Really the best way to go about this is a mixed license. If you want commercial users to pay then require them to pay.
Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
21–30 of 113 posts
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#22Overall this is a good idea but with too many options to turn ugly fast. You need to carefully examine the situation: For instance at an old job my contract contained the following sentence: "all intellectual property and code, developed during or outside working hours, regardless of it's nature or purpose belongs to {COMPANY_NAME}". Somehow if my employer pays me extra for working on personal(albeit open source) pro…
That's just flat out unenforceable in California.
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#23Overall this is a good idea but with too many options to turn ugly fast. You need to carefully examine the situation: For instance at an old job my contract contained the following sentence: "all intellectual property and code, developed during or outside working hours, regardless of it's nature or purpose belongs to {COMPANY_NAME}". Somehow if my employer pays me extra for working on personal(albeit open source) pro…
That's a good point, and also, what a horrendous thing to have in your contract. I wonder if it's even legal for them to claim ownership of unrelated code done outside work hours.
I actually check the laws in a US State before moving there just to make sure it this type of intellectual property grab is not allowed. By rights any jurisdiction that allows this should have zero people producing intellectual property, but there's so much friction in moving elsewhere for most people that companies can push it and get away with it.
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#24Some businesses are incredibly dependent on open source components that can stop being maintained at any time.
Having in-house contributors spend company time on these dependencies alleviates the issue.
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#25I wish more open source projects had an "enterprise" plan with a few inconsequential features and maybe priority support - just enough to justify a line item on a tech org's budget.
How do you provide these pay-only features on an open source project?
And who is doing the support?
It sounds like you are envisioning something like Red Hat.
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#26I think this is good will for sure, and 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software, but the real problem with (most) FOSS is the lack of clear structure or organization in terms of payment. Not only who gets paid, but also how much to pay, how to quantity roles and work, spending if necessary, etc. That’s the real problem/opportunity for someone like Gratipay.
I think a possible solution may be paying not in terms of money.
For a free and open source project, the ultimate goal IMO is growth and usability, to fulfill the reason why the software itself exists, and that can be done by donating that money in the shape of a hiring dedicated to work on the software. Some companies already do this, and i don't see why the practice couldn't be more established as a way to ensure a quid pro quo with the community.
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#27Overall this is a good idea but with too many options to turn ugly fast. You need to carefully examine the situation: For instance at an old job my contract contained the following sentence: "all intellectual property and code, developed during or outside working hours, regardless of it's nature or purpose belongs to {COMPANY_NAME}". Somehow if my employer pays me extra for working on personal(albeit open source) pro…
That's just flat out unenforceable in California.
And yet it's still in a contract. Just because it's unenforcable doesn't mean you're not going to have a shit time dragging your employer to court over it.
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#28I think this is good will for sure, and 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software, but the real problem with (most) FOSS is the lack of clear structure or organization in terms of payment. Not only who gets paid, but also how much to pay, how to quantity roles and work, spending if necessary, etc. That’s the real problem/opportunity for someone like Gratipay.
I think a possible solution may be paying not in terms of money. For a free and open source project, the ultimate goal IMO is growth and usability, to fulfill the reason why the software itself exists, and that can be done by donating that money in the shape of a hiring dedicated to work on the software. Some companies already do this, and i don't see why the practice couldn't be more established as a way to ensure a…
That would only work for the largest companies hiring for the largest FOSS projects, without some sort of independent administration.
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#29I think this is good will for sure, and 2k is a rounding error to the cost of most enterprise software, but the real problem with (most) FOSS is the lack of clear structure or organization in terms of payment. Not only who gets paid, but also how much to pay, how to quantity roles and work, spending if necessary, etc. That’s the real problem/opportunity for someone like Gratipay.
perhaps this is something DAOs can fix.
Re: Companies should probably pay $2k per person for open source (2017)
#30We should not be building our infrastructure to rely on the incidental beneficence of the oligarchy. We should build tools for decentralized permissionless economic coordination. Quadratic funding as used in Gitcoin and others is promising.