6 ms·

I tell every entrepreneur that asks me for advice that the donation model for any business gets no more than 1-10% (depending on the industry) compared to a bus

I tell every entrepreneur that asks me for advice that the donation model for any business gets no more than 1-10% (depending on the industry) compared to a business model of selling commercial software. This is the difference between poverty and 6-figures. The open-source model is good for launching your own career, but you should avoid trying to make the career the open-source project itself. The open-core model is a good alternative if you wish to be around open-source software. Or make your project de-facto standard and charge for consulting. Or, you can make an entirely commercial project that uses and contributes to open-source projects. That way, you are surrounded by open-source and can help them financially to add features you need.

throwayEngineer 7y ago
I could convert my website to a paid model, but as you mentioned I use it for growing my career. But really, I just wanted to help people. Here is my great question, can I help more, if I charge money?
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  You would be able to afford helping more if you charge money, now you're your boss, you charge based on what you believe and know you need to survive and based on periods where you aren't consulting.
- luxstyle 7y ago
  Absolutely. Imagine how much more you can help if you had a team helping to build and grow your website. If you want, don't take a dime for yourself and instead invest it all into growing your business and helping others. If you're delivering something that gives real value to someone's life, and it's priced correctly, they will pay for it.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    But what about the people you won't be helping any more if it becomes commercial? That could vary wildly depending on the context.
    - tracker1 7y ago
      Can you help anyone if you're homeless on the street? At some point there is a trade off to any number of choices. I choose to keep active employment, and open what I can, when I can. Mostly utilities that I wrote for work that aren't core functionality that it makes sense to separate out anyway. Heaven help me if something got too popular and people wanted a support model.
- jasode 7y ago
  >Here is my great question, can I help more, if I charge money? It depends on which dimension of "help more" you want to affect. I looked at your website "efficiencyiseverything.com" and here's how I would break it down: "more people" vs "more features"... - if you want to help more people, it's better to keep it free because no subscription/paywall payments means the biggest audience (including those without discretionary income) can be helped by your information - if you want to help less people but add more features, you should charge money. The paying audience will always be less than a non-paying one but the ones who do monetarily support you can be assisted with new website features that requires revenue to develop (One can sort of try to get the best of both of the above scenarios by keeping it free with voluntary donations but to me, that just simplifies down to "free" since the percentage of donators will be very small.)
  - throwayEngineer 7y ago
    Thank you for these ideas. I think I will keep things free. I have a day job that Pays great. I need to find a way to incorporate premium features.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    >if you want to help less people but add more features, you should charge money I would add one more thing. It would help less people in short-term, but in long-term, it might actually end up helping more people, as those features have the potential to attract way more people than you would have gotten without those features but for free.
kemitchell 7y ago
Consider public-private licensing. Choose a license that requires sharing back, or limits to noncommercial use, and sell individual exceptions to that rule. https://indieopensource.com/public-private/indies https://indieopensource.com/public-private/indies
- nostalgk 7y ago
  This, I think, is the key. The few projects I'm working on right now are not at the point where business logic would come into play, but all contributors are in agreement that they would support this model over all. It allows the public to continue to use your work to collaborate and create better things, which is the point of open source, while allowing businesses (which should be able to afford to license a software product) to still pitch in and generate a profit. Both of these will attract talent and interest and allow collaborators to prosper.
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    This approach is as old as the hills. From RMS' Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism: > Many years ago, a friend of mine was asked to rerelease a copylefted program under noncopyleft terms, and he responded more or less like this: > > > "Sometimes I work on free software, and sometimes I work on proprietary software---but when I work on proprietary software, I expect to get paid." > > He was willing to share his work with a community that shares software, but saw no reason to give a handout to a business making products that would be off-limits to our community. His goal was different from mine, but he decided that the GNU GPL was useful for his goal too. The approach is far more common in other kinds of licensed, creative work. Creative Commons' choice to standardized noncommercial license terms helped make commercial-noncommercial licensing familiar in photography, illustration, music, and so on. The model has gone by a few names. Those researching should search on "selling exceptions" and "dual licensing", too. I'm doing what I can to popularize through License Zero (https://licensezero.com https://licensezero.com).
    - neilv 7y ago
      Some of the times when people would repeat things RMS said about sustaining Free Software work by making money from consulting on the side, this seemed misleading. I understand RMS was at times the beneficiary of people who were sympathetic to his mission. For example, students said at one point he was living in a university office that someone arranged to be allocated to him. Personal sacrifices like this, towards his principles, were to RMS's credit, but the suggestion that one could just pick up consulting work on the side seemed misleading. RMS was one of the better programmers, and famous, and even he didn't seem to pull off that sustainability reliably.
ensignavenger 7y ago
Is this advice based solely on your own experience (I see that you are an open source creator, thank you), or are basing this advice on actual data that you have collected/analyzed? If you have actual data would you consider sharing it?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cosmodisk 7y ago
A very good example on this is Vue.js. While it is very popular, a quick look at the donation amounts on Evan's patreon page gives a good reality check for those who are dreaming of living off donations.
- cryptica 7y ago
  His donation amount is not bad but if you think about it like a salary; it's kind of low considering how well known he is in the industry.
  - epicide 7y ago
    > how well known he is in the industry. That is also part of his compensation.
    - alex_anglin 7y ago
      But you can’t eat goodwill.
      - dexterdog 7y ago
        You can eat the food that is bought with the fees that can be easily gained from speaking and consulting.
        AWebOfBrown 7y ago
        Or, phrased differently, from working another job.
        lliamander 7y ago
        A job you could only get by having the reputation in the first place.
        CydeWeys 7y ago
wolco 7y ago
Some products wouldn't exist without open source. There are many sides to this coin.

