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I haven't seen any large scale, long-term open source projects succeed with a 'pay to play' process; what usually happens is the original maintainers realize th

I haven't seen any large scale, long-term open source projects succeed with a 'pay to play' process; what usually happens is the original maintainers realize that even with some amount of compensation, they still don't like scratching other people's itch when it comes to their project. And then they realize that the amount of people/companies even willing to pay at all is a tiny fraction of 1% of their potential target market. The better advice is to do what you want, know your limits, consider sharing some maintainance responsibility with another committer or two, and don't ever feel obligated to do anything with other people's issues and PRs. It's nice to do, but if it's interfering with anything else, or taking away valuable time, ignore them or just blanket close them, with a note that it's not something you'd be interested in maintaining. The great thing about open source is someone can fork your code and do what they need. You have no obligation to help them, it's just nice if you can. And if they don't get that, that's not your problem.

Radim 9y ago
It's not your problem only in the sense that it shouldn't be your problem. E.g., in theory. Some people can be quite belligerent about their FOSS entitlement. I've also seen folk publicly bash open source projects just because the license wasn't permissive enough, in their opinion (GPL vs. their darling I'll-bend-over-do-what-you-will-with-me BSD or MIT). It can be hard to maintain poker face with "not my problem"... as hard as the "fuck you, pay me" proposed by the OP. The social pressure to give away your work for free is real, and humans are social animals. Just look at this thread.
slashdotdash 9y ago
Sidekiq by Mike Perham is following the open core, paid subscription for a "pro" version containing extensions. His single founder company has a monthly recurring revenue in excess of $80k, as featured on Indie Hackers[1]. [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq

Radim 9y ago

It's not your problem only in the sense that it shouldn't be your problem. E.g., in theory. Some people can be quite belligerent about their FOSS entitlement. I've also seen folk publicly bash open source projects just because the license wasn't permissive enough, in their opinion (GPL vs. their darling I'll-bend-over-do-what-you-will-with-me BSD or MIT). It can be hard to maintain poker face with "not my problem"... as hard as the "fuck you, pay me" proposed by the OP. The social pressure to give away your work for free is real, and humans are social animals. Just look at this thread.

slashdotdash 9y ago

Sidekiq by Mike Perham is following the open core, paid subscription for a "pro" version containing extensions. His single founder company has a monthly recurring revenue in excess of $80k, as featured on Indie Hackers[1]. [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq