submit article to OpenSource.com

[chadwhitacre]

Very interested in your story! Maybe share it on http://opensource.com ? Would love to hear from you. Enjoy the book [see: https://github.com/gratipay/guide/issues/1]!

https://twitter.com/openorgbook/status/714077088563773440

Maybe it's about take-what-you-want salaries, a la #534 (comment)?

Drafts

1. "Teaching Open-Source to Fly"
2. "Take What You Want"
3. "Take What You Want"
4. "Take What You Want"
5. "Open Hiring"

[chadwhitacre]

https://opensource.com/how-submit-article

[chadwhitacre]

Adapted #534 (comment), submitted the following (#552):

Article idea / topic

Gratipay's experience with take-what-you-want compensation

How are you involved in the subject matter?

I'm the founder of Gratipay.

Who is the intended audience?

leaders of open organizations

What type of article is this?

• Case study

Please provide a brief outline or bulleted list of what you plan to cover

At Gratipay, we've discovered a solution to the problem of distributing revenue to members of an open organization without killing intrinsic motivation: take-what-you-want compensation. Here's a proposed outline for this article:

• intro
  • state the problem: https://mako.cc/writing/funding_volunteers/funding_volunteers.html
  • explain the model we implemented to solve it
  • give an overview of how our solution was used
  • 300+ people, 100+ teams, $50,000, 2 years
• deeper dive into the story of the Gratipay team itself
  • 100+ people, $20,000+
  • what "normal" operation looks like
  • how we handled conflicts
• thoughts on how the model might scale up

Approximately how long will your article be?

1000+

Other questions or additional information to share?

References:
https://twitter.com/openorgbook/status/714077088563773440
https://twitter.com/openorgbook/status/715177044745785344

Here's a similar-scope article I wrote a few years ago:
https://changelog.com/open-products/

Here's where we're tracking this internally:
#551

[chadwhitacre]

[chadwhitacre]

Email sent!

https://twitter.com/openorgbook/status/715946835072925697

---

I coordinate the Open Organization content on Opensource.com (I'm the guy "behind the Twitter"), and I'm really excited about the article proposal you submitted recently. I've reviewed your notes, your outline, and your plans, and I think they all look great.

The Open Organization channel is a place where we're telling stories about the way open values are changing work, management, and leadership. Your story fits that bill precisely.

Just two notes:

• As you tell your story, be sure to highlight open solutions and values whenever possible. For example, I see you're using GitHub tracking to increase transparency. Be sure to mention that. Our readers are all open source fans first and foremost, and they're really going to take to your story when they see these connections.
• A 1,000 word article is fine, especially for something as intricate as this, but please do what you can not to exceed that word count by too much. If you feel like you need to, let's chat about ways we can actually turn your idea into a series of stories for Opensource.com. We like to keep stories to a 1,000-word cap.

Really excited to hear your story, Chad. You can email it to me directly (at this address) when you've finished a first draft. When do you think you'll have it to us? I will start making space on our publication calendar.

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks, []! Great to hear from you, and I'm excited to work together! :D

Thanks for the helpful guidance on open-source focus and word count. Happy to abide by those.

My normal process would be to link drafts on this GitHub ticket (which I believe you've seen) as I develop the piece. I would expect to go through a draft or three before I'm ready to submit it to you formally. I'm happy to circle back here in email at that point, and of course you're also welcome to subscribe to that ticket and follow along or even chime in. :-)

Since Gratipay is an open organization, I'll need to at least summarize our private email conversations publicly over there on GitHub for the Gratipay community. You'll see that I've copied your message over there, for example—though without attaching your name to it.

Along with that: Are you okay with me linking drafts publicly on GitHub? It's important to me that the Gratipay community can see what we're doing and how I'm telling our collective story, but I also want to respect your needs as a publisher. Let's find the common ground here.

When do you think you'll have it to us?

Hmm ... can we look at early May? What kind of timeframes and scheduling constraints are you working with?

