41–50 of 185 posts
How long do people think this subscription thing will last? "It's cheaper per month than one Starbucks coffee" stops working when you have to pay for 100+ Starbucks coffees per month... and then the subscription bubble will crash.
I'm closing in on 100 public, nontrivial, nonforked repos on github. Since github's inception, I've received a total of $200 in donations for my OSS stuff, 1 job from a company that uses a product of mine as the foundation of their business, and many job offers from people who are familiar with my work. I don't make money off OSS, and never have (at least not directly). But I just. can't. stop. I can't. I've tried su…
Why not? I'd prefer working with OSS for money over proprietary products.
I'm closing in on 100 public, nontrivial, nonforked repos on github. Since github's inception, I've received a total of $200 in donations for my OSS stuff, 1 job from a company that uses a product of mine as the foundation of their business, and many job offers from people who are familiar with my work. I don't make money off OSS, and never have (at least not directly). But I just. can't. stop. I can't. I've tried su…
> don't write OSS for money Why not? I'd prefer working with OSS for money over proprietary products.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can we fix that?
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.
What's commercial use? Creative Commons has been messing around with this question for something like decade and has never come to a resolution.
So, sure, advocate for changes to the open source definition if you like. But there are reasons that a lot of people are resistant.
So going from free to subscription based. How long do people think this subscription thing will last? "It's cheaper per month than one Starbucks coffee" stops working when you have to pay for 100+ Starbucks coffees per month... and then the subscription bubble will crash.
Wondering what percentage of the donations the author forwarded to the library maintainers and authors that his product relies on..
So going from free to subscription based. How long do people think this subscription thing will last? "It's cheaper per month than one Starbucks coffee" stops working when you have to pay for 100+ Starbucks coffees per month... and then the subscription bubble will crash.
Altruistic FOSS works best when there are many more users than issues, ideally technical users capable of fixing them, so a fraction of the users can donate just a small amount of their time and get the project going. Alternatively, when some business players decide to collaborate on a project and fund its development. Otherwise, when there are many more issues than users, particularly users who aren't capable or wil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> don't write OSS for money Why not? I'd prefer working with OSS for money over proprietary products.
Because you won't get money from OSS contribution for most part. If your priority is money, then OSS is not the best option unless you have a clear strategy of monetizing it.
Firstly, this post is really excellent and quite profound - I read it end to end and would recommend you do so too if you've just come directly to the comments - it goes a lot broader than the title might suggest and contains quite a few quotes I'll be referring back to. That said, on the surface point about making money directly from open source, I'd just like to chip in with my own perspective that wasn't really co…
However, being a published author builds credibility in a lot of respects whether it's within many large companies or doing consulting/etc. work.
ADDED: I've written a few books. I've made no money off them (to a first approximation relative to everything else). But they've been immensely valuable in other respects.