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Open Source Maintenance Fee

github.com

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Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#111

Post by mirsadm »

20k wrote: post #102
chrisandchris wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me that's basically a subscription fee for one-time download. Not a WiX user, but that's my issue with it too. E.g., AutoMapper, a popular mapping library for .Net recently changed their license from Free to a Subscription. We use it heavily, and may be willing to pay - however: we are still using the same version as of 2 years ago, because there are no new features we care about and there's no need to put in m…

The problem is, if its one time payment, companies will just leech off of it indefinitely. It'd be great if companies were contributing, but its gotten to the point where you have to assume heavy bad faith from everyone involved

I am starting to think that the open source licenses need to be updated to specifically exclude large tech companies and force them to pay.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#112

Post by samrus »

orochimaaru wrote: post #49
trjordan wrote: post #31

I love the innovation. The basic idea here appears to be: - Nobody wants this to be closed source. The code is freely available, and you may do with it as you want. The marginal cost to distribute the code is 0, after all. - The maintainers, as people, don't want to do charity work for companies. Their time is limited, and if they're going to support revenue-generating activities, they want a cut of the revenue. So e…

I have mixed feelings about this. I’m not a Wix user so this is a general comment on the substance of this. As an open source project no one is forcing you to maintain it. Every fix you put in is something that you do of your own volition. No company can force you to accept a PR or work on it. I think FOSS developers often get stressed about this but unless you personally have financial motivations around what you’ve…

> As an open source project no one is forcing you to maintain it.

Sure but thats not the spirit that built the modern software world. Our globabl information infrastructure heavily heavily relies on OSS and that has open source devs assuming some responsibilities. If not from others then just their own sense of self respect and engineering pride.

The only issue was that companies were exploiting that and demanding the exact labour that benefits them. Which is bullshit. And this might solve that

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#113

Post by zeeg »

Arch-TK wrote: post #32

It seems like it would be much less complicated to write this/enforce this if they just made you pay a subscription fee for access binaries and the issue tracker. Instead, they've generated an enforcement nightmare by solely relying on an EULA.

Just want to say, absolutely this. Its an awfully confusing way to say: "if you make money, compile your own binaries or pay us". Have a feeling the confusion and FUD it causes will create more harm than good unfortunately.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#114

Post by samrus »

LtWorf wrote: post #100
hbn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a "free if you're not generating revenue" model which is similar to JetBrains' recent "free for non-commercial use" releases of their IDEs, and I believe Docker does something like that too. And famously WinRar which will nag you to upgrade every time you open it but doesn't actually force you to buy it, but expect enterprises will if they don't want to risk lawsuits.

But why call it open source if it's no longer open source?

They dont charge for the source. They charge for paying more attention to your issues, and for compiling the code for you. If you compile it yourself and do some of the work to resolve the issues (planning or an outright PR) then you wont pay anything

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#115

Post by samrus »

majkinetor wrote: post #38
trjordan wrote: post #31

I love the innovation. The basic idea here appears to be: - Nobody wants this to be closed source. The code is freely available, and you may do with it as you want. The marginal cost to distribute the code is 0, after all. - The maintainers, as people, don't want to do charity work for companies. Their time is limited, and if they're going to support revenue-generating activities, they want a cut of the revenue. So e…

Anybody should be able pay up for the feature/support and it should be closed source until some threshold. That could take years or months depending on the interest/income. Eventually it will become open source. Otherwise, everybody will wait for someone to pay for the thing they want. Obviously this needs to be worked up a bit so not to maintain N forks but it can work.

I think thays fine. Thats within the spirit of FOSS. The issue has always been companies demanding fixes because it affects their users, and those companies cant afford to wait. So now they can pay to have the devs spend a bit more time to get their fix out. This works

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#116

Post by monocularvision »

thayne wrote: post #98
derefr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or if you open issues I feel like there should be an exception carved out to this policy, if the submitter of an issue is offering to create (or, as a corporation, dedicate their own engineers' time to creating) a PR to resolve the problem the issue describes. As a maintainer of a few OSS projects myself, I see my fair share of "choosing beggars" (i.e. people who don't mentally model others' motivations, and so use…

It's complicated. Reviewing a PR takes time and effort, and the maintainer may not want to do that for a feature that mainly benefits a company that isn't paying the maintenance fee. OTOH, as a maintainer, if a company finds a bug that would impact a lot of users, I would want them to report it, regardless of their payment status. But saying something like "Issues from paying customers/donors have higher priority" is…

I guess the point is if someone discovers a bug and opens a PR to fix it, then that person is, in a way, also a maintainer. They are “paying” for the maintanence of the project in time and effort.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#117

Post by x0x0 »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #76
TrueDuality wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start-ups and smaller companies that are extremely cash strapped are willing to take an opensource project, compile it themselves, turn it into deployment artifacts and manage that whole lifecycle. There is a threshold where paying someone to manage and certify the lifecycle of tools is more valuable than keeping it in house. This is pushing those enterprise customers that are just using and updating binary releases…

I agree with your point. In the name of promoting basic numeracy: """ Sign up for GitHub Sponsorship and create the tiers: Small organization ( 100 people): $60/mo """ You are beyond 'cash strapped' if $10/month for something as fundamental as this breaks the bank. The fully loaded cost of a single US software developer is already above $100/hour.

The only object is that monthly fees are super annoying. I'd much prefer an annual :shrug:

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#118

Post by constantcrying »

This is absurd. Seriously, read the EULA: https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix/blob/main/OSMFEULA.txt

This fee only governs the binaries compiled directly by the company. You can "circumvent" this license by building the software yourself, or having someone else build the software.

Right now I can click the download button on their github build, what then? They do not even link to to the EULA there, yet the EULA stipulates that this exchange requires me to pay money to them. The github statement stipulates that paying money requires me to first pay the maintenance fee, which is not part of the EULA, why? What is the point.

Here is a tip: If you want to make money, make it easy to give you money. Right now any legitimate company has to fear walking into legal troubles with this. Can you imagine how the discussion with accounting is going to go?

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#119

Post by jackdawipper »

trjordan wrote: post #31

I love the innovation. The basic idea here appears to be: - Nobody wants this to be closed source. The code is freely available, and you may do with it as you want. The marginal cost to distribute the code is 0, after all. - The maintainers, as people, don't want to do charity work for companies. Their time is limited, and if they're going to support revenue-generating activities, they want a cut of the revenue. So e…

pull back the layers. This is the usual masking of the facts. A rose by any other name... is after money.

FOSS is destroyed the moment that is introduced to the mix. Its like political sells - begin pushing a small degree, they wont notice the temperature as it rises over time until its closed source and corporate.

This is how you kill off FOSS, or your project. "corporate creep" I call it.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#120

Post by constantcrying »

trjordan wrote: post #31

I love the innovation. The basic idea here appears to be: - Nobody wants this to be closed source. The code is freely available, and you may do with it as you want. The marginal cost to distribute the code is 0, after all. - The maintainers, as people, don't want to do charity work for companies. Their time is limited, and if they're going to support revenue-generating activities, they want a cut of the revenue. So e…

They totally have the wrong approach. The EULA is completely bizarre and the implementation even worse.

What they should have done is saying "If you aren't a sponsor we do not care about your issues." Right now clicking the download button is a violation of their EULA, which is probably something you want to avoid when trying to get companies to give you money.

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