Open Source Maintenance Fee • Hacker News Board

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#171

Post by robmensching » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 3:49 AM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #163

robmensching wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen some other projects show interest and a few have adopted it. I've not checked in with any of them. The Open Source Maintenance Fee is pretty new, and I've not been promoting it for use by other Open Source projects (yet) because I want to resolve any "OSMF bugs" using my project (WiX Toolset). After the bugs are worked out, then I'll recommend it more widely and we'll see if it catches on then. I've had a…

Some licenses might allow you to distribute binaries with extra restrictions, but the one you chose almost certainly doesn't. >For any file you distribute that contains code from the software (in source code or binary format), you must provide recipients the source code to that file along with a copy of this license, which license will govern that file. So your nuget package and github release would be a binary distr…

> Some licenses might allow you to distribute binaries with extra restrictions, but the one you chose almost certainly doesn't

The OSMF EULA has been through a few lawyers now. If you're a lawyer, we're happy to have the discussion on the Open Source Maintenance Fee's Discussion forum.

> So your nuget package and github release would be a binary distribution, what license applies?

If I understand your question correctly, the EULA applies to the binary distribution.

> Your license essentially explicitly disallows you from doing what your trying to do.

No. The source code is available, and there are no restrictions placed on your use of the source code.

> This also goes horribly against the spirit of open source software,

I disagree, but the OSI doesn't say much about it specifically. The FSF, however, explicitly calls out the idea of paying a fee for the convenience of acquiring the software. This is straight in line with the FSF.

> if every small package on a Linux distro did this it'd cost tens of thousands at least to even launch the OS

No, because you only pay the Maintenance Fee for the software you directly depend upon. And if you don't use the Open Source project to make money, you don't pay anything. These catastrophic scenarios you are drawing up are not the reality.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#172

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 5:00 AM UTC

lars_francke wrote: post #5

Not commenting on the substance but on the https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/ homepage itself. It only works in dark mode and is unreadable in light mode. The repo doesn't allow opening issues. Maybe the author reads here... (long shot)

[deleted]

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#173

Post by kindkang2024 » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 5:04 AM UTC

Open-source projects often function like a system of charity and honor. The honor goes to the contributors, while the charitable benefits flow to those who can use it to generate revenue. This model works well for both parties and indirectly benefits humanity.

However, I personally believe—perhaps naively—that the charity could be directed toward all humans in a more direct and obvious way. For example, when a project is released under a license, businesses that use it to make money would donate a small percentage of their profits—say, 1%—to a global fund: the "Decentralized Universal Kindness Income" (DUKI /dju:ki/). The business behind the main contributors would be exempt from this donation, or could choose a reduced percentage. This gives them an advantage when big companies use their project to compete against them (the reason why Redis changed its license).

The benefits are clear. Contributors would receive greater global recognition for their efforts—especially from those outside the tech industry—while businesses that donate would gain access to a wealth of open-source resources (if enough high-quality DUKI-licensed projects exist), also earning respect as a marketing strategy. They would likely gain a competitive advantage compared to those who do not.

I've called this concept the “DUKI License.” At its heart, it’s the MIT License with one simple addition: a profit-sharing requirement. Unfortunately, I don’t have the power to market it, and still unsure how it would be received by the very people who steer the open-source world—the project founders and core maintainers

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#174

Post by codedokode » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 5:31 AM UTC

Open source software used to be an implementation of the principles of communism - everyone contributes whatever they can and uses whatever they need, and money is not necessary anymore. It seems that now people are starting to turn to a capitalism?

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#175

Post by codedokode » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 5:37 AM UTC

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 fully loaded cost of a single US software developer is already above $100/hour.

To be pedantic, it can be $0 if the developer is you yourself, or your friends, wives, husbands and other relatives.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#176

Post by codedokode » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 5:49 AM UTC

rock_artist wrote: post #20

I've used WiX for a specific project in my work when I've needed MSI. TBH, enforcing maintenance fee for anyone who makes revenue feels unfair. There are other open-source libraries that has dual-license with some kind of GPL variant and a commercial license. but there's at least some threshold. Imagine indie developer or someone who wants to try and create something but without much revenue (eg 1k / year). so 10% of…

> so 10% of your revenue goes to the installer of your product...

In this case you can install your product yourself.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#177

Post by codedokode » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 5:54 AM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #47

optymizer wrote: post #16

Honestly, open source software should come with a price. I think the "starving artist" approach is detrimental long-term. Sure, there is great value in having a free (in both senses) operating system, but at the same time the year of Linux desktop is a running joke. To be blunt, money motivates people to do the work they otherwise would not do. It's soul crushing to run the 400th manual test. It's not sexy to work on…

Canonical and Lenovo both make lots of money already. Sucks that Lenovo doesn't think supporting Linux on your laptop is important.

I was under impression that Lenovo laptops actually work pretty good with Linux.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#178

Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 5:58 AM UTC

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…

> No company can force you to accept a PR or work on it.

> FOSS developers often get stressed about this

> you have zero obligation to fix

I agree with you but would like to carve out an exception to the rule: folks who condescendingly reply with "PRs welcome" to people instead of just saying "no, I won't be working on this because [reason]".

Should someone who was told that actually show up later with the code in hand, I'd say they are very much owed respect and serious consideration at the very least. I'll fall just short of saying their code should be merged in by default. This is a completely avoidable moral responsibility, one that maintainers often inadvertently bring upon themselves by daring others to do their work for them.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#179

Post by vpq » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 6:17 AM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #161

robmensching wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true, but that isn't what happened (at least, not yet). Most companies found the fee reasonable and worth it to have us maintain the project and not have to fork it.

>Most companies found the fee reasonable and worth it to have us maintain the project and not have to fork it. You must have incredibly good analytics to know exactly what companies are using your nuget package. Did you embed a phone home?

WiX usage is easy to check, just open an installer with Orca, and you'll see a bunch of WiX artifacts.

Checking whether it's their own compile or official binaries is also simple if they use an extension like the official Util one, which many do: It embeds a binary that implements the custom action, which is signed by FireGiant.

As for turning this into analytics / statistics, I imagine you could just download every MSI from winget and just check if they contain a FireGiant-signed extension dll.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#180

Post by acoustics » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 6:31 AM UTC

mirsadm wrote: post #111

20k wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big tech companies use open-source software primarily because it is free and unencumbered.

If an author uses a license that makes big tech pay, they will not pay. They will just not use the software. We already see a similar dynamic with AGPL.

It's easy to fall into a trap of thinking "I have several big companies using this software. If I had charged a reasonable license fee, I'd be making $100k/yr on this project." But, of course, if the project has started with this license, it never would have gotten to the point where several big companies were using it.

This is why we very rarely see successful GitHub projects that have asked for payment from the beginning. If a maintainer wants to make money on a GitHub project, the far more common path is: 1) release the software with a free and unencumbered license; 2) wait for people to adopt your software because it's free; and finally 3) once people have adopted your software because it's free, then ask them to start paying you.

In fact, in the early stages of an open source project, if someone opened an issue that said "hey do you want to set a norm of commercial users paying to use your software?" it would be rational to say no! You don't want to scare off big tech engineers. Better to wait until they're already using the software.