Open Collective fund distribution

[pat-s]

I was about to donate to the project and started to look around what the incoming funds have been used for recently.
I was a bit surprised to see the following:

• There are three people eligible for payout on OpenCollective.
• While @mysticaltech is more or less the only person doing active work over a continuous period of time (at least that's my impression when viewing the overall activity), the activity of the other two persons is substantially less, has (very) long breaks and don't look to me like ones from "core contributors".

As a person thinking about donating, beside my own active contributions to the project, it would be great to get some more transparency on that. For reference, here are the activity logs:

• The activity from aleksasiriski
• The activity from valkenburg-prevue-ch

Specifically I don't understand why there has been a payout to @aleksasiriski in March 2025 even though the last activity was in Nov 2024? With the next ones dating back to May 2024 and Feb 2024.

Similarly for @valkenburg-prevue-ch: while there has been some activity lately, the first page of activity even dates back to 2023 and includes a 1year+ break.

I am aware that this is not a nice topic to bring up, but I can't really understand these recent payouts (besides the one for @mysticaltech).

If the argument is that the payouts were for their historic contributions many years ago, I'd like to see these justified in more detail. There have been many contributors with equal contributions over different periods (and maybe even more substantial ones), so it would be good to understand in more detail how these decisions have been made. Until that isn't addressed in a relatable way, I am holding back my financial contribution.

[aleksasiriski]

I will answer about my payment:

@mysticaltech and I have talked a lot in DMs about the project when I was still working on a more modular rewrite as part of my work for a company that hired me, as I came to a burnout during my work and student protests started here in Serbia I didn't have free time to dedicate to neither work nor open source that much.

This was a gift from him to me for the past work I have done, even though the last public commit I made wasn't recent. I was fine without it and didn't ask for it if that matters, but I accepted it as it helped my situation and am very thankful to him for that.

[mysticaltech]

@pat-s Last time you commented on the project, I just gave you a heart and did not reply because it's complicated. Let me address it here along with the above.

I started this project just to be able to run Kubenetes simply on Hetzner. People liked it and started contributing, so I created the org Kube-Hetzner and started proposing active contributors at the time to join, and gave them commit access, some even admin like the @aleksasiriski and @valkenburg-prevue-ch.

We are not a company, this is volontary contributions, but I just entrusted them because they made very good contributions to the project and stuck around.

Now when we got enough donations, I chose to donate to those that were still involved with the project and did significant and important contributions. At the time, both were "recently active" and we were the top three line of code counts wise that did not backout from the project. The only other one that contributed more left the project long ago. I used AI calculate the fair payout, but it was too low for them in my view. If it was lines of code alone, I should have taken most of the payout, but wanted to thank them, so did a more favorable distributions for them, that's all.

I remain project lead, and basically it's my project, I steer it the best I can to maximize both personal usability and value to the community. Anyone that wants to fork it can, it's MIT. So even if something happens to me, no big deal, and on top of that, the members you mentioned have access.

So it's a no-strings-attached, goodwill operation for now. Maybe in the future it could turn into something else. For now, we're still optimizing for maximum stability.

Hope that clarifies it. Thanks again for the support, your contributions, and for caring. I appreciate it very much!

[pat-s]

@mysticaltech Thanks for the all the information. These are good to have and I am sure others appreciate it as well.

Now when we got enough donations, I chose to donate to those that were still involved with the project and did significant and important contributions. At the time, both were "recently active" and we were the top three line of code counts wise that did not backout from the project. The only other one that contributed more left the project long ago. I used AI calculate the fair payout, but it was too low for them in my view. If it was lines of code alone, I should have taken most of the payout, but wanted to thank them, so did a more favorable distributions for them, that's all.

That's a good explanation and valid reasons for these actions, and more or less, what I missed and was hoping to find somewhere.
I am aware that such discussions always create friction. Also I know that we are talking about xxx and not xxxx or more.

Yet again, I think its OK (and must be ok) to ask such things and maybe implicitly gain pro-active communication around such actions in the future, especially if they can't be directly related to recent contributions.
Yes, contributions are not linearly linked to fund payouts and there's always a subjective point in who gets what (if at all). That's why a logical and transparent process helps to understand these decisions. Based on such, everyone can then also make their own judgement on whether they align with it or not :)

As stated initially, I haven't question your own payout but specifically addressed the others with valid stats.

Long-term I think the project could profit from a group of 3+ active maintainers, who would also transparently be eligible for a relative share of the project money. This is both better for the project, active replies to user feedback and PRs, and releases pressure on you as the main/single maintainer right now (and I am not saying this in the hope to become one 😉️). This is of course your decision in the end and I understand that your opinion might be a different one on this topic, based your recent reactions/replies. Totally fine, albeit it doesn't align with my preferred outcome.

