GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

Post by shimman » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 11:19 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #84

bsnnkv wrote: post #82

Not a great take. Corporations who use and benefit from software should be made to pay for their use of that software, but they don't want to, which is why they'll happily spend money promoting the use of corporate-friendly and maximally exploitable open source licensing among the passionate individuals who maintain the lions share of their dependency tree. https://lgug2z.com/articles/on-evils-in-software-licensing/

If you don't want to give your software away for free, don't give your software away for free. When they decide it is in their best interest to pay for it they will, i.e. support, bug fixes, changes. If you make open source software that just works they are unlikely to start writing checks nor should there be any expectation that they do that.

Post by tehjoker » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 11:27 PM UTC

joe_mamba wrote: post #179

tehjoker wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK music culture of the 1960s was in large part due to the "dole" or cash payments to poor people.

I don't think that's the only reason since the dole exists today too and there's not as much good music coming out. Jazz and other music genres in the US came without government welfare, they came from struggle and oppression. Motivated artists will still work part time to fund their dream, they don't necessarily wait for welfare to start making art. IF you were to give a lot of people free money today, will you get…

Post by joe_mamba » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 11:32 PM UTC

tehjoker wrote: post #183

joe_mamba wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the only reason since the dole exists today too and there's not as much good music coming out. Jazz and other music genres in the US came without government welfare, they came from struggle and oppression. Motivated artists will still work part time to fund their dream, they don't necessarily wait for welfare to start making art. IF you were to give a lot of people free money today, will you get…

What do you think those policies might look like? It's true that we have more screen based entertainment options today. We also have a very different music distribution system that is likely influencing things substantially. In the 1960s, I imagine getting on the radio was what it took to launch a career, now it's matching the algorithm on spotify.

Post by eddd-ddde » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 11:38 PM UTC

securesaml wrote: post #35

Dilettante_ wrote: post #10

>it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing it for their own enjoyments Yes it absolutely is. That is the exact social contract people 100% willingly enter by releasing something as Free and Open Source. They do give it as a gift, in exchange for maybe the tiny bit of niche recognition that comes with it, and often times out of simple g…

The problem is more so maintenance. The expectation of FOSS is that the users and maintainer work together to resolve bug fixes/features/security issues. However many companies will dump these issues to the maintainer and take it for granted when they are resolved. It's not a sustainable model, and will lead to burnout/unmaintained libraries. If the companies don't have the engineering resources/specialization to com…

Post by spullara » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 11:44 PM UTC

shimman wrote: post #181

spullara wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want to give your software away for free, don't give your software away for free. When they decide it is in their best interest to pay for it they will, i.e. support, bug fixes, changes. If you make open source software that just works they are unlikely to start writing checks nor should there be any expectation that they do that.

We can make similar arguments for the corporations: if you want to sell your software in the US market, you need to pay for a VAT for digital services that fund national endowments giving grants to individual US developers that apply to the program. Corporations should start paying their fair share, they've scammed society enough.