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Good for him. I hope we see more of this in the future: developers realising that the work they do has value and that they’re not required to spend their lives

Good for him. I hope we see more of this in the future: developers realising that the work they do has value and that they’re not required to spend their lives giving it away for free. So they take control of their work product and start capturing some of that value for themselves. It’s a shame that the article is written in this tone, as it mirrors the dominant sentiment among open source folks. There is still a lot of entitlement to be seen, even here in the comments from people who are likely to end up in the same boat as the software author referenced in the article. I think it’ll take a while to get there.

Semaphor 7y ago
> It’s a shame that the article is written in this tone The article seemed pretty neutral excluding the slightly shady stuff like not mentioning the license change properly, timely or even in expected locations > the dominant sentiment among open source folks The dominant sentiment of open source folks is that they want open source instead of proprietary software? That seems expected, it’s after all the whole point. edit: positive -> neutral; shady -> slightly shady
- pjmlp 7y ago
  The dominant sentiment of open source folks is that they don't want to pay for anything, even if it is open source.
  - f1refly 7y ago
    That's a lie, lots of people donate voluntarily for their favorite free software every day. If you decide to be a leech that's fine too, but don't try to convince yourself others are that way as well.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Donations don't allow for a sustainable business.
      - BurningCycles 7y ago
        Blender, Krita are notable FOSS projects being sustainable through donations. I'm not saying it's easy, just that it's not impossible.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Blender was a commercial product and has some big studios doing those donations, as far as I remember. And I bet only a lucky few of the contributors get to see the money.
        BurningCycles 7y ago
        >Blender was a commercial product 18 years ago, since then it's been open source and paid for by donations >and has some big studios doing those donations These big studios started donating this past year when the development fund was started (and really took off during the latter part of this year for some reason), before that it was donations and in later years also the Blender Cloud service. >And I bet only a lucky few of the contributors get to see the money. Well, most (if not all) of the Blender developers now working full time where Blender contributors, also Blender is a non-profit organization.
      - laughinghan 7y ago
        But they demonstrably can allow for a sustainable project, the obvious example being the Linux Foundation. And if you admit to the existence of donations, then do you admit that you were wrong to say "open source folks don't want to pay for anything"?
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Since you brought up the Linux Foundation as an example, the large pool of contributions are from Fortune 500 happy to use Linux instead of paying for UNIX licenses. Which in any case only a tiny part of kernel contributors can live from.
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    Feel free to have that opinion, this is not in any way related to the article though.
ossworkerrights 7y ago
I think there should be either a dual licensing model, where if a company earns more than X$ they need to pay a license, if you are a student wanting to learn more about how its implement then it's free, or you just have to pay for it. OSS has killed indie development, for the benefit of large corporations. Thousands of developers out there are putting in their own sweat blood and tears in advancing "humanity" by building great OSS products, only to be taken advantage of. Seal the pipe. Charge money for great work!
mdellavo 7y ago
at one point - the spirit of the OSS movement was giving away things for free.
aequitas 7y ago
> developers realising that the work they do has value and that they’re not required to spend their lives giving it away for free. As far as I understand he is still giving it away for free to users, but not allowing other companies to sell his work to for their profit only.
kgwxd 7y ago
We lived in that world a few decades ago, it sucked for users, and where it's still common practice, it still sucks for users, and the only players really allowed to play that game are a few big names.

Semaphor 7y ago

> It’s a shame that the article is written in this tone The article seemed pretty neutral excluding the slightly shady stuff like not mentioning the license change properly, timely or even in expected locations > the dominant sentiment among open source folks The dominant sentiment of open source folks is that they want open source instead of proprietary software? That seems expected, it’s after all the whole point. edit: positive -> neutral; shady -> slightly shady

pjmlp 7y ago
The dominant sentiment of open source folks is that they don't want to pay for anything, even if it is open source.
- f1refly 7y ago
  That's a lie, lots of people donate voluntarily for their favorite free software every day. If you decide to be a leech that's fine too, but don't try to convince yourself others are that way as well.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Donations don't allow for a sustainable business.
    - BurningCycles 7y ago
      Blender, Krita are notable FOSS projects being sustainable through donations. I'm not saying it's easy, just that it's not impossible.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Blender was a commercial product and has some big studios doing those donations, as far as I remember. And I bet only a lucky few of the contributors get to see the money.
        BurningCycles 7y ago
        >Blender was a commercial product 18 years ago, since then it's been open source and paid for by donations >and has some big studios doing those donations These big studios started donating this past year when the development fund was started (and really took off during the latter part of this year for some reason), before that it was donations and in later years also the Blender Cloud service. >And I bet only a lucky few of the contributors get to see the money. Well, most (if not all) of the Blender developers now working full time where Blender contributors, also Blender is a non-profit organization.
    - laughinghan 7y ago
      But they demonstrably can allow for a sustainable project, the obvious example being the Linux Foundation. And if you admit to the existence of donations, then do you admit that you were wrong to say "open source folks don't want to pay for anything"?
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Since you brought up the Linux Foundation as an example, the large pool of contributions are from Fortune 500 happy to use Linux instead of paying for UNIX licenses. Which in any case only a tiny part of kernel contributors can live from.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  Feel free to have that opinion, this is not in any way related to the article though.

ossworkerrights 7y ago

I think there should be either a dual licensing model, where if a company earns more than X$ they need to pay a license, if you are a student wanting to learn more about how its implement then it's free, or you just have to pay for it. OSS has killed indie development, for the benefit of large corporations. Thousands of developers out there are putting in their own sweat blood and tears in advancing "humanity" by building great OSS products, only to be taken advantage of. Seal the pipe. Charge money for great work!

mdellavo 7y ago

at one point - the spirit of the OSS movement was giving away things for free.

aequitas 7y ago

> developers realising that the work they do has value and that they’re not required to spend their lives giving it away for free. As far as I understand he is still giving it away for free to users, but not allowing other companies to sell his work to for their profit only.

kgwxd 7y ago

We lived in that world a few decades ago, it sucked for users, and where it's still common practice, it still sucks for users, and the only players really allowed to play that game are a few big names.