[Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

[Greg L. <gre...@gm...>]

Dear all,

The thread about Andrew's ChemFP paper started to turn into a discussion of
open-source business models and their feasibility (Thanks for starting that
Francois). Since I think this is an important topic, I'd like to have that
in its own thread.

Here's the thread:
https://www.mail-archive.com/rdk...@li.../msg08796.html

I'm going to include a couple of complete messages from participants so
that we can discuss things here.

Here's part 1, part 2 will come in a separate message:

On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 11:36 PM Geoffrey Hutchison <
geo...@gm...> wrote:

>
> I don't want to hijack the thread, so please feel free to take this
> off-list with anyone interested.
>
> I think it's an interesting idea in general in open chemistry. We have set
> up an Open Chemistry collective - this receives $$ from Google Summer of
> Code. The "host" is the Open Source Collective, a 501c6 non-profit in the
> United States (
> https://docs.opencollective.com/help/hosts/open-source-collective)
>
> The collective isn't perfect, it skims 5% for transaction fees and
> overhead, but it's:
> - completely transparent for donations
> - completely transparent for expenses
> - allows both one-time and recurring donations
>
> Greg can correct me - I think we handled the $$ to RDKit from Google
> Summer of Code 2018 before we set this up, but it's certainly there to use.
> You can create your own RDKit collective pretty easily too:
> https://opencollective.com/open-chemistry
>
> One big benefit is that OpenCollective handles all the legal paperwork and
> accounting.
>
> -Geoff
>
> PS One regret is that I haven't had need of chemfp in house, or I would
> have pushed some $$ towards Andrew.
>