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks, []! Great to hear from you, and I'm excited to work together! :D

Thanks for the helpful guidance on open-source focus and word count. Happy to abide by those.

Awesome, Chad. Thanks for that.

My normal process would be to link drafts on this GitHub ticket #551 (which I believe https://twitter.com/openorgbook/status/715623354338775040 you've seen) as I develop the piece. I would expect to go through a draft or three before I'm ready to submit it to you formally. I'm happy to circle back here in email at that point, and of course you're also welcome to subscribe to that ticket and follow along or even chime in. :-)

This is perfectly fine with us. Actually, it's more than fine—preferable, actually. Will be fun to watch the drafts come together.

Since Gratipay /is/ an open organization, I'll need to at least /summarize/ our private email conversations publicly over there on GitHub for the Gratipay community. You'll see that I've copied your message over there, for example—though /without/ attaching your name to it.

Along with that: Are you okay with me linking drafts publicly on GitHub? It's important to me that the Gratipay community can see what we're doing and how I'm telling our collective story, but I also want to respect your needs as a publisher. Let's find the common ground here.

We understand and respect this, too. Whatever copies of correspondence you deem necessary to post for the sake of your community are fine. And just to be clear (though you've likely already seen): We publish all content under Creative Commons licenses by default, so you're free to share and repurpose after publication. Our "needs as a publisher" essentially amount to the desperate compulsion to tell good open source stories—so however you want to collaborate on that is good with us.

When do you think you'll have it to us?

Hmm ... can we look at early May? What kind of timeframes and scheduling constraints are you working with?

Great question. We typically work with a one- or two-week backlog. So the earliest we could publish at the moment would be April 12 or April 14. But I gather you might like a little more time than that, and we don't want to rush you. If you need the month, then certainly take the month. We have a feeling the story will be worth the wait.

Hope that helps, Chad. Really looking forward to it!

(By the way, I'm already mulling ideas for your follow-up pieces; one might involve the specific ways you use GitHub in an open organization!)

[chadwhitacre]

Sounds like we are very much on the same page. :-)

I will aim to ping you in a few weeks with some initial work to review!

---

Music to my ears. Thanks, Chad!

[chadwhitacre]

I am thinking of framing this in terms of the invention of flight (a la "Making it Right").

The invention of flight brought together three things: lift, thrust, and three-axis control. Here's the parallels I would draw:

• Lift is open-source. Sharing. Collaboration. It works! By now, we know it works. This is the "magic," as it were.
• Thrust is corporate money. This isn't the hard part, just like bringing together propellors and combustion engines wasn't the hard part in the invention of the airplane. But just as some tweaks were necessary there (cast the engine in aluminum for weight), we need to make some slight modifications to established practices here as well (self-billed, pay-what-you-want invoicing). Individual contributions are enough for gliders, but for airplanes we need corporate money.
• Three-axis control is payroll. Where does the money go once it's flowing into the system? This is our big innovation: take-what-you-want payroll. We've seen it work on a glider, now we are combining this with real dollar volume—look out!

[chadwhitacre]

I could see this being a two-part series:

• one on the modifications necessary to make corporate money work in a significant way, and
• a second to tell the story of take-what-you-want payroll.

[chadwhitacre]

I'm going to try to stick with the original brief: one piece primarily on take-what-you-want payroll. We can expand beyond that in the future if there's interest.

[chadwhitacre]

Hi Chad!

Just checking on this, wondering how it's going and what we can do to help you. No pressure. Just updating our publication calendar for the near future and wanted to drop you a line so we could be sure to work you in at an appropriate time.

---

Thanks for checking in, []! :-)

I've been stewing on this, and I started putting some thoughts down a few days ago. I'm watching for a chance this week to hammer out a draft. If I get you a first draft by next Monday (April 25), does that keep us on track to publish in early May?

[chadwhitacre]

Sure, Chad. I think that will work. Looking forward to seeing the draft next week!