---

The other points address are a bit off-topic to the discussion (project vision, leads, responsibilities) and might be good to discuss in another thread, e.g. #1557. This one was solely focused on the OC payouts, reasonings and potential improvements :)

I highly appreciate your reply here (and the ones from the others) and hope this discussion has helped to put some focus on such governance-topics to make the project even better in the future 😉️

[valkenburg-prevue-ch]

I have nothing to add to the answers from @aleksasiriski and @mysticaltech . Like @aleksasiriski , I did not ask for the payout and could not convince @mysticaltech of any other distribution, so I gratefully accepted his gesture of appreciation.

[mysticaltech]

Hey @kube-hetzner/core,

FYI, follow-up on the above.

How we handle donations and payouts:

• Active participation matters. Anyone who’s currently contributing in a meaningful way will be considered in the next distribution.

• Merit-weighted shares. I’ll keep evaluating the impact of each contribution—code, docs, reviews, support—so the split reflects real value, not just raw commit counts.

• Volunteer spirit intact. The project remains MIT-licensed and community-driven. Forks are welcome, but I’ll continue steering things toward maximum stability and usefulness for everyone.

Thanks for all you do, your time and talent keep Kube-Hetzner thriving!

[ifeulner]

Hi, I am also not contributing actively since quite some time, but just my two cents:

• donation should be done if the project provides value for someone. Its about the project, not the individual (non-)contributions
• the project team decides how the donations are used. As @mysticaltech is the main driver and owner, he should also have the major stake in that decision

Best, Ingo.

[pat-s]

@ifeulner I think it must be OK to ask such questions, for transparency, trust and fairness.
I explicitly stated that this is important for me to make a decision and I can't do so without it.
I didn't claim anyone else should do so, neither did I start a movement to stop active contributors from contributing.

To address your specific points:

donation should be done if the project provides value for someone. Its about the project, not the individual (non-)contributions

Financial contributions should be used for two things: to cover project costs (infra, testing, etc.) and compensate maintainers. I guess everyone agrees on that?
Maintainers are people that put a lot into a project and subsequently are eligible for a fair share. This can have a positive effect on both the users and project.

I don't know what you mean with "its about the project". If donations go to people who are not active (anymore) or haven't done substantial contributions (again, here the subjective part starts), I don't think the donation is "used for the project".

the project team decides how the donations are used.

It is. And hence, they are also responsible for justifying these.
In the same way FOSS is open-source and transparent, OpenCollective is. And exactly for that point: to avoid potential misuse of such project-bound donations.
Again (and important): I am not claiming that the referred payouts were misused, but they are at least "questionable". Which is why I opened that discussion here. I think my entry post stated all my thoughts on these in details already.

It is totally fair that you have your opinion and don't care too much or at all, such is everyone else. In the same way, I appreciate that you respect my decision in asking for clarification and basing my decision on such.

[ifeulner]

I don't know what you mean with "its about the project".

The project — in this case, a software project — provides functionality that people can benefit from. If you find value in it, it’s fair to consider making a donation or payment in return.

The challenge with open source is that it’s widely used, but appreciation — especially in the form of financial support — often comes from only a small minority.

[pat-s]

I am donating to many projects and offering donations myself. I am around in the FOSS community for > 10 years.

I can't relate how your reply addresses the point you quoted. Anyhow, we might be talking about different things here, maybe better to to leave it as is.

[ifeulner]

And hence, they are also responsible for justifying these.

This is the point: Why do you think you have the right to expect a justification? The financial contribution is for the result, the software you're obviously using.
The team has to be fine with the usage of the financial contributions (which is usually not very high as you know as a longterm FOSS contributor...). That's my opinion on it.

You get a software that is working and well-maintained, this is what you're valueing by your financial contribution.

[pat-s]

Alright, I didn't want to get down to the nitty & gritty details of this, but then here we go:

No, I have no justification at all, at least on a legal level.
I asked for it in the hope to get a reply, which could have been left unanswered or alternatively answered with a reply following your style, aka "you have justification to ask for it, we do what we want".

In both cases my personal result would be to not donate and others would have maybe also stopped theirs.
It should be in the interest of the project owners to clarify this and build trust. No matter if its about $1 or $100k.
This is how the FOSS donation model works. This is different to a for-profit, license-based software of a company where I would indeed have neither a legal nor a moral justification to ask for this.

If one asks for a donation for doing X and distributes the money to Y with a weak/bare justification, this is commonly referred to as fund embezzlement. No matter if in software, global heath care, or any other field (disclaimer: this is just a theoretical comment and not at all implying anything on this general topic or this project here).