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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

#81

Post by pabs3 »

ddevault wrote: post #55
richardwhiuk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> the only obligation is to send the modifications upstream as patches

That is incorrect, the modifications have to go to users not upstream. All the GNU copyleft licenses are like this.

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

#82

Post by pmoriarty »

dencodev wrote: post #72
teraflop wrote: post #68

I feel like it's weird to first talk about aligning your incentives towards things that provide value to your users, and then suggest this business model: > Training, support or consulting services from the project’s maintainers without even mentioning that it creates exactly the opposite incentive. If you get paid to help people understand how to get stuff done with your product, you have absolutely no reason to imp…

Your core product is something that needs to be popular enough that anyone needs your services though, and it's not going to be popular if it's difficult to learn and navigate.

It also has to outcompete other products that do the same thing.

That's not going to happen if your product is a baroque mess that requires a ton of support in order to use/setup/understand compared to other competing products.

Ideally, your product is as easy to use as possible compared to other products, yet complex enough to require support.

Anyway, many corporations will buy support as a matter of course, whether they need it or not. And if they want specific features they might pay to have them added rather than dedicate their own engineers to writing and maintaining that code, especially if they don't have the in-house expertise to do so.

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

#83

Post by ddevault »

pabs3 wrote: post #81
ddevault wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> the only obligation is to send the modifications upstream as patches That is incorrect, the modifications have to go to users not upstream. All the GNU copyleft licenses are like this.

Sorry, you're right, thanks for the correction. In practice, sending the patches upstream is the easiest way to be compliant, though.

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

#84

Post by victor106 »

I asked this on HN a few days back.

I open sourced a library and its become heavily used by some of the largest enterprises who make lot of money using that library as one of many.

It takes a lot of my time to keep it updated so I would like to be compensated some how for the time it takes me away from my family

Even though its used by small and medium businesses I would like only the largest businesses to pay for it.

So how do I keep it open source as well as have the largest business pay for it? Any examples of open sourced applications doing the same?

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

#85

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

ddevault wrote: post #76
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're glossing over the fact that being compliant with AGPL requires more competence than the vast majority of software jobs. I know you could competently integrate or use AGPL software, and I might be able to do it (while repeatedly referencing armchair lawyers on stackoverflow), but there is still a risk I fuck it up and my (or my employer's) competitive advantage is in jeopardy. You are right that AGPL is easy if…

>If I link an AGPL PDF-generating library with my monolith service which runs financial reports over my business, what happens? No one uses AGPL for libraries, except maybe by mistake. LGPL is used for this purpose. >Do I need to now publish my SQL queries that access sensitively named tables? No. The FAQ from GNU makes how this works pretty clear: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AGPLv3InteractingR... The A…

> No one uses AGPL for libraries, except maybe by mistake.

This isn't my experience at all. Here's an example:

https://github.com/unidoc/unipdf/blob/master/LICENSE.md

> The AGPL is not viral in the sense that all client software accessing an AGPL-licensed service are required to use the AGPL, but rather, such clients are entitled to the source of that service. It puts no obligations whatsoever on client software.

This depends on what your "client" is. If you're making library calls, lawyers get uncomfortable.

> Maybe you should actually read up on the AGPL license before you make assumptions about it? It seems like you don't really understand it.

I understand it quite well, and I even use it myself! There are just problems associated with it that most proponents gloss over.

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

#86

Post by alexellisuk »

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…

I have first-hand experience of this with OpenFaaS and other projects and wrote-up about it here, if anyone is interested in some long-term experience - https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/

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

#87

Post by pabs3 »

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.

This kind of situation is not evenly distributed. For example the Linux kernel is mostly like this, but lots of other things are not like this.

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

#89

Post by ddevault »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #85
ddevault wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I link an AGPL PDF-generating library with my monolith service which runs financial reports over my business, what happens? No one uses AGPL for libraries, except maybe by mistake. LGPL is used for this purpose. >Do I need to now publish my SQL queries that access sensitively named tables? No. The FAQ from GNU makes how this works pretty clear: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AGPLv3InteractingR... The A…

> No one uses AGPL for libraries, except maybe by mistake. This isn't my experience at all. Here's an example: https://github.com/unidoc/unipdf/blob/master/LICENSE.md > The AGPL is not viral in the sense that all client software accessing an AGPL-licensed service are required to use the AGPL, but rather, such clients are entitled to the source of that service. It puts no obligations whatsoever on client software. Thi…

>This depends on what your "client" is. If you're making library calls, lawyers get uncomfortable.

Ah, in this case, this software is designed to maximize conversions to the paid commercial license, so they deliberately use the AGPL in a way which makes it inconvenient for your internal use. This is not common in software which does not have an alternative commercial license. I don't really appreciate this model because it is disrespectful of the copyright of third-party contributions.

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

#90

Post by spieglt »

I work on open source projects* when I have a need that other tools don't quite fill properly, and because I like to work with languages like Rust and C that I don't get to use at my day job. I'd like to have a "buy me a cup of coffee" button on my Github because I have put thousands of hours into my side projects, but have no idea how to monetize really. And I wouldn't want to use the monthly supporter model because often when I finish a project I want to take months off, and may not have another idea for a while.

*like https://github.com/spieglt/flyingcarpet

https://github.com/spieglt/whatfiles

https://github.com/spieglt/cloaker

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