Sadly the article neglects the single biggest problem in open source: very few people, or companies for that matter, are actively willing to contribute in any way, whether it be contributing with code or financially supporting a project. Even big and popular open source projects are most often self-funded and it's people dedicating their own resources and spare time to support them. All of the things in the article are more than valid but creating an open source project that can potentially pay your rent is arguably just as hard as adding another letter to FAANG. As a matter of fact the letter might very well be an easier task.
How to pay your rent with your open source project
41–50 of 171 posts
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#42This domain is blocked by my uBlock origin due to it being in "Peter Lowe's ad and tracking list"
Yeah this was blocked for a day or two, a couple of weeks ago.
Refresh your filter lists and it'll no longer be blocked.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#43Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money.
Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long way to go in order to replace that income, meaning it's very hard to transfer from a regular job to maintaining and living from your OSS.
And the most important thing - those people are pure engineers, that don't know/are not interested in business, marketing, making a product out of their software, etc.. practically anything besides coding. It's like advising a mason: "Hey man, you know how to build a building, why don't you build one and sell it? You can pay the rent with it." It's a bit more complicated than that.
But nice article overall, good starting point for someone who wants to find out more on the topic.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re right regarding the convenience point, to have a chance to work it has to be as straightforward as possible to buy and then install your tools. I understand the difference people expect from GUI vs CLI, I just don’t think it really makes sense to be ok to pay for one but not the other, and I see it as a missed opportunity for tool creators. Edit: Regarding Linux users as the main target, I don’t know if that’s…
I fully agree that it is unfair to creators that they cannot reasonably generate income from CLI apps. Still, I am unconvinced that the model you are proposing could gain viable traction. It might be that I am in a sysadmin bubble here, but I just think that the "paid store" model conflicts with how people use CLI software. For example, I suppose even the MacOS developers you mentioned would be interested in running…
The docker case as an example:
- your prod docker images are already very likely to be built by your CI
- a Dockerfile typically does: apt update + install, git clone a private repository with your scripts, then build whatever you have to build
- so you already have secrets to manage, given that you need to access your private git repository
- in an environment such as Jenkins, Travis, Github Action, GitLab equivalent, secrets for your CI pipeline are equivalent to env vars that you add to your pipeline settings. It's quite unlikely that you have setup your own.
- let's say you want to avoid to have the private repository as a point of failure, just store the downloaded archives to your own registry. Not too different from storing build artifacts.
I'm not saying there isn't some friction, but it doesn't seem to be a deal breaker to me.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#45We're in the process of monetizing an open-source project as well (Klaro - https://github.com/kiprotect/klaro). The project started as a "weekend hack" for our own website and became quite popular over time, to the points that it's used on thousands of websites already. We plan to keep the client software (i.e. the part that runs in the browser) open-source and feature-complete. We want to charge for backend services (managing consent data, scanning websites) and comfort features like a graphical configuration editor. That way we hope to enable users to still get great free value from the open-source version while allowing us to raise money for the development.
Contrary to some other voices here we had great community contributions to our project right from the start: For example, almost all translations are contributed by the community and even some of the non-trivial features have been built by community contributors. That said it's a rather simple Javascript project and we try to keep it as accessible as possible. We have another open-source project (KIProtect - https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect - just open-sourced it last week actually) which is way more complex and that we also want to monetize, we'll see how many contributions we'll get for that.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then, I guess, the only choice is Github Sponsors. And it doesn't seem to be a bad one[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23613719
That, or using a very restrictive copy left license.
GPL would protect more user freedoms and potentially avoid big SaaS providers making profit off of your product, but it won't help you earn money just like that.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#47How about dual licensing of the core software itself? That is, release the source under a copyleft license, and sell licenses to companies who won't accept the copyleft terms. For libraries and tools targeted at software developers, I think the Parity Public License [1] is a particularly good choice.
Taking it further, we should be willing to challenge the strict parameters of the Open Source Definition, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, etc. These aren't sacred texts, and for many applications, it doesn't matter if they can never be packaged in the main section of Debian or other distros that hold tightly to these rules. In particular, for applications that aren't targeted at software developers, releasing the source under a license that allows non-commercial use, then selling commercial licenses, is a completely sensible approach. For example, check out the Prosperity License [2]. Edit: To be clear, licenses like this one shouldn't be called open source; a common term is "source available".
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#48What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development. I personally believe that could also work for other distribution channels, such as a private APT repository, or equivalent to other platforms. People could still build by themselves from sources if that's what they want, and if you want convenience you buy th…
It would be interesting to test this mode. I work for free on the source code, and you can get that for free. But if you don't know what to do with it (i.e. build it) or don't want the hassle of setting up a build environment, you can always pay the project for that effort.
I'd argue this would need a special license deviation from the typical OSS ones to prevent distros from packaging it. Otherwise, this model would break down the moment an Ubuntu or Fedora decides to package the software and then the incentives to contribute some money in exchange for convenience dissappear.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#49There is another option, unpopular with some open source advocates, the source-only option. You simply sell your software product (with source code) for a price. That's it. Simple and uncomplicated. Your customers get the source of your app. They can modify the code to suit their needs. But unlike open source, they cannot re-distribute the app. Very few companies would object to this. Some popular and profitable proj…
In this scenario, would a rollout of new features or upgrades be paid by the customer?
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#50Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long wa…
Most people who write OSS do it as employees for companies for whom OSS is a strategic asset.