[chadwhitacre]

I started drafting something but ended up spending most of my time trying to make a chart that compares RedHat's growth over the past 16 years with Microsoft's without hiding the fact that Microsoft is still an order of magnitude bigger than RedHat.

[chadwhitacre]

Here's half a draft. It's the setup. Second half is the details.

[chadwhitacre]

Rewrite: "Take What You Want." Dropped the airplane motif. More concrete details about how payroll actually worked.

[chadwhitacre]

Third draft: "Take What You Want"

[chadwhitacre]

Not sure how much I'll be able to work on this tomorrow, so I may as well link you now:

https://medium.com/@Gratipay/9fa4aded3c6a

That's my third draft. It's still rough in the second half, but I feel pretty good about how it's shaping up. Please let me know how it reads to you so far and if we need to make any course corrections at this point. I should be able to pick up with writing on Tuesday.

Could we look at publishing during the week of May 8? How does that fit with your schedule?

[chadwhitacre]

I think it's shaping up beautifully. The scope of the piece is wider than I initially assumed (I could only conceive the "open compensation" part, not the "open hiring" part, which is also killer). Really looking forward to seeing the first completed draft.

We can certainly aim to publish on May 10 or May 12. Sounds like a perfect goal: enough time to finish and tweak, but enough downward pressure to ensure we get it done.

[chadwhitacre]

Awesome. I'll plan to follow up again next Monday at the latest.

[chadwhitacre]

Alright! Here's draft 4:

https://medium.com/@Gratipay/cd9a4f4ae7a

A couple more TKs, and then some massaging to shave 100 words and make it punchy as can be ...

More later! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

We can certainly start reviewing your draft on Monday, but publishing on May 12th will not be possible, as we already have another story scheduled to run that day.

At the moment, Tuesday is wide open, but I suspect that will be too tight for us. Still, beginning the editing early next week would be beneficial.

---

I'd really love to get something out next week, because I'll be traveling (and unavailable) for roughly two weeks after that—though perhaps that in itself is a red flag.

Specifically, I'll be offline from May 17-24. If we publish part 1 on Tuesday the 10th, I'll have a week to be available to respond to reader feedback. Is that enough to cover the initial attention cycle?

If so, and I get you a draft today, can we make Tuesday the 10th happen?

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks for the context regarding your schedule. If you have a draft today, then, yes, we should be able to get it published with a little work over the weekend and some back-and-forth on Monday morning.

---

Awesome, let's aim for that. More in a bit! :)

---

Ok, Chad!

[chadwhitacre]

Part 1: "Open Hiring"

[chadwhitacre]

Here you go, []:

https://medium.com/@Gratipay/open-hiring-b9606fa027ed

Definitely needs some work, but I think we're moving in the right direction! Let me know ...

Preened it a bit since.

[chadwhitacre]

I think the new revision is really great! Much more focused, explanatory, better-paced, and so forth. I'm excited to see how this does on Opensource.com.

What would you like to do next? Do you have more revisions or tweaks to perform? Would you like me to get this into copy editing and electronic proofing so you can approve final copy? Let me know. I'll be back on email from the office tomorrow morning.

---

Also, if you haven't already, could you make an account at Opensource.com, with a photo and bio? This will let us link your writing to your account, and allow you to reply to people who leave comments on
your story.

---

I gave it another read-through, and yes, I'm ready to move forward into copy editing and electronic proofing! :-)

I also filled out my profile. Let me know what's next!

[chadwhitacre]

Great! We're all set here:

https://opensource.com/open-organization/16/5/want-best-employees-let-them-hire-themselves

There's a (private) link you should be able to review for proofing. Please take a look and let me know if you have any last-minute changes or alterations. Otherwise, I'll work with our editors to get it published tomorrow, as we discussed.

---

Thanks, Bryan. I'm excited to see this coming together! Five suggestions:

1. "are a mechanisms" → "are a mechanism"
2. Can we remove the parentheses around "In a future article ..."? The sentence is essential to the structure of the paragraph, not ancillary.
3. Could we try to make the problem statement even clearer?
    
