21–30 of 185 posts
I know there are ways of doing this today, but if it's not super frictionless and integrated into the platform, it's less likely to happen
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By giving it away for free only for personal rather than commercial use, as lots of software used to be in the last millenium? But of course what's going to happen is a certain F/OSS advocacy org will shout "this isn't F/OSS as it doesn't obey our no-purpose-limitation criterion" and you and your software will be treated as a pariah and avoided like the plague and even more than pure closed-source software.
Fine, so you write a bunch of code, and release it under an NC license and a paid commercial license, no problem. Then someone comes along and submits a PR. What now? Will you accept their code and monetize it, despite the fact that you still deny that person the right to monetize your code, or will you refuse all PRs? The problem with these proposals is that it creates an unequal relationship; some developers have m…
would be great if GitHub had some kind of patreon system built in, to make it very easy to do recurring donations. Especially for companies that use open source software for commercial activity, it would be great to have an automated way of paying each month and a culture for that, so that it's almost the default option. I know there are ways of doing this today, but if it's not super frictionless and integrated into…
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/18637344/github-sponsors-...
would be great if GitHub had some kind of patreon system built in, to make it very easy to do recurring donations. Especially for companies that use open source software for commercial activity, it would be great to have an automated way of paying each month and a culture for that, so that it's almost the default option. I know there are ways of doing this today, but if it's not super frictionless and integrated into…
would be great if GitHub had some kind of patreon system built in, to make it very easy to do recurring donations. Especially for companies that use open source software for commercial activity, it would be great to have an automated way of paying each month and a culture for that, so that it's almost the default option. I know there are ways of doing this today, but if it's not super frictionless and integrated into…
I think they recently did. https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/18637344/github-sponsors-...
People who have relatively limited amounts of money (eg anyone who isn't a millionaire) will always want to keep their money if they don't have to spend it so you need to give them a truly compelling reason to spend if you want to make money. Just writing an app, even a useful one, isn't enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I (and most people) used to buy encyclopedias. If wikipedia didn't exist, I would again...
How many information sources do you currently pay for on a monthly basis? How many times have you actually clicked the "donate" button when Jimmy Wales asks you to?
It's still interesting to note that the Wikimedia Foundation is getting more cash in donations than it requires to operate. If it wasn't a non-profit, it would actually turn out a profit.
It's no surprise that offering your product for free won't make you much money.
Lots of developers have an expectation of "Build it, they will come" as a route to market, and they end up disappointed. Selling a piece of software, regardless of whether or not you also give away the source, is really hard. Moving people from "I want this handy tool" to "I will pay for this handy tool" is the hardest part of sales no matter how amazing your app is. People who have relatively limited amounts of mone…
But I just. can't. stop.
I can't. I've tried suppressing the urge to create, but I just can't do it. Ideas, challenges, problems, unmet potential, are everywhere, and I can't unsee them. On many days I despair that I won't live long enough to build even a tiny fraction of the things I see in my mind. It's infuriating!
And so I do my best to keep my focus small. I have a full time job, so I try to keep my extracurricular coding down to at the very most 3 hours a day if I can, but my idea list just keeps on growing faster than I can keep up.
I keep thinking that maybe I'll calm down as I get older, but I started at 8, and I'm 44 now. If I had no financial pressure at all, I'd be doing this stuff all day. The only difference would be that I'd burn through my list faster.
But long story short, don't write OSS for money. Have a full time job and do OSS on the side.