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Open Source Maintenance Fee

github.com

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Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#201

Post by csomar »

opticfluorine wrote: post #26

I came across this a few months ago when I was evaluating open source installer options for my own open source project. I have no issue with charging for binaries while the source is available under an OSI license, but this from the README rubbed me the wrong way: "To ensure the long-term sustainability of this project, use of the WiX Toolset requires an Open Source Maintenance Fee. While the source code is freely av…

If you read the comments on the GitHub issue, the guys seems more than reasonable. My understanding is that they want you pay if you are making money. My guess if you are just a one-person show with a just-started product, they probably won't care much.

Here is their sponsorship page: https://github.com/sponsors/wixtoolset

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#202

Post by sokoloff »

bayindirh wrote: post #193
orochimaaru wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The sponsorship seems to introduce a business model around what is FOSS, then it’s not FOSS anymore. No major F/OSS license (MIT, (A)GPL, Apache) talks about money. You can sell the software, sell the support, and sell the source code (GPL requires bundling code with the software, not putting it everywhere). When it comes to Free and Open Source Software, everybody talks about sustainability rightfully, and many pe…

> Even curl has a "bulletproof" version for enterprises which you can't download without paying.

What is the curl bulletproof version? I only see the free open-source license version: https://curl.se/docs/copyright.html

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#203

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

robmensching wrote: post #156
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just a couple of minutes setting up a Github action on a fork, and you're good to go.

Yep, and now you have about half a million lines of code* to maintain as well. Have fun with it!* * Last count the WiX Toolset had 589,719 loc but 444,936 if you skip comments and whitespace. * This is the point, maintaining successful (and often non-trivial) projects requires a good bit of work.

You can always just merge in the latest changes from the upstream project with a click or too. No need to maintain it on your own.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#204

Post by huem0n »

agent327 wrote: post #197

I feel what we need is not this, but rather a cultural change among the corporate consumers of open source. I'm arguing for this at my employer: that we set up a fund to support open source libraries that we rely on for our products, with a regular payout for products that we are using. So far it isn't easy going: what reason is there for paying developers who already give us their work for free? Who do we even pay,…

I think this could help lead to the corporate change you're hoping for.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#205

Post by mytailorisrich »

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…

This strikes me as a problem with the widespread dogma that it has to be open source (OSI approved license). It doesn't.

If you want commercial users to pay then pick a license that makes it so, it can still be source available and free (as in freedom and/or cost) to non-commercial users.

> The maintainers are now free to respond to complaints with "you need to pay us for us to care."

If you are a maintainer of an open source project you don't have to care about complaint and you can absolutely say that you need to charge for your work in reply to requests. In fact that has always happened.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#206

Post by bayindirh »

sokoloff wrote: post #202
bayindirh wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sponsorship seems to introduce a business model around what is FOSS, then it’s not FOSS anymore. No major F/OSS license (MIT, (A)GPL, Apache) talks about money. You can sell the software, sell the support, and sell the source code (GPL requires bundling code with the software, not putting it everywhere). When it comes to Free and Open Source Software, everybody talks about sustainability rightfully, and many pe…

> Even curl has a "bulletproof" version for enterprises which you can't download without paying. What is the curl bulletproof version? I only see the free open-source license version: https://curl.se/docs/copyright.html

It's here: https://rock-solid.curl.dev/

It's a different, official curl version with commercial support from curl team themselves.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#207

Post by entuno »

derefr wrote: post #78
nine_k wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT, the fee applies if you're using binary releases, or if you open issues, and are also generating revenue from the project. Apparently you can grab the sources and build the binaries yourself (as per the OSS license), never ask for support (by reporting issues), and still have to pay nothing, even in a commercial setting. It looks a bit similar to the RedHat model: they release open-source software (Linux kerne…

> or if you open issues I feel like there should be an exception carved out to this policy, if the submitter of an issue is offering to create (or, as a corporation, dedicate their own engineers' time to creating) a PR to resolve the problem the issue describes. As a maintainer of a few OSS projects myself, I see my fair share of "choosing beggars" (i.e. people who don't mentally model others' motivations, and so use…

And also an exception for reporting security-related issues. Because if you try and charge people money to responsibly report security vulnerabilities, then they'll just end up taking the full disclosure approach, which is probably not what you want.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#208

Post by threemux »

Hah - Legal at my company wouldn't respond to this by forcing us to pay. They'd take one look at that bizarre EULA and tell us to stop using the product entirely. I suspect this is what will happen in most cases.

Perhaps that's fine in the eyes of the maintainers! But I say this every time someone says they want to restrict commercial use while still being Open Source: just slap AGPL on it. It's radioactive to enterprises; I've never worked anywhere that allowed us to use AGPL code in commercial products. Then, charge for a commercial license.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#209

Post by kube-system »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #91

>While the source code is freely available under the terms of the LICENSE, all other aspects of the project--including opening or commenting on issues, participating in discussions and downloading releases--require adherence to the Maintenance Fee. Surprised downloading releases is in there, I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure this goes against it's own license on the source code, specifically: >each contributor gra…

The license snippet you quoted means that they have given YOU the right to copy, change (or compile), and redistribute, distribute anything you've created from it. Nothing about that implies contributors are required to give you binaries.

This isn't all that uncommon -- usually open source licenses only apply to the source.

> comically easy to bypass and literally forces someone to automate a github mirror that builds new releases. Your essentially enforcing the existence of a fork. They even provide the github actions necessary to do so in their repo already...

Yeah, cloning and building software is something that is straightforward for software developers to do. Traditionally people would clone software to their own machine, but you can use GitHub or whatever tools you want to work with the source. I'm not sure if I would call this a "bypass" -- this is the typical way FOSS software has always worked, and it's part of the reason why FOSS is popular :)

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#210

Post by [deleted] »

kube-system wrote: post #209
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #91

>While the source code is freely available under the terms of the LICENSE, all other aspects of the project--including opening or commenting on issues, participating in discussions and downloading releases--require adherence to the Maintenance Fee. Surprised downloading releases is in there, I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure this goes against it's own license on the source code, specifically: >each contributor gra…

The license snippet you quoted means that they have given YOU the right to copy, change (or compile), and redistribute, distribute anything you've created from it. Nothing about that implies contributors are required to give you binaries. This isn't all that uncommon -- usually open source licenses only apply to the source. > comically easy to bypass and literally forces someone to automate a github mirror that build…

[deleted]
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