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At the point you require payments, users can have expectations and requests, which turns your project into a job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The most powerful set of tools available to create your Windows installation experience. Open Source since 2004!
It's shocking to me that Microsoft aren't heavily involved with the project considering it's one of the fundamental frameworks for releasing software on Windows. I've had the displeasure of using Wix and it's an incredibly complicated and poorly documented platform that had us reaching for paid competitors in order to get our installer shipped. I realized shortly after that it's not really Wix's fault. Windows is squ…
The history of WiX is that it started internally at Microsoft. IIRC it was a project under the Office organization originally. It's generally considered the first big open source success of Microsoft in spinning a project out to open source community ownership and paved the way for almost every later open source project at Microsoft.
I've got a feeling Microsoft doesn't want to support it anymore because they see it as completely legacy today. WiX is one of the better/cheaper/harder ways to build an old school MSI file. MSI installers are an ancient archive format (the old CAB format) wrapping an ancient and dying DB format (the old JET database engine) and a lot of the complexity of the WiX toolkit is just a reflection of the complex legacy of the old terrible MSI output format. Today Microsoft suggests using MSIX which looks a lot more directly like the better/simpler input to a (well crafted greenfield) WiX project, it's a plain ZIP file with XML metadata.
I haven't fully read it yet, but it would be great if GitHub had "bounties" where users could submit an issue/request with a bounty attached.
The license agreement doesn't change? But you don't get support unless you pay the maintenance fee? So if a user reports an exploit, Wix won't fix it unless the reporter pays the maintenance fee first?
Or if some corporate user has a great idea for a new feature, Wix will ignore it until a paying user requests it?
It seems obvious that this is nonsensical. OSS authors have always been able to pick and choose what PRs they accept or what issues get their attention. They have always been able to charge for support. How is this maintenance fee any kind of innovation?
I don't mean this as a criticism of Wix. I think it is awesome that they develop tools with open source licenses. And I think it is perfectly fine for them to charge support fees. Just like it always has been for all open source projects.
If a would-be contributor feels locked out, they can fork. This is not a new idea. Obviously, forking is a pretty big commitment that will require financial backing. So any rational party considering forking should also consider paying the author for their attention. Even if you have the pockets of an Amazon, it would probably be better all around to fund the original author than to set up a competing fork. Of course there will be the occasional LibreOffice, io.js, OpenTofu, neovim. If you can actually pull off a split like LibreCAD, more power to you. io.js made its point and made nodejs healthier.
This has always been a huge advantage to open source software. You can benefit from the community. You can contribute to the community (code, art, docs, money, ideas, whatever). Kudos to Wix for participating. Best wishes for their future.
Alternative: https://github.com/oleg-shilo/wixsharp/
For me, Wix was never truly an OSS project (sure, technically/formally, it is). It's for me just an MS developer workplace in disguise. As MS, it looks nicer and you don't have to support so much. I was wrong and Rob was indeed not an MS employee??
This sucks out the joy of Open Source development, which is freedom to do anything, change anything and not responsible for anyone else. At the point you require payments, users can have expectations and requests, which turns your project into a job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is good for you to feel that way, others increasingly view it as a narrative endorsed by big tech to get free labor and "AI" training material.
If it solves your problem, why would you care about what other people do with it ? Free software isn't charity, just a way to find allies - usage by other people is a side effect which doesn't cost anything to the project and is entirely irrelevant apart as some input for the user-to-ally pipeline.
It seems like it would be much less complicated to write this/enforce this if they just made you pay a subscription fee for access binaries and the issue tracker. Instead, they've generated an enforcement nightmare by solely relying on an EULA.
The worst part for me is: > Q: How long do I have to pay the fee? > You pay the Maintenance Fee as long as you use the project. What does that even mean? I built one-off apps for small businesses that I never touch again or maybe every 5 years. Okay, at least paying perpetually for something I don't use anymore is out of question but if I open a solution for a fix I have to check all 80 packages what their current li…
Not a WiX user, but that's my issue with it too. E.g., AutoMapper, a popular mapping library for .Net recently changed their license from Free to a Subscription. We use it heavily, and may be willing to pay - however: we are still using the same version as of 2 years ago, because there are no new features we care about and there's no need to put in multiple days of work to upgrade "just because".
I miss the one-time-payment option for such things.