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The overarching problem with expecting companies to pay for open-source is that they don’t have to. It’s often as vital to them as the publicly-provided infras

by muglug 7y ago

The overarching problem with expecting companies to pay for open-source is that they don’t have to. It’s often as vital to them as the publicly-provided infrastructure used by their employees to get to work, but because they never see the costs, they assume there isn’t any. In an ideal world business-critical FOSS projects would be funded by the government the same way that other public infrastructure is. Until that happens I think lone developers of those popular projects should start to adopt licenses that allow them to charge businesses. It’s the only way to avoid creating martyrs of them.

pdonis 7y ago
> The overarching problem with expecting companies to pay for open-source is that they don’t have to. It might also be because, even when they have to, they refuse to. As in this case described in the article, for example: "Last year, a company overseas contacted him in a panic after they paused a firmware upgrade rollout to several million devices due to a cURL problem. "When Stenberg asked the company that needed him to fly to a different country to troubleshoot their problem to pay for [a support contract], they refused."
- kube-system 7y ago
  Sounds like that company either found an alternative or decided it wasn't important enough of a problem. This isn't a situation inherent to FLOSS. I've worked many sales cycles with commercial software where potential customers act exactly the same way. I wouldn't be surprised if this effect is even stronger for commercial software, because of the sunk cost effect.
jackcosgrove 7y ago
I understand the sentiment. However 1. Money corrupts everything. Be careful what you wish for. 2. Lone developers will probably do a better job than any sort of bureaucracy, public or private. Small-scale FOSS projects are the perfect platform for a lone developer. They can of course demand payment for their efforts, with all that it might entail regarding point 1.
- muglug 7y ago
  > Small-scale FOSS projects are the perfect platform for a lone developer Perfect platform in what sense? A perfect platform for burnout when the project becomes too popular?
SamuelAdams 7y ago
>The overarching problem with expecting companies to pay for open-source is that they don’t have to. Exactly this. Take the cURL program, as mentioned in the article. The license [1] states: >Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies. So, if an organization is free to use something, then you get upset that you don't get paid for it, why not just adopt a different license? Build a model where they have to pay for it? [1]: https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/COPYING https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/COPYING

by muglug 7y ago

pdonis 7y ago

> The overarching problem with expecting companies to pay for open-source is that they don’t have to. It might also be because, even when they have to, they refuse to. As in this case described in the article, for example: "Last year, a company overseas contacted him in a panic after they paused a firmware upgrade rollout to several million devices due to a cURL problem. "When Stenberg asked the company that needed him to fly to a different country to troubleshoot their problem to pay for [a support contract], they refused."

kube-system 7y ago
Sounds like that company either found an alternative or decided it wasn't important enough of a problem. This isn't a situation inherent to FLOSS. I've worked many sales cycles with commercial software where potential customers act exactly the same way. I wouldn't be surprised if this effect is even stronger for commercial software, because of the sunk cost effect.

jackcosgrove 7y ago

I understand the sentiment. However 1. Money corrupts everything. Be careful what you wish for. 2. Lone developers will probably do a better job than any sort of bureaucracy, public or private. Small-scale FOSS projects are the perfect platform for a lone developer. They can of course demand payment for their efforts, with all that it might entail regarding point 1.

muglug 7y ago
> Small-scale FOSS projects are the perfect platform for a lone developer Perfect platform in what sense? A perfect platform for burnout when the project becomes too popular?

SamuelAdams 7y ago

>The overarching problem with expecting companies to pay for open-source is that they don’t have to. Exactly this. Take the cURL program, as mentioned in the article. The license [1] states: >Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies. So, if an organization is free to use something, then you get upset that you don't get paid for it, why not just adopt a different license? Build a model where they have to pay for it? [1]: https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/COPYING https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/COPYING