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Generating Income from Open Source

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Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#51

Post by jraph »

tm-guimaraes wrote: post #48
ThinkBeat wrote: post #42

[old person rant] There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. It used to be the norm and it is still quite common. These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source. However, the term open source has been used for so many different things that is has lost…

Sourcehut seems to be an exception here, Drew not only has a profitable open source business, he not only contributes upstream, but also donate to open source projects.

WordPress, Nextcloud, XWiki, Univention, Passbolt are a few other profitable open source businesses doing well. It is possible to sell open source software :-)

Now, maybe it's not as profitable, but not every wants to be as big as Apple or Microsoft.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#52

Post by mlatu »

ipaddr wrote: post #30
ximm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a subtle but important difference here though: If you publish a piece of software under two licenses, one open source and one commercial, why would anybody pick the commercial one? You cannot say "corporations have to pick the commercial one". The only way to do that would be to include a term in the open source license so it cannot be used by corporations. But then it would no longer meet the open source de…

You might want the logos

so you have an about window that says "look how lazy i was, i used all this software i dont support and you still have to pay me full price"

idk. it reaaaaally _isnt_ that big a selling point to see all the open source projects one has used in a commercial application as you might be thinking

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#53

Post by mejutoco »

monero-xmr wrote: post #2

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…

Open source has a specific meaning clarified in each license (like truffle, truffle-flavoured in food). Each license is unambiguous about what one is allowed to do.

Some licenses favor the freedom of the user, and some the freedom of the developer, in different degrees. It is not a "name only" thing, unless we insist on misinterpreting it.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#54

Post by unmole »

jraph wrote: post #51
tm-guimaraes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sourcehut seems to be an exception here, Drew not only has a profitable open source business, he not only contributes upstream, but also donate to open source projects.

WordPress, Nextcloud, XWiki, Univention, Passbolt are a few other profitable open source businesses doing well. It is possible to sell open source software :-) Now, maybe it's not as profitable, but not every wants to be as big as Apple or Microsoft.

I remember there was also a Prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. They were called Scarlet Caps or something similar.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#55

Post by amelius »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #42

[old person rant] There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. It used to be the norm and it is still quite common. These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source. However, the term open source has been used for so many different things that is has lost…

> What is plain hypocrisy to me are the people who developed "for profit" open source projects, and are angry when they dont get paid enough, when the projects they have created rely on GNU tools, the Linux kernel (Perhaps Debian), a libre software database on so on.

We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. I don't see the hypocrisy here.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#56

Post by robertlagrant »

tm-guimaraes wrote: post #48
ThinkBeat wrote: post #42

[old person rant] There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. It used to be the norm and it is still quite common. These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source. However, the term open source has been used for so many different things that is has lost…

Sourcehut seems to be an exception here, Drew not only has a profitable open source business, he not only contributes upstream, but also donate to open source projects.

There are many OSS companies. I think what the OP is (correctly) complaining about is people writing OSS and then getting upset when others sell it, or sell things based on it. I see this attitude creeping into e.g. articles on The Register. If you want to licence your software so anyone can use or resell it, don't be surprised when they do.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#57

Post by robertlagrant »

unmole wrote: post #54
jraph wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress, Nextcloud, XWiki, Univention, Passbolt are a few other profitable open source businesses doing well. It is possible to sell open source software :-) Now, maybe it's not as profitable, but not every wants to be as big as Apple or Microsoft.

I remember there was also a Prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. They were called Scarlet Caps or something similar.

You're thinking of Crimson Headwear?

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#58

Post by robertlagrant »

brightlancer wrote: post #34
memefrog wrote: post #12

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…

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

I shudder at these confident, definitive statements when they're off the mark this far. It's not just "freeware" when you can see, modify, sell and redistribute under the same licence. It's open source.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#59

Post by robertlagrant »

godelski wrote: post #7
monero-xmr wrote: post #2

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…

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…

> Stop gatekeeping

It is open source, yes. But "stop gatekeeping" is a bad phrase. "Gatekeeping" is now a negative spin on "telling the difference between things", and thus worse than useless.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#60

Post by unmole »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #44

While we're here, does anyone know if a sole proprietorship donating to OS projects for "sponsorship" (aka listing the donor company's name in the project's github) is deductible as Advertising expenses? Specifically wondering about Canada personally, but I'm sure people in the U.S. would benefit from this knowledge as well. Our tax law (in Canada) is so opaque, and I feel like finding ways for these monetary contrib…

> While we're here, does anyone know if a sole proprietorship donating to OS projects for "sponsorship" (aka listing the donor company's name in the project's github) is deductible as Advertising expenses?

It is deductible in India.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, chartered accountant. Nothing I ever say should be construed as legal advice etc.

> Our tax law (in Canada) is so opaque

I was going to dismiss it as something people in every country complain about but then I tried to look it up myself:

Depending on where you're advertising, you might be entitled to either a 100% deduction, a 50% deduction or no deduction at all. And you need to take into account if the publication has atleast 80% original content to figure out the deduction. Seriously, WTAF is that?!

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