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Generating Income from Open Source

vadimdemedes.com

31–40 of 126 posts

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#31
post #4

I've always looked at charging for open source as a support service. What is the developer's time worth? If one wants new features pay a fee/salary/bounty for the development.

I used Ghost.org in a project last year and love their business model (and obviously their product).

Completely open source software, but you can pay a reasonable amount for managed hosting and support. Plus obviously it supports the devs and new development.

A simple line to separate DIYers from anyone who wants the convenience, peace of mind, or to support the project itself. Would love to see more of this.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#34

Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineers to vet its utility first before paying, with free usage for non-profits (i.e. other non-profit devs). I’m not making any comment about the merits of this model. I strictly make and sell closed-source software (SaaS). But it’s funny to me that this is essenti…

It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license. In fact, it is something explicitly advocated for by Richard Stallman himself and the Free Software Foundation generally: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions He's got mixed feelings, but says "I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate…

> It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license.

That is not what is proposed in the article:

----

Isotope is open source, but there are different licenses depending on how you intend to use it:

    Open source license.
This license allows Isotope to be used in personal or open source projects for free.

    Commercial license.
This license permits you to use Isotope in almost any commercial app. Realistically speaking, any company wishing to use it, most likely will need to buy a commercial license.

----

That is not open source. It's proprietary software offered as freeware for non-commercial use.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#35
This is a good overview of the options. It's worth pointing out that there are a lot of successful open source projects out there and most of them are maintained by people that are being paid by companies to do so. It's nonsense that you can't make money of open source, it's an industry that employs quite a few people and the companies that employ them get a lot of value back in return. A lot of that spending is strategic and not charitable. E.g. Google has things like Android. They make a lot of money from Android. And its built on top of a lot of OSS. Instead of passively consuming that, they employ people to work on each of the projects that are important to them and have a very active role in driving those forward. They even create open source projects themselves.

In fact all of the big name software companies have people on staff that represent them in various mission critical open source projects. There are also a lot of smaller companies that are very successful that are built on top of open source projects that they either pioneered or contribute to heavily. Commercial contributions to open source are the back bone to the open source communities.

Any such business is a great place to start if you are looking to make money from open source. They might employ you if you are good enough and having a track record as a top contributor is a great way into such companies. Getting involved with such projects is a great way to bootstrap your professional career in open source development.

Where a lot of amateur run projects fail to make money is mis-perception of their value, unprofessional behavior by developers, or just plain poor business and communication skills. That happens a lot. Computer scientists are not great at this stuff. Also they tend to be a bit spoiled because they are constantly being pampered by companies that need their technical skills. So, not necessarily the best entrepreneurs.

Built it and they will come is not how things work. It's not a business model. Making money is hard work and you have to be smart about it. Just because you think that your source code is worth a lot doesn't mean it actually is. E.g. a lot of javascript packages are a combination of tiny and a bit of a commodity. What's a commodity: something with a lot of alternate implementations. If you are cost conscious consumer of such things, you are going to be optimizing for cost and convenience and pick the cheapest (i.e. free) good enough thing. Commodities are by definition not worth a lot. And in OSS that typically means 0$.

Mistake #1 with OSS companies: most of them provide commodity functionality that just isn't worth a lot to many people. Set your expectations accordingly. There can still be valid reasons to work on them.

I maintain some small open source projects and I've set my expectations accordingly. I don't expect or ask for donations. Below a certain threshold the admin work on my side would cost me more than the amount I'd receive. It makes no economical sense to me to bother with low $ amount tips unless I magically can get a lot of them. For the same reason, I don't donate to OSS projects either. I reserve donations for more worthy causes.

I make money indirectly via consultancy. The libraries are just there to make my life easier and they are a nice talking point that helps my clients understand that I might know what I'm talking about. Most of my clients don't actually use my OSS even. Mainly they just make my life easier. And I enjoy working on them. Nothing wrong with that.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#37
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think these kinds of comments are counter productive to people seeing source available software (SAS, OSS, FOSS, or all three). Free to the public but not corporate is clearly not "try before you buy" and is a gross misinterpretation of this. I don't care what Citizens United ruling said, corporations are not the same as people and we should distinguish them as such. This model is in no way functionally simi…

"Source available" is not open source and has nothing to do with open source. Open source never confused people until bad-faith actors started intentionally trying to confuse them by labeling things that aren't open source as "open source". Open source has a precise definition and it has had it for decades . If you describe your software as open source and it is not available under an open source license then you are…

> Guess what, most people can't make money from their hobbies

Essentially this. As talking heads said,

Never for money Always for love

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#38
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter one whit whether people can "pay the bills". It's totally irrelevant to the discussion. If you can't make money making open source software, then go get a job. What a terrible fucking take. First of all yes it matters. OSS developers not being able to pay their bills despite maintaining software used by trillion dollar corps has been in the news several times. It’s an ongoing issue and talked abou…

We should absolutely be finding business models that work for open source but not compromising the ethic of it, like open core. It probably just won't make a ridiculous amount of money for open source developers. It's the tradeoff you have to make when deciding to write open source or proprietary software.

Sure but I honestly disagree that open core compromises the ethics of open sourse.

It's just pragmatic. People are into open source for different reasons. I've been in it for almost two decades and it was always for the the benefits for learning, hackability, transparency, future-proofing, etc etc. All aspects which are perfectly preserved by open core.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license. In fact, it is something explicitly advocated for by Richard Stallman himself and the Free Software Foundation generally: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions He's got mixed feelings, but says "I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate…

> It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license. That is not what is proposed in the article: ---- Isotope is open source, but there are different licenses depending on how you intend to use it: Open source license. This license allows Isotope to be used in personal or open source projects for free. Commercial license. This license permits you to use Isotope in…

Isotope's actual license page is much clearer than the article's summary:

> The open source license is designed for you to use Isotope to build open source and personal projects. The Isotope open source license is GPLv3. The GPLv3 has many terms, but the most important is how it is sticky when you distribute your work publicly. From the GPL FAQ:

>> If you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL.

> Releasing your project that uses Isotope under the GPLv3, in turn, requires your project to be licensed under the GPLv3. If you are okay with this, feel free to use Isotope under the GPLv3, without purchasing a commercial license.

https://isotope.metafizzy.co/license.html#open-source-licens...

Isotope's code is available under GPLv3 with no further restrictions. Although the page says that the project's use of GPLv3 is "designed for you to use Isotope to build open source and personal projects", it does not say that Isotope cannot be used for commercial projects under GPLv3.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#40

> Isotope is open source But it hasn't been updated in years: https://github.com/metafizzy/isotope Does the commercial license use a different repo?

I don't think so. Buying a commericial license just gives you a PDF of the license, according to Isotope's docs:

> Purchasing takes a minute. Our purchasing form accepts credit cards or PayPal. Once purchased, you’ll receive a commercial license PDF and you will be all set to use Isotope in your commercial applications.

https://isotope.metafizzy.co/license.html#purchasing-a-comme...

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