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How It Works

How does it work?

Flossbank provides two ways to give back to the Open Source community. The first is to view curated tech advertisements during installation of Open Source packages, with the revenue being distributed down the dependency tree. The second is to make a monthly donation as you would on Open Collective or Patreon, with the donation split up amongst the packages you install each month, and their entire dependency trees.

If ads are opted into as your form of giving back to the Open Source community, Flossbank shows curated tech ads during the installation of Open Source packages and passes along 70% of the ad revenue. See the GIF below for an example. When the installation finishes, the ads are replaced with the default installation output.

GIF showing the process of installing packages when the Flossbank wrapper is installed.

Alternatively, if a donation is chosen as your method of giving back to the Open Source community, 99% of the donation (after processing fees) is passed along to the maintainers of the Open Source packages installed and no ads will be shown. You can change or delete your donation at any time within the user portal. Additionally, within your user portal you'll be able to see your top 10 most frequently installed packages throughout your daily work flow (they might surprise you!) and will have the ability to make individual monthly donations to them directly.

How is the ad revenue I generate distributed?

We distribute the revenue all the way down the dependency tree of each open source package you install. Every installation begins with some "top-level package(s)". For instance, in a web development project, your top-level packages might be react, react-dom, webpack, babel, and a few others. We divide the chunk of revenue generated from viewing ads (or from a monthly donation) evenly between the top-level packages. Then we divide each package's share evenly between its own immediate dependencies. This process continues all the way down the tree.

How are donations distributed?

Just as we do with ads, we distribute the revenue all the way down the dependency tree of each open source package you install. Unlike ad revenue however, we distribute donation revenue when the actual donation is processed. When the donation is processed, the amount is divided and distributed to the packages you installed that month.

Have more questions? Visit our FAQ page to find out more.