4 ms·

We need a patio11 person dedicated to donation-based software ;) Does it work better if the software is open-source, but the donation is mandatory in the origin

• johnward 11y ago
  Maybe we don't have one because it's a poor business model?
• patio11 11y ago
  Would it be presumptuous of me to mention why that is not me? Because, in 10 years of doing this, I've seen one small business do decently well with the donation model. (It's Paint.NET. Rich asked me not to mention the numbers when he told me them, and I respect his wishes, but let's say "A quite happy result which supports a small team in a sustainable fashion.") I have also seen many developers try it. Monks take a vow of poverty, because it can be spiritually fulfilling, but I do not believe many people would take a vow of poverty so that they can devote every waking moment to fixing the problems of for-profit companies. (There are individual people I'm thinking of while writing this. I won't mention their situations, for the obvious reasons, but I'm generally a quiet restrained guy and, after a coffee date with one of them, I nearly put my fist through a mirror out of vicarious frustration with injustice.) There are so, so many better business models than taking donations. Let's move the conversation to those better models. "Charge money for goods and services" provides plenty of room for experimentation and has the desirable property of actually working.