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0017-add-funding-support.md

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Add funding support to package.json

Summary

This RFC identifies an initial means of tooling to describe & notify consumers of a package's monetary support information. npm has been vocal about our commitment to providing a means for package maintainers to more sustainably support their work & this reflects an initial step toward that goal.

Motivation

Package maintainers want to clearly indentify how their software is currently, or could be in the future, supported monetarily.

Detailed Explanation

  • See Prior Art
  • Provide a means to reference existing funding opportunities in package.json
  • Provide a means to define the type of funding opportunities in package.json
  • Provide a means to notify package consumers of funding opportunites with the cli
  • Provide a means to view dependency's funding opportunites with the cli
  • Provide a means to view a package's funding opportunites

Rationale & Alternatives

  • Rationale:
    • This is a straightforward and easily implemented solution to take the first step toward supporting Open Source Package Maintainence sustainability
    • Building this functionality into the package management layer is the only reliable way to push funding notifications to the vast majority of developers who already use npm
  • Alternatives:
    • Continue to rely on third-party, opt-in, tools & platforms that only support a fraction of the desired audience
    • Continue debating a larger, more complex schema /w correspondingly more complex tooling

Implementation

  • Add a funding field to package.json
    • supports a string or an object with a specified type & url field
    • url is required for npm fund to execute
    • type is an optional field that can be inferred by the url
    • Note: if funding is defined as a string, that value will be mapped to url & a type may be inferred
    • Note: it is not advised to add arbitrary key/values to funding as additional fields may be added in the future
  • Add notification at the end of output of package installation that references the number of packages with funding defined
    • ex. 23 packages are looking for funding. Run "npm fund" to find out more.
  • Add --no-fund flag to opt-out of the funding notification when installing
  • Add npm fund <pkg> subcommand:
    • if a package is specified, npm will attempt to open the url defined in funding using the --browser config param (similar to npm repo <pkg>)
    • if no package is specified, npm will print out a tree of all the funding references defined in the current project's installed dependencies
  • Add a visual representation & link for the funding type & url fields of a package on npmjs.com

Examples of funding usage in package.json:

{
  ...
  "funding": {
    "type": "patreon",
    "url": "https://www.patreon.com/my-account"
  },
  ...
}

{
  ...
  "funding": {
    "type": "foundation",
    "url": "https://openjsf.org/"
  },
  ...
}

{
  ...
  "funding": {
    "type": "corporation",
    "url": "https://microsoft.com/"
  },
  ...
}

Example of npm fund <pkg>:

$ npm fund example-package 
# opens a browser with correpsonding `url` value: https://www.patreon.com/example-package 

$ npm fund 
└─ example-dependency@1.0.0
   ├─ type: patreon 
   └─ url: https://www.patreon.com/example-dependency
└─ example-dependency-two@1.0.0
   ├─ type: opencollective
   └─ url: https://opencollective.com/example-dependency-two
└─ example-dependency-three@1.0.0, example-dependency-four@1.0.0, example-dependency-five@1.0.0
   ├─ type: individual
   └─ url: https://sindresorhus.com/donate

Prior Art

Other Work & Conversations

  1. PM WG: "Document support levels" Draft
  2. PM WG: "Document support levels" Blog post to announce
  3. PM WG: "Document support levels" Blog post to validate
  4. PM WG: support field license Issue
  5. PM WG: "Future direction of support field" Issue
  6. npm: sustainability PR
  7. npm: support PR
  8. thanks: "Read URL from package.json" Issue
  9. funding: "Collaborate with the PM WG" Issue
  10. Differences between: "author", "contributors", "maintainers" & "owner"