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Open Source Maintenance Fee

github.com

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Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#221

Post by robmensching »

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 100% agree with you, and I applaud your efforts.

However, my experience is that procurement teams will not pay unless they are required to. Once they are required to, that's what they do. Charity, good will, and responsible citizenship are not arguments to move a procurement team.

But legal... the legal team is very effective at moving the procurement team.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#222

Post by robmensching »

auggierose wrote: post #195

So how does this play out for large companies? Let's say Alphabet, they pay $60 once per month, no many how many of their developers use the product? Probably large companies should introduce some sort of registry to keep track of this.

This is something companies track. Honestly, tracking payments is one of the most important tasks for the procurement teams in a company. They have tools and if the OSMF becomes common, it'll be standard practices for them too.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#223

Post by robmensching »

pabs3 wrote: post #185
robmensching wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen some other projects show interest and a few have adopted it. I've not checked in with any of them. The Open Source Maintenance Fee is pretty new, and I've not been promoting it for use by other Open Source projects (yet) because I want to resolve any "OSMF bugs" using my project (WiX Toolset). After the bugs are worked out, then I'll recommend it more widely and we'll see if it catches on then. I've had a…

Is the OSMF EULA compatible with the GNU GPL family of licenses?

It should be. The goal was to make it compatible with all OSS and FOSS licenses.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#224

Post by robmensching »

foxglacier wrote: post #182

I've always treated WiX as one of those "finished" projects that never needs updating. I'm still using some old version from 10-20 years ago. What could they possibly be still changing? Didn't it just work already?

Well, we've had a few CVEs to work around Windows vulnerabilities, and one of our own making. :( We've also improved the integration with modern Windows build systems. Now adding some features to the language to make it easier to use for simpler installation packages (still more work to do).

In this day and age, it's very hard for software to sit idle.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#225

Post by robmensching »

codedokode wrote: post #174

Open source software used to be an implementation of the principles of communism - everyone contributes whatever they can and uses whatever they need, and money is not necessary anymore. It seems that now people are starting to turn to a capitalism?

> everyone contributes whatever they can and uses whatever they need

Yeah, Open Source projects don't work like that in reality. It's far more consumers take what they want and demand what is missing.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#226

Post by robmensching »

constantcrying wrote: post #118

This is absurd. Seriously, read the EULA: https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix/blob/main/OSMFEULA.txt This fee only governs the binaries compiled directly by the company. You can "circumvent" this license by building the software yourself, or having someone else build the software. Right now I can click the download button on their github build, what then? They do not even link to to the EULA there, yet the EULA stipula…

So far the only hard conversations with accounting are how to pay by invoice (since GitHub Sponsors invoice handling is a bit wonky). Those that pay by credit card have pretty universally been, "Oh, this is easy. Done."

> You can "circumvent" this license by building the software yourself, or having someone else build the software.

Correct. By design. The software is Open Source. That's the whole point.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#227

Post by robmensching »

elsjaako wrote: post #214
thayne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated. Reviewing a PR takes time and effort, and the maintainer may not want to do that for a feature that mainly benefits a company that isn't paying the maintenance fee. OTOH, as a maintainer, if a company finds a bug that would impact a lot of users, I would want them to report it, regardless of their payment status. But saying something like "Issues from paying customers/donors have higher priority" is…

I think this is one of those issues that only exists in theory, not in practice. If a company reports a bug in a clear and helpful way, it's probably going to get looked at anyway. Also, if a company cares enough about Wix to bother finding and documenting a bug, they should be willing to pay $60 for the software. So this is only a problem in the case where a company finds a bug, decides to report it, refuses to pay…

You sound like a very reasonable person. :)

Many arguments here are extremes with the assumption that everything is a hard lines that cannot be crossed. That's not generally how the real world works (there are some hard lines in the world) and the parties involved can communicate and do communicate.

Overall, the OSMF is working very well right now. There are still a couple of wrinkles to iron out (like invoicing). It's also early. :)

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#228

Post by threemux »

robmensching wrote: post #218
threemux wrote: post #208

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 enterp…

This hasn't been the case as of yet. We've had many large companies just pay the sponsorship. Honestly, the problem is not the EULA, it's the need for more flexibility in invoicing than GitHub Sponsors provides today. To say it another way, legal is cool with it, the challenge now is making it easy for procurement.

Honest question: how would you know if companies stopped using the product as a result of this change? Presumably the only ones you'd hear from are ones that managed to get through the process far enough to complain about procurement (which is definitely another issue, pretty sure GitHub Sponsors doesn't do net 60...)

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#229

Post by derefr »

elsjaako wrote: post #214
thayne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated. Reviewing a PR takes time and effort, and the maintainer may not want to do that for a feature that mainly benefits a company that isn't paying the maintenance fee. OTOH, as a maintainer, if a company finds a bug that would impact a lot of users, I would want them to report it, regardless of their payment status. But saying something like "Issues from paying customers/donors have higher priority" is…

I think this is one of those issues that only exists in theory, not in practice. If a company reports a bug in a clear and helpful way, it's probably going to get looked at anyway. Also, if a company cares enough about Wix to bother finding and documenting a bug, they should be willing to pay $60 for the software. So this is only a problem in the case where a company finds a bug, decides to report it, refuses to pay…

Careful with your wording, as I think you're slipping the goalposts a bit: the thing this "Open Source Maintenance Fee" is pushing back against here wasn't specifically bug reports. It was issues — a more general category, which, besides bugs, also contains feature requests. (And that, I think, is where this problem does exist "in practice.")

As you say, I don't think anyone's going to demand money to look into an (easily-replicated) bug.

A bug is, by definition, a blemish in your code quality with real-world implications; something that, even if affects no one, still feels slightly embarrassing/pride-stinging to have hanging around in your codebase. (And if the bug does affect even just one person, then it can also feel like your software is like a child or pet of yours who has accidentally done something bad to that person out of ignorance. You feel the need to re-educate your software to do better.)

In either case, you'll likely accept anything that's truly a bug into your issue tracker (rather than closing it as a WONTFIX) regardless of who submitted it, or how it got there. You might keep deprioritizing it once it's in there, but you won't close it.

But a feature request — no matter how obvious it is, or how many people want it — is different. The maintainers of a piece of code decide the direction the code evolves in; and if they never want to support some feature, that's their perogative.

Maybe you just hate the feature! Maybe it'd force the code into a less-elegant architecture! Maybe the code exists entirely to scratch your own itch, and you're not going to implement anything that isn't part of your own workflow! Doesn't really matter in the end.

It's these cases, I think, where putting money on the table would obviously sway that kind of decision. "Of all the directions you could freely choose to evolve the code... how about a little incentive to choose this one?"

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#230

Post by jackdawipper »

robmensching wrote: post #143
jackdawipper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pull back the layers. This is the usual masking of the facts. A rose by any other name... is after money. FOSS is destroyed the moment that is introduced to the mix. Its like political sells - begin pushing a small degree, they wont notice the temperature as it rises over time until its closed source and corporate. This is how you kill off FOSS, or your project. "corporate creep" I call it.

My experience is that FOSS is being destroyed by entitled consumers. Note: I'm not saying you're an entitled consumer, but I interviewed many maintainers of successful Open Source projects. The number one issue for all of them was entitled consumers.

Yea that is actually more a symptom of post-war generations, so isnt exclusive to OSS. Ask any employer how its going with their new young staff members.

but what I see causing far more problems in the OSS community is greedy patreon gatewallers who poach all they can from the devs, then put it behind a patreon wall and charge money for it. Them and corporate swooping in are a bigger problem than whining on a github issues board.

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