31–40 of 171 posts
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Which in many ways looks deeply unapealing. The last thing I want to do is sell support or services. I'd much rather spend my time writing software that is easy to use and well documented.
Then, I guess, the only choice is Github Sponsors. And it doesn't seem to be a bad one[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23613719
What 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 optionall…
Personally I'm happy to see it. I keep thinking I'll ask my company to support ones we use, every time I run `npm install`, and I plan to do it soon.
What 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…
That's exactly what Aseprite (a pixel-art tool) does. I think it's great, I got it to build on Windows but eventually ended up buying it on Steam because it's so good.
Edit: Sources available, but not open source license as far as I understand the EULA. https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite
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> 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. the solution to "not even getting contri…
> almost all devs working on F/OSS ... a large fraction of OSS work these days is sponsored by corporations.
TL;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…
Oh come on, if it was possible to run a business model like that it would have been done. You would see multi-billion-dollar-valuation publicly traded companies like, say, Red Hat out there. If it was sensible you'd see people like RMS and the Free Software Foundation advocating for it.
New approaches are successful all the time.
What 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…
Of course Linux distros are still building and shipping it.
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That's exactly what Aseprite (a pixel-art tool) does. I think it's great, I got it to build on Windows but eventually ended up buying it on Steam because it's so good.
Wait, Aseprite is open source?! I didn't know that, it's an awesome program. Edit: Sources available, but not open source license as far as I understand the EULA. https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite
The license and FAQ are somewhat confusing as to if you need to pay for a license even if you compile from source.
This domain is blocked by my uBlock origin due to it being in "Peter Lowe's ad and tracking list"
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> 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. the solution to "not even getting contri…
The AGPL doesn't guarantee that you'll get contributions back. For the very few companies who are willing to touch AGPL code, they only need to make the changes available (e.g. a CD in the post is sufficient). Very few companies are willing to use it, because it creates an almost unassailable hurdle in lots of industries. It's also highly at risk at making a bunch of other projects AGPL as well.
Using "you" in the general "one" sense, not to attack you personally of course
> it creates an almost unassailable hurdle in lots of industries.
It's intended to be a hurdle, if you want to build a business on other people's work and not contribute back. Be a player that benefits the ecosystem or go away and build the product from scratch if you think you can.
> a CD in the post is sufficient
Yeah, it would be. If they make valuable contributions to the source code, they'll soon realize that just dumping those on github will have the same effect and save them a full time employee for burning CDs. If the contributions are not valuable, the problem will likely solve itself when the company goes bust.