throwayEngineer 7y ago

I could convert my website to a paid model, but as you mentioned I use it for growing my career. But really, I just wanted to help people. Here is my great question, can I help more, if I charge money?

giancarlostoro 7y ago
You would be able to afford helping more if you charge money, now you're your boss, you charge based on what you believe and know you need to survive and based on periods where you aren't consulting.
luxstyle 7y ago
Absolutely. Imagine how much more you can help if you had a team helping to build and grow your website. If you want, don't take a dime for yourself and instead invest it all into growing your business and helping others. If you're delivering something that gives real value to someone's life, and it's priced correctly, they will pay for it.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  But what about the people you won't be helping any more if it becomes commercial? That could vary wildly depending on the context.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    Can you help anyone if you're homeless on the street? At some point there is a trade off to any number of choices. I choose to keep active employment, and open what I can, when I can. Mostly utilities that I wrote for work that aren't core functionality that it makes sense to separate out anyway. Heaven help me if something got too popular and people wanted a support model.
jasode 7y ago
>Here is my great question, can I help more, if I charge money? It depends on which dimension of "help more" you want to affect. I looked at your website "efficiencyiseverything.com" and here's how I would break it down: "more people" vs "more features"... - if you want to help more people, it's better to keep it free because no subscription/paywall payments means the biggest audience (including those without discretionary income) can be helped by your information - if you want to help less people but add more features, you should charge money. The paying audience will always be less than a non-paying one but the ones who do monetarily support you can be assisted with new website features that requires revenue to develop (One can sort of try to get the best of both of the above scenarios by keeping it free with voluntary donations but to me, that just simplifies down to "free" since the percentage of donators will be very small.)
- throwayEngineer 7y ago
  Thank you for these ideas. I think I will keep things free. I have a day job that Pays great. I need to find a way to incorporate premium features.
- filoleg 7y ago
  >if you want to help less people but add more features, you should charge money I would add one more thing. It would help less people in short-term, but in long-term, it might actually end up helping more people, as those features have the potential to attract way more people than you would have gotten without those features but for free.

kemitchell 7y ago

Consider public-private licensing. Choose a license that requires sharing back, or limits to noncommercial use, and sell individual exceptions to that rule. https://indieopensource.com/public-private/indies https://indieopensource.com/public-private/indies

nostalgk 7y ago
This, I think, is the key. The few projects I'm working on right now are not at the point where business logic would come into play, but all contributors are in agreement that they would support this model over all. It allows the public to continue to use your work to collaborate and create better things, which is the point of open source, while allowing businesses (which should be able to afford to license a software product) to still pitch in and generate a profit. Both of these will attract talent and interest and allow collaborators to prosper.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  This approach is as old as the hills. From RMS' Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism: > Many years ago, a friend of mine was asked to rerelease a copylefted program under noncopyleft terms, and he responded more or less like this: > > > "Sometimes I work on free software, and sometimes I work on proprietary software---but when I work on proprietary software, I expect to get paid." > > He was willing to share his work with a community that shares software, but saw no reason to give a handout to a business making products that would be off-limits to our community. His goal was different from mine, but he decided that the GNU GPL was useful for his goal too. The approach is far more common in other kinds of licensed, creative work. Creative Commons' choice to standardized noncommercial license terms helped make commercial-noncommercial licensing familiar in photography, illustration, music, and so on. The model has gone by a few names. Those researching should search on "selling exceptions" and "dual licensing", too. I'm doing what I can to popularize through License Zero (https://licensezero.com https://licensezero.com).
  - neilv 7y ago
    Some of the times when people would repeat things RMS said about sustaining Free Software work by making money from consulting on the side, this seemed misleading. I understand RMS was at times the beneficiary of people who were sympathetic to his mission. For example, students said at one point he was living in a university office that someone arranged to be allocated to him. Personal sacrifices like this, towards his principles, were to RMS's credit, but the suggestion that one could just pick up consulting work on the side seemed misleading. RMS was one of the better programmers, and famous, and even he didn't seem to pull off that sustainability reliably.

ensignavenger 7y ago

Is this advice based solely on your own experience (I see that you are an open source creator, thank you), or are basing this advice on actual data that you have collected/analyzed? If you have actual data would you consider sharing it?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cosmodisk 7y ago

A very good example on this is Vue.js. While it is very popular, a quick look at the donation amounts on Evan's patreon page gives a good reality check for those who are dreaming of living off donations.

cryptica 7y ago
His donation amount is not bad but if you think about it like a salary; it's kind of low considering how well known he is in the industry.
- epicide 7y ago
  > how well known he is in the industry. That is also part of his compensation.
  - alex_anglin 7y ago
    But you can’t eat goodwill.
    - dexterdog 7y ago
      You can eat the food that is bought with the fees that can be easily gained from speaking and consulting.
      - AWebOfBrown 7y ago
        Or, phrased differently, from working another job.
        lliamander 7y ago
        A job you could only get by having the reputation in the first place.
        CydeWeys 7y ago

wolco 7y ago

Some products wouldn't exist without open source. There are many sides to this coin.