Funding open source development with Profit First methodology
A friend shared the Profit First book with me a little after I started Bluehorn Digital. I have been using it for a few months to allocate profits as legitimate benefits right now instead of at the end of the year when it vanishes and is just some accounting magic. But, what do I do with that profit? What do I do with the profit that is generated by the few subcontractors I have?
I could pocket it and have an extravagant dinner. That’s actually what the book says you should do every quarter with 50% of the profit you have set aside. The remaining 50% is emergency cash for the business. I have decided on a different approach with Bluehorn Digital. Instead I am focusing on training materials and funding open source projects that I rely on to do daily business.
I feel like business as usual is broken. I am excited to have my own company and communicate what I am doing and plan on doing. Each contractor and employee is a privilege to have, and I want to invest with them so that they help me fulfill my goals.
Training materials
Each of my contractors has full access to Laracasts for training material. Why Laracasts over Drupalize.Me if I primarily work in Drupal? All Drupal inquiries only want me, not my team. The first team project was a Laravel application, so I bought them resources best suited for that.
Once there is a Drupal project that allows me to put my team in place instead of just me, I will be purchasing an organization membership to Drupalize.Me. I am also going to look into grants or business programs that would help cover sending folks through the Drupal Career Online program by DrupalEasy.
Funding open source projects
I am super excited about this. I know I have blogged about funding my own open source projects. This isn’t some snake eating itself analogy. My open source funding allocates time for me to maintain projects without worrying about client work. And I want to fund open source projects that I rely on to ensure they have the same.
Bluehorn Digital is able to fund the following projects, with more on the horizon as feasible.
- PHPUnit, Sebastian Bergmann.
- PHPStan, Ondřej Mirtes
- Xdebug, Derick Rethans
- Ansible and infrastructure tools, Jeff Geerling
- Composer, PHP package manager
- Lando, local development Docker wrapper
- COMING SOON: A Drupal core contributor and active community member
Bluehorn Digital was also sponsoring the development of DDEV. The open-source local development tool lives on, but the company has shut down (😢) and we will begin sponsoring the project once the dust settles and we can again.
