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How to pay your rent with your open source project

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

#161

Post by jcelerier »

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,

I actually do. If I write a library, I definitely don't want people to put a web UI on top of it and get away without any obligations, like so many people do for e.g. website that are just ffmpeg frontends.

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

#162

Post by Milank »

soamv wrote: post #119
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 of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Not to pick on you personally, but this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money. But that's kinda true for my non-OSS engineering work, too…

I agree.

We don't have "official data", this was just my opinion, based on my personal experience. I think most of the people start OSS for the reasons I mentioned, but what happens later depends on many things - success of the project, luck, type of personality of the owner, crossing paths, right place at right time, etc.

"Pure engineer" for me is someone who just wants to code, to solve a problem, and doesn't care a lot about other stuff. Even processes to organise the team (SCRUM meetings for example) are boring, waste of time. Not to mention other stuff. But that same person can, of course, change over time and go searching for other things. Me being an example - a significant part of my career I was like that, with a vision of being a technical lead or architect in the future. Until one day I realised I'm not so hyped about that anymore, that now other things motivate me. This document, 10 years ago, would be mostly new information for me. Probably not so interesting. Now it's old news for me, but it's as a "pure engineer's" good starting point, something to get him in the right direction if he wants to expand his competence toward monetising his OSS.

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

#163

Post by dwild »

soamv wrote: post #119
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 of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Not to pick on you personally, but this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money. But that's kinda true for my non-OSS engineering work, too…

> It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money.

So you believe "most people" do it for the money?

There's so little money into OSS and yet so many OSS contributors, I can't see how most people could do it for money, even if they wanted to. You would have to include indirect gains to maybe become plausible that most do it for money, like support contracts, but then are they working on the OSS project to get contracts or are they getting contracts to be able to works on the OSS project.

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

#164

Post by Milank »

pmoriarty wrote: post #104
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…

"those people are pure engineers, that don't know/are not interested in business, marketing, making a product out of their software, etc.. practically anything besides coding" Yeah, that's a serious problem, and one similar to ones that artists and musicians face. I've made a fair bit of art (paintings, drawings, sculptures) but except for one group exhibit in high school I've never bothered to exhibit it anywhere, s…

Wow, music, art, dev, you did quite a lot. Nice. I plan to try music (drums to be precise), but time..

Anyway, this has been a problem since forever. That's why all kinds of occupations like singer managers, sales, marketing etc. exist. It's all perfectly normal.

For you, it would be good to find someone compatible, someone to take care of presenting your work to the public while you can focus on creating.

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

#166

Post by benkaiser »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #115
victor106 wrote: post #84

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…

CKEditor ( https://ckeditor.com/ ) releases their product using the GPL license. Most large business avoid the GPL since they don't want to release their own code in accordance with the GPL. CKSource, the company that releases CKEditor, sells commercial licences to those companies, and will issue free licenses to GPL-incompatible open source projects. https://ckeditor.com/pricing/

Can confirm, a team I used to work on in Microsoft pays $$ to use CKEditor in their product.

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

#167

Post by shard »

dwild wrote: post #163
soamv wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Not to pick on you personally, but this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money. But that's kinda true for my non-OSS engineering work, too…

> It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money. So you believe "most people" do it for the money? There's so little money into OSS and yet so many OSS contributors, I can't see how most people could do it for money, even if they wanted to. You would have to include indirect gains to maybe become p…

It could also be in terms of showing open source community engagement to look attractive to employers, or to work on projects which are popular in corporate use, leading to being hired for that expertise.

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

#168

Post by amelius »

pmoriarty wrote: post #98
victor106 wrote: post #84

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…

Some other ideas: 1 - Charge for support. 2 - Put a Patreon and/or Paypal link prominently on the front page of the website for your product, and clearly and politely ask for financial support. Often people want to help out financially, but they don't see an easy and convenient way to do so. This is one way to let them know how they can. 3 - Consider running Kickstarter campaigns to add new features. See the successf…

> Often people want to help out financially, but they don't see an easy and convenient way to do so.

Except people who use your product (engineers) have one extra hurdle: they need an OK from the financial department, and I suppose that this hurdle is often quite big.

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

#169

Post by amelius »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #115
victor106 wrote: post #84

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…

CKEditor ( https://ckeditor.com/ ) releases their product using the GPL license. Most large business avoid the GPL since they don't want to release their own code in accordance with the GPL. CKSource, the company that releases CKEditor, sells commercial licences to those companies, and will issue free licenses to GPL-incompatible open source projects. https://ckeditor.com/pricing/

This seems to be against the spirit of the GPL, however.

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

#170

Post by amelius »

oh_sigh wrote: post #141
victor106 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will consider offering consulting support. I just wish there was an open source license that basically says "its free to use but if your company makes more than x billion of dollars in profit then you have to pay $x per month/year."

You could just write that term into a modified BSD license or some such. It wouldn't be Open Source at that point but it would get your point across. Enforcement would be difficult but you'd really only need to rely on the rule following behavior of a few big corps

Sounds like a good idea, theoretically, making those BigCorps pay an open-source tax :)

I wonder if that sort of discrimination is allowed though.

I also wonder if package bundlers like Ubuntu would consider to bundle the project with their distros, if it has such a license slapped on it.

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