paid to
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implement a certain plugin or feature. Today, we're excited to announce that we
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will finally be able to fund our contributors! __We are opening an
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OpenCollective to receive individual and corporate sponsorships__.
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This is not unheard of, [Hugo](http://gohugo.io) is also funded by sponsorships,
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as are many other similar projects, such as
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[webpack](https://opencollective.com/webpack),
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[Babel](https://opencollective.com/babel) or
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[RuboCop](https://opencollective.com/rubocop).
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OpenCollective is a service that makes it easy for open source projects to
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receive funding from individuals and companies alike. It's specifically designed
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for open source and many other projects already use it for funding.
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Sponsoring is, for us, a method to finally realize some of the more ambitious
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goals we've had with the project for years. The closest thing we want to realize
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is to __release Jekyll 4.0, and to make it as polished as we can__. In the
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future, we would also like to work on other things that will improve the Jekyll
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ecosystem. Here's a couple of ideas:
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- Create a comprehensive official plugin and theme directory site
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- Improve tooling built around measuring and improving Jekyll's performance
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- Improve maintenance for official plugins
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- Including the community into official decisions; making Jekyll more friendly to folks in the community
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Again, these are just some ideas, but with the help of sponsoring, they are now
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one step closer to being realized :heart:
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<div align="center" style="background-color: white;padding: 1em;">
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  <a href="https://forestry/io"><img src="/img/forestry-logo.svg" alt="Forestry" /></a>
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</div>
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With that, we would like to announce our very first sponsor:
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[__Forestry.io__](https://forestry.io)!
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Forestry is a CMS that integrates with your Jekyll sites and lets you update
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content using a beautiful interface, and then automatically commits it back to
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your GitHub repository. We're excited to have them on board on a new, exciting
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step of our journey.
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Will anything change for Jekyll users? The answer is no - this step does not
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impact the Jekyll software in any aspect. In fact, you might see positive
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changes, such as more features and better performance. Surprisingly, that's what
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happens when you properly fund people for their work!
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If you have been a long time user for Jekyll and would like to give something
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back to the project, you can consider a small monthly donation to our
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[OpenCollective page](http://opencollective.com/jekyll). If your company heavily
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relies on Jekyll, do consider sponsoring us!
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Contact [matt@jekyllrb.com](mailto:matt@jekyllrb.com) and we'll figure something out together.
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Thanks for sticking with us, and happy Jekylling! :tada:
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