6 ms·

Channelling my inner patio11: Also consider offering a support contract, or selling licenses, rather than just soliciting donations. Especially if you're alrea

Channelling my inner patio11: Also consider offering a support contract, or selling licenses, rather than just soliciting donations. Especially if you're already intending to offer access in return for said donations! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863939

jcbrand 9y ago
Could you point me to any resources that show what such a support contract generally looks like?
- hayksaakian 9y ago
  It's less about what the words in the document say and more about the concept of offering technical support to your business class users. (Obviously you want that agreement in writing, but start by just getting conversations with users who would be qualified for this. Anybof your users with 50+ employees could be good candidates.)
djsumdog 9y ago
I think back to Caddy and how they offered this and they still had to resort to that controversial thing where they started replying with a special Caddy header with pre-compiled versions of their server. Even professionally, shops with good admins/devops will usually prefer CentOS/openSUSE over RHEL/SLES, since they can handle almost all the support themselves. The other model is tools like Gitlab/Alfresco/Magento where the enterprise version has closed source code not available in the OSS version. I wrote a thing about different OSS support philosophies a while back: http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-...
- busterarm 9y ago
  > Even professionally, shops with good admins/devops will usually prefer CentOS/openSUSE over RHEL/SLES, since they can handle almost all the support themselves. And shops with large enough IT budgets and huge downside risk (like finance) will pay for the SLA guarantee because ultimately it's really cheap insurance against the cost of catastrophic events. I've been in banks where the admins were the definitive authors of books written in their space, but where CentOS or RHEL on a server was chosen purely on the basis of the value of the service being hosted.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  WINE vs CrossOver is another example. There's a plethora of examples available. There's also an example of software which clearly doesn't wish to follow such scheme: IDA Pro.
crdoconnor 9y ago
I kind of wish there was a business set up that would take a small cut to deal with payments/contracts etc. to do this. As a developer I'm not sure I want to deal with the headache.
- inimino 9y ago
  You mean, an accountant?
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    Yeah, like an accountant that writes contracts, sets up a website to take payments and arrange consults and has a brand that large corporate purchasing departments feel happy doing business with. So basically, yeah, just Joe the accountant from your local strip mall.
j1elo 9y ago
Patio11 was ultimately asking for the owner of the free software project to emit an invoice, which has its own financial bureaucratic burden in which the owner most probably won't want to enter. Ie. it won't work because the typical free software developer doesn't want to incur into the taxes that this could imply. For example, in Spain you aren't allowed to extend invoices if you aren't first registered as an autonomous worker (freelancer), which most people aren't because they already work for some company. But even if you did, then you'd have to pay for the obligatory social security for freelancers, which is around 260 Euro per month (so staying registered indefinitely as freelancer is not financially sensible, if you are not really doing actual contract jobs). I would think this is similar in most other European countries, which in other words means that for the most common of the FOSS developers, writing a legally valid invoice is a no-no. Of course the matter changes if the company doing the donations doesn't really care about the invoice being legally correct inside the country of the developer. But I wouldn't advise the developer to do things like that... (s)he would be risking a fine.
- erkkie 9y ago
  are you sure it's 260 Euro per month for social security in addition to what the freelancers salaried company is paying?
  - j1elo 9y ago
    There are some schemes which allow to save money if it's the very first time that you register as such. But they are only a short- to mid-term solution (covering typically the first year), but in the long term (starting from the 12th to 18th month) you'll end up paying the full quota. If you can read spanish, articles such as this one explain the options: http://gestron.es/ventajas-ser-autonomo-trabajar-cuenta-ajena/#Bonificaciones http://gestron.es/ventajas-ser-autonomo-trabajar-cuenta-ajen...
    - capisce 9y ago
      A regressive tax like this must disincentivize freelancing and thus prevent a lot of economic activity. What are the benefits?

jcbrand 9y ago

Could you point me to any resources that show what such a support contract generally looks like?

hayksaakian 9y ago
It's less about what the words in the document say and more about the concept of offering technical support to your business class users. (Obviously you want that agreement in writing, but start by just getting conversations with users who would be qualified for this. Anybof your users with 50+ employees could be good candidates.)

djsumdog 9y ago

I think back to Caddy and how they offered this and they still had to resort to that controversial thing where they started replying with a special Caddy header with pre-compiled versions of their server. Even professionally, shops with good admins/devops will usually prefer CentOS/openSUSE over RHEL/SLES, since they can handle almost all the support themselves. The other model is tools like Gitlab/Alfresco/Magento where the enterprise version has closed source code not available in the OSS version. I wrote a thing about different OSS support philosophies a while back: http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-...

busterarm 9y ago
> Even professionally, shops with good admins/devops will usually prefer CentOS/openSUSE over RHEL/SLES, since they can handle almost all the support themselves. And shops with large enough IT budgets and huge downside risk (like finance) will pay for the SLA guarantee because ultimately it's really cheap insurance against the cost of catastrophic events. I've been in banks where the admins were the definitive authors of books written in their space, but where CentOS or RHEL on a server was chosen purely on the basis of the value of the service being hosted.
Fnoord 9y ago
WINE vs CrossOver is another example. There's a plethora of examples available. There's also an example of software which clearly doesn't wish to follow such scheme: IDA Pro.

crdoconnor 9y ago

I kind of wish there was a business set up that would take a small cut to deal with payments/contracts etc. to do this. As a developer I'm not sure I want to deal with the headache.

inimino 9y ago
You mean, an accountant?
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  Yeah, like an accountant that writes contracts, sets up a website to take payments and arrange consults and has a brand that large corporate purchasing departments feel happy doing business with. So basically, yeah, just Joe the accountant from your local strip mall.

j1elo 9y ago

Patio11 was ultimately asking for the owner of the free software project to emit an invoice, which has its own financial bureaucratic burden in which the owner most probably won't want to enter. Ie. it won't work because the typical free software developer doesn't want to incur into the taxes that this could imply. For example, in Spain you aren't allowed to extend invoices if you aren't first registered as an autonomous worker (freelancer), which most people aren't because they already work for some company. But even if you did, then you'd have to pay for the obligatory social security for freelancers, which is around 260 Euro per month (so staying registered indefinitely as freelancer is not financially sensible, if you are not really doing actual contract jobs). I would think this is similar in most other European countries, which in other words means that for the most common of the FOSS developers, writing a legally valid invoice is a no-no. Of course the matter changes if the company doing the donations doesn't really care about the invoice being legally correct inside the country of the developer. But I wouldn't advise the developer to do things like that... (s)he would be risking a fine.

erkkie 9y ago
are you sure it's 260 Euro per month for social security in addition to what the freelancers salaried company is paying?
- j1elo 9y ago
  There are some schemes which allow to save money if it's the very first time that you register as such. But they are only a short- to mid-term solution (covering typically the first year), but in the long term (starting from the 12th to 18th month) you'll end up paying the full quota. If you can read spanish, articles such as this one explain the options: http://gestron.es/ventajas-ser-autonomo-trabajar-cuenta-ajena/#Bonificaciones http://gestron.es/ventajas-ser-autonomo-trabajar-cuenta-ajen...
  - capisce 9y ago
    A regressive tax like this must disincentivize freelancing and thus prevent a lot of economic activity. What are the benefits?