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How to pay your rent with your open source project

plausible.io

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Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#51

Post by pankajdoharey »

barrkel wrote: post #50
Milank wrote: post #43

Most 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.

I would say a lot of people yes but "Most" may not be accurate clearly there are more projects on github than there are companies which are funding OSS projects.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#52

Post by Milank »

barrkel wrote: post #50
Milank wrote: post #43

Most 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.

We are talking about OSS projects that "need to pay the rent".

OSS projects that are created by companies as a strategic move are something completely different.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#53

Post by kerkeslager »

barrkel wrote: post #50
Milank wrote: post #43

Most 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.

[citation needed]

This isn't my experience--I've worked with hundreds of developers who do open source, and only a handful were paid in any way. I don't exactly look deeply into the finances of every open source project, but my own open source projects, I've paid to run. Now, I'm aware that my experience is anecdotal, so I'm not going to confidently say that you're wrong, but I'll say that the best evidence I have (which isn't very good) doesn't match your claim. If you want to persuade me, you'll have to provide better evidence than what I already have.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#54

Post by ddevault »

mwcampbell wrote: post #47

How 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 F…

We shall not challenge the OSI and FSF definitions, because every principle that they defend is not only worth protecting, but under attack by bad interests. "Challenging" these is how you end up being gaslit by companies which are abusing the open source brand to peddle software that isn't. And such muddying of the waters makes it easier for companies to disregard the terms of copyleft licenses. This is non-negotiable: non-commercial licenses ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE, and people who argue for this are actively causing harm to open source. I expected better from you, Matt.

However - by no means am I suggesting that non-commercial licenses or licenses which don't meet the other OSI or FSF criteria are wrong, or cannot be used to do good - nothing of the sort. But you need to give it another name. Some projects are using "Fair Source", for example.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#55

Post by ddevault »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #14
jcelerier wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I think the ongoing trend to slap a thin wrapper on top of F/OSS and sell it as a service (aka "the Cloud") points to a weakness in F/OSS licensing schemes that needs to be addressed as I'm sure that almost all devs working on F/OSS don't intend their work to become part of a lock-in scheme, mass surveillance, or both, all the while not even getting contributions back. the solution to "not even getting contri…

The AGPL doesn't guarantee that you'll get contributions back. For the very few companies who are willing to touch AGPL code, they only need to make the changes available (e.g. a CD in the post is sufficient). Very few companies are willing to use it, because it creates an almost unassailable hurdle in lots of industries. It's also highly at risk at making a bunch of other projects AGPL as well.

It does nothing of the sort. This is propeganda that mega-corps want you to believe because they are unable to rip off AGPL software effectively. Organizations like Google can afford to not use AGPL software (they can just write their own software), but it costs them money, so they refuse to use AGPL software and spread propeganda that it's impossible to do so, to weaken its market penetration and ensure that they have greater access to software without the responsibility to contribute back.

In actual fact, being compliant with AGPL software is extremely easy. Nothing at all is expected of you if you just ship it into production as-is. And if you modify it, the only obligation is to send the modifications upstream as patches. That's it. Surely any company is capable of completing such a trivial feat.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#56

Post by boogies »

pankajdoharey wrote: post #51
barrkel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who write OSS do it as employees for companies for whom OSS is a strategic asset.

I would say a lot of people yes but "Most" may not be accurate clearly there are more projects on github than there are companies which are funding OSS projects.

Are you implying that one company can't fund more than one project?

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#58

Post by michaelt »

pankajdoharey wrote: post #51
barrkel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who write OSS do it as employees for companies for whom OSS is a strategic asset.

I would say a lot of people yes but "Most" may not be accurate clearly there are more projects on github than there are companies which are funding OSS projects.

The results here are going to depend on if someone spending 1 hour a month on a project with 1 user, and someone spending 40 hours a week on a project with 10,000,000 users both count as 1 OSS developer.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#60

Post by pselbert »

Milank wrote: post #43

Most 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…

You make an excellent point here—it takes a lot of effort to get a solo project (OSS or otherwise) to be profitable enough that can compete with a day job’s salary. As somebody that is monetizing OSS, making a supplanting my salary is my measurement of success. At that point I can focus on my product and my customers during core working hours.
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