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Ask HN: Concept for Monetizing Open Source Projects

3 points by jppope 7y ago

Looking for feedback on a concept: I've been reading a lot about the financial hardships of open-source software and I had an idea for a solution. It seems that the value OSS has on a business should be returned in some way but OSS creators seem to have difficulty getting companies to donate (or pay) for their software. What if there was a license that explicitly laid out company by company what contribution they must make to use the OSS... this license would be available to all OSS so that it was relatively efficient for the creators to use generically. E.G. "Sun Microsystems must donate $50 a month to use this software, Netscape must pay $50 a month to use this software... etc" The costs could be simply relative to the companies valuation. Interested in feedback... (yes I do understand its basically creating a large company database)

ljw1001 7y ago
i'm not sure about the specifics, but i applaud any attempt to return something to contributors. There are difficulties as always. The most important I think is that it might discourage free contributions if the core developers got paid and no one else did. Second most important is how to handle payments made to one project, when it uses similarly licensed software from another. If the purchaser had to pay double and the money were split we might have a new industry aggregating software. If those hurdles weren't fatal, I might consider a simplified pricing model: say $X for commercial use, free for other uses, coupled with a system for handling the payments. Otherwise the payment part might be onerous. I call my new license "Fee and Open" Source.
- jppope 7y ago
  love the "Fee and Open" Source. Gave me a chuckle... these concerns are totally valid... I appreciate the follow up and will think through it.
gus_massa 7y ago
It's not "open source" with the most common definitions of open source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition It's not clear how much and who you have to pay if you use an aggregate of projects. It's not clear what happens if you are using a fork or a patched version. It's not clear what happens if you are using only a tiny part of a project.
- jppope 7y ago
  Fantastic observations. I appreciate you mentioning them. You are totally right I'm colloquially using "Open Source" to basically mean code that is under a permissive license... and not really covering all the basis with the comment. important to consider.
  - gus_massa 7y ago
    I think that the magic part of open source is that it is easy to fork, so the BDFL (or equivalent) must be nice. For example, in the node.js vs io.js fork or the OpenOffice vs LibreOffice fork. This ensure the community that they can continue with the project on their own if there is a big enough problem. If everyone must continue to pay the original project, it's not possible to make a meaningful fork.

3 points by jppope 7y ago

ljw1001 7y ago

i'm not sure about the specifics, but i applaud any attempt to return something to contributors. There are difficulties as always. The most important I think is that it might discourage free contributions if the core developers got paid and no one else did. Second most important is how to handle payments made to one project, when it uses similarly licensed software from another. If the purchaser had to pay double and the money were split we might have a new industry aggregating software. If those hurdles weren't fatal, I might consider a simplified pricing model: say $X for commercial use, free for other uses, coupled with a system for handling the payments. Otherwise the payment part might be onerous. I call my new license "Fee and Open" Source.

jppope 7y ago
love the "Fee and Open" Source. Gave me a chuckle... these concerns are totally valid... I appreciate the follow up and will think through it.

gus_massa 7y ago

It's not "open source" with the most common definitions of open source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition It's not clear how much and who you have to pay if you use an aggregate of projects. It's not clear what happens if you are using a fork or a patched version. It's not clear what happens if you are using only a tiny part of a project.

jppope 7y ago
Fantastic observations. I appreciate you mentioning them. You are totally right I'm colloquially using "Open Source" to basically mean code that is under a permissive license... and not really covering all the basis with the comment. important to consider.
- gus_massa 7y ago
  I think that the magic part of open source is that it is easy to fork, so the BDFL (or equivalent) must be nice. For example, in the node.js vs io.js fork or the OpenOffice vs LibreOffice fork. This ensure the community that they can continue with the project on their own if there is a big enough problem. If everyone must continue to pay the original project, it's not possible to make a meaningful fork.