Why Eventsourcing Is a Non-profit
At first, when I tell Eventsourcing is backed by a non-profit corporation, I get questioning stares. With so many startups in the database and frameworks fields, that’s not surprising. But when I start explaining, people seem to start recognizing the motivations behind this move and its potential value.
Marketing new database software, especially with a different paradigm, is a huge challenge. Nobody wants to invest their time and money to risk the abandonment or stagnation of a foundational component of their stack. By giving the controls and incentives to everybody who’s interested in the project, I am hoping to ensure the project can live on whether the original maintainers are still there or not (and given my personal track record, I am rather a great starter — and I can help so many other projects to be brought to life before I fully retire).
The open, membership-based nature of the organization fits quite naturally with the C4’s right to contribute, except that now we’re talking about the right to associate.
Having no shareholders, licensing software under MPL and havingcopyright securely owned by all the Contributors makes it harder to imagine a buy-out (takeover) scenario. No Apple will swoop in and take away the database you’ve been building your application on.
It’s a great way to measure the commitment and interest in what you’re working on. Raising the barrier just a bit to see if the work you’re doing is valuable for anybody. For better or worse, free is not always appreciated and valued. Starring a project on GitHub is cheap. By having to pay your dues it is more likely that the topic will remain on your radar in these busy, attention deficit times.
Not to mention the ability for members to re-elect the board and officers should they go against the popular vote of the community. Dictatorship is efficient and cool until things, well, go wrong.
Software is only useful if it is being actively used. Getting others to use a new foundational piece is tricky. How do we learn about its bugs, applicability or usability problems faster, without locking ourselves to our own projects? The non-profit organization can work with businesses to help build up case studies based on real projects. They get their problems solved and software implemented, developers get paid and the organization has a steady influx of new case studies as well as extra cash to finance the really complex parts of development efforts. Win-win-win.
Lastly, but not least importantly, a number of organizations give grants, free or heavily discounted products and services to qualifying non-profits. Sometimes you can get anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars worth of those. With incorporation and maintainence costs in many jurisdictions being quite low, what’s not to like about it?
Eventsourcing, Inc. is a non-profit organization that facilitates the development, case studies, funding and administration of the Eventsourcing project, as well as promotes the benefits of the event sourcing technology.I if you’re invested in the event sourcing approach or anticipating that to happen, you can become a member at https://eventsourcing.com/membership/signup