   Current:
    
   This is a notoriously difficult problem because of the money's propensity to introduce extrinsic motivation into voluntary organizations, thereby "crowding out" those who had been acting out of intrinsic motivation. Solving the problem means answering two questions.
    
   Suggested:
    
   This is notoriously difficult because of money's propensity to introduce extrinsic motivation into voluntary organizations, thereby "crowding out" those who had been acting out of intrinsic motivation, and ruining what made the organization attractive to volunteers in the first place. Solving the problem of money and motivation in voluntary organizations means answering two questions.
4. Could we bring back another subheading before the conclusion? Perhaps "From Hiring to Compensation"
5. Could we change "open compensation" to "take-what-you-want compensation" in the last sentence?

[chadwhitacre]

All great, all done! I will get this into the pipeline. Thanks so much for your work on this. Really excited to see it go live!

---

Thanks, []! I noticed a couple more typos and other minor things. In the interest of time, I went ahead and fixed these myself. Here's the diff I applied:

https://gist.github.com/whit537/758c03dac4b2f71075b6e9e2da6e6672

If I've overstepped my bounds here, please let me know!

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks for fixing those. Our style for subheads to to capitalize only the first letter of the first word, so we've made all those consistent.

---

Perfect, thank you. :-)

Thanks for all your work on this, I'm excited for tomorrow! :D

[chadwhitacre]

👍

[chadwhitacre]

No problem! Thanks for yours, too. Lots of excitement on this end, as well!

Just FYI: We'll be promoting it on social media tomorrow (@/opensourceway, @/OpenOrgBook, etc.). If you share or syndicate anywhere, let us know so we can pitch it where possible.

---

Roger. I plan to promote on @/Gratipay Twitter tomorrow. I will see you there! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

We're live!

https://opensource.com/open-organization/16/5/employees-let-them-hire-themselves

https://twitter.com/openorgbook/status/730013288755548161

[chadwhitacre]

Hmm ... returning after being offline for #314 #464, the article doesn't seem to be doing too well. It's not in the top ten for either of the past two weeks:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/osdc-list/2016-May/msg00004.html
https://www.redhat.com/archives/osdc-list/2016-May/msg00006.html

:-/

[chadwhitacre]

Looks like the open hiring post didn't do as well as we might have hoped—I didn't see it in the top ten for the week it was published or for the week after. Do you still want to pursue part 2?

Let me know your thoughts.

[chadwhitacre]

So great to hear from you. Reaching out to you about Part 2 of your story was on my mental to-do list for the week, so thanks for beating me to it.

We would absolutely love to publish the second installment of Gratipay's story. We think the community would seriously enjoy reading about the dynamics of a take-what-you-want compensation system, and that the story would be quite popular.

While it's true that perhaps we didn't see as much traffic to the first story as we'd have initially anticipated, we see the value of these stories as something that transcends everyday traffic. For example, you've probably seen that we publish supplements to The Open Organization (one entitled The Open Organization Field Guide and one entitled Catalyst-In-Chief, so far, with more planned and already on the way), and we use our best-of-best content from Opensource.com for these bundles. Because Gratipay's story is so unique and compelling—and because your stories focus so well on the practicality of how and why to use open values—we're already hoping we can include your
writing in future publications from Opensource.com. Having both "parts" of the story would be the first step toward that goal.

Let me know what you think.

Hope your traveling went well!

---

Thanks, []. Good to hear that we're playing the long game here. I'd be happy to see these posts reused, of course—let's see how part 2 comes together. Can we aim for an early to mid July publishing date for this one?

[chadwhitacre]

Sounds perfect to us, Chad. Always happy to have new stories from you. Yes, let's aim for whatever is comfortable for you.

---

Cool. If you don't hear from me by Monday the 20th, feel free to check in. Go team! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Ha! You can hold me to that! Let me know if you'd like help or advice along the way, too. :)

[chadwhitacre]

First article published! Opening a new ticket for the second ... #683.

!m *