[GitHub] [incubator-pekko] mkurz edited a discussion: On the project's stability, future and funding

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GitHub user mkurz edited a discussion: On the project's stability, future and funding

Hi everyone!

Like @gmethvin, who wrote some messages here already, I am one of the maintainers of the Play Framework.

Since Play is looking for alternatives to replace akka (including akka-http), it's obvious that pekko would be a feasible alternative for us, given it's a fork of the current akka 2.6.x branch.

We highly appreciate the ambitions you have with pekko and we sincerely hope the project succeeds in the long term.w
However, we do have some concerns about pekko in the long run. That's why we haven't come up with a decision yet on how to move forward in Play.

I want express those concerns here (excuse my ignorance if some of those topics were discussed before already):

- How many seriously active and engaged devs do currently invest time to push the project forward? Specially, how much time, realistically, do individual core contributors think they can invest in the upcoming years? Please correct me if I am wrong, it seems pekko right now still is in it's early stage, being set up, but no real work has been done yet (like features and/or bugfixes).
- I assume all of you currently have full-time jobs (be it employed or as a freelancer/consulting) and some may even have families with kids. The work you do on pekko currently, is that happening outside of your regular occupation?
- Do any of you get time reserved from your employer to work on pekko? Like is your employer backing you and basically sponsoring you to work on pekko?

I do ask those questions because my fear is that in the end there will be like a handful people maintaining pekko to keep it alive in their free time, but as soon as one or two of those most engaged people struggle to invest time next to their jobs (because of whatever reasons... private life kicks in, accident, sickness, a newborn, divorce, changing jobs, single person with lots of free time not single anymore,...), the project may start to slowly fall apart. From my personal experience I know that if other stuff is coming up it sometimes gets tough to keep engaged with a project you actually only work on in your spare time. Lot's of Open Source projects actually just depend on one or two main actors that hold the project together...

That leads my to my second question:

- Have you considered getting serious funding for the pekko project, either to onboard one or two main devs, like at least part time?
- Or if one of you is freelancing/consulting anyway, have you considered working a certain amount of fixed hours for pekko as your "client" during normal working hours, not just as a side project?

Even though it took way more than half a year (almost 9 months actually) in the end we were able to get decent funding for Play, so we are now able to pay one person to work on the project. So I was wondering if you already considered opening an Open Collective and/or GitHub Sponsors account for pekko.
I do think akka is _much_ more widely used then Play ever was and believe that companies using akka right now are much more willing to fund the development of pekko than they are for Play. I also believe that around September, much more companies will feel a pressure to migrate away from akka, when 2.6 is EOL and would then be more willing to invest a bit of money into funding pekko.
Of course that only works if someone of you decides to at least work part time on the project. Or, like said, if someone of you is freelancing already anyway, you could at least charge the time to work on the pekko project, do that in normal working hours and not in the evenings or on the weekends.
If you ever choose the road of sponsorship I can offer my help to set things up.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying funding is absolutely necessary or is the best thing to do, nor I want to talk anyone into funding, I just wanted to bring up this topic because it seems it never was discussed before.
Like I said, I am just a bit worried about the long term stability of the project.

Thanks for listening!

<details>
  <summary>PS: Side note that may be relevant for someone considering (click to open).</summary>
There are two ways to payout money from Open Collective, the standard way where you just get the money wired onto your bank account and you have to do the tax stuff yourself, nothing special, you just act like a freelancer / self-employed and do whatever you have to do yourself to pay taxes in your country.
Or, since this isn't advertised on the Open Collective website, Open Collective could also set up people on their PEO provider, as an employee with full coverage or as a contractor. In that case you would have a normal remote job, with normal regular salaries and Open Collective via its PEO provider provides you with necessary insurance and other employment records. Like I said this second option is not advertised anywhere, but if a collective has enough funding, you can just reach out to Open Collective folks to set things up. They did offer that to me, and in general, folks at Open Collective are very easy going.
Also, if you live in the European Union and need help on how to tax "income" from the Open Source Collective, which is based in the US, I can help out here too if you reach out to me.
</details>

GitHub link: https://github.com/apache/incubator-pekko/discussions/144

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