How to pay your rent with your open source project
1–10 of 171 posts
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#2What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development. I personally believe that could also work for other distribution channels, such as a private APT repository, or equivalent to other platforms.
People could still build by themselves from sources if that's what they want, and if you want convenience you buy the software. Has that been tested? I personally think that could even work for CLI tools if a great distribution channel exists (that's something I have in mind since a while now, see this ask HN from 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22178949).
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#3TL;DR: start a business that sells a (possibly premium) hosted version of the project, sells training/support for the project or try to extract sponsoring from your users.
It's less a "pay your rent with your open source project" article (as the title suggests) than a "start a business that happens to produce open source software" article. Also anyone with one or two smallish libraries need not apply, this is about projects with person-years of effort invested in them.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#4I use Plausible and switched immediately after the launch from GA. I am very satisfied except that it seems that I cannot share sites with other people, if we are more than 1 that manage it.
I hope they'll fix that!
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#5What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development. I personally believe that could also work for other distribution channels, such as a private APT repository, or equivalent to other platforms. People could still build by themselves from sources if that's what they want, and if you want convenience you buy th…
One problem I see is that for more tech-savy Linux users, which are the people most CLI software is targeted at, convenience means simply installing something via their distributions package manager. I am not interested in downloading your precompiled static binary or setting up your private repository. I want to run `foo install bar` and get on with my work.
On the other hand there are some more mainstream optionally paid for (via Steam/Windows Store) GUI tools that I can freely download using my package manager, presumably because the main target audience actually prefers the paid distribution channels.
I think the GUI/CLI app markets could be more different than you think.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#6Good article, but I thought webpack is founded by The OpenJS Foundation these days, who are making an astonishing job of identifying and sustaining core web packages. Unfortunately, they also picked controversial software like AMP (in exchange for contributions by Google I guess) to make it appear a grassroots or "legitimate" effort. 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. Apart from the licensing situation, F/OSS developers serious about generating an income might also need to work on integration and polish; at least it's what the success of stuff like Docker suggests, which, as super-practical as it is, in a way is benefitting from "too much" F/OSS, too many Linux distros, either too much or not enough NIH in F/OSS, F/OSS failing to directly engage with their user base, and/or developers not personally promoting their software such that the whole thing is falling prey to large corporations giving the illusion of order and maintenance, when the reality is that the initial development of any package of significant depth and its maintenance can only be provided by individual developers or small teams in the end.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#7What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development. I personally believe that could also work for other distribution channels, such as a private APT repository, or equivalent to other platforms. People could still build by themselves from sources if that's what they want, and if you want convenience you buy th…
I guess the problem is that once there is a paid CLI tool, some other dev will make a clone for his CV / GitHub where even the compiled binaries are free. Now people have to choose between the OG tool and maybe pay for it or use the mostly feature complete (or feature complete for a specific use case) free version.
I would even go as far as the community will continuously switch to the free tool until the free tool has enough clout / traction to actually supersede or replace the OG tool.
Theory: At this point, tutorials which are consumed by the beginners in the field will select the free tool (because it has a bigger target audience, so better SEO), which makes this whole thing a generational thing? „Oh in the early days we had to pay for this, now we use XY which is newer and shinier and even free, thus better“
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#8What about charging for build and distribution? Krita does something like this for their Steam and Windows Store versions, that helps finance their development. I personally believe that could also work for other distribution channels, such as a private APT repository, or equivalent to other platforms. People could still build by themselves from sources if that's what they want, and if you want convenience you buy th…
I guess the problem is that once there is a paid CLI tool, some other dev will make a clone for his CV / GitHub where even the compiled binaries are free. Now people have to choose between the OG tool and maybe pay for it or use the mostly feature complete (or feature complete for a specific use case) free version. I would even go as far as the community will continuously switch to the free tool until the free tool h…
Krita is free to download, so it doesn't really apply.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#9TL;DR: start a business that sells a (possibly premium) hosted version of the project, sells training/support for the project or try to extract sponsoring from your users. It's less a "pay your rent with your open source project" article (as the title suggests) than a "start a business that happens to produce open source software" article. Also anyone with one or two smallish libraries need not apply, this is about p…
Yes I thought the same. They did not make money with the open source project, instead created a product and sold that.
Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project
#10In 2019 someone from Elastic also tried to highlight the issue and various models at the market right now in a talk https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2019-2463-open_source_as_a_bus...
My main take away was "it's complicated".
Sad story is that in many cases the biz paying for interesting contributions is questionable (Googel, Facebook et al).