4 ms·

I wouldn't mind if there was a "DONATE" button, I'd certainly donate 5$ or 10$. Under these circumstances even more since this driver is unique and several othe

I wouldn't mind if there was a "DONATE" button, I'd certainly donate 5$ or 10$. Under these circumstances even more since this driver is unique and several other drivers I use depend on it. (sshfs, perkeep, ext4fuse, ...) Probably these small but frequently used projects should also be supported by the FSF, at least in the *GPL case.

eropple 7y ago
So this is an area of significant interest to me. I have researched this extensively, talked to a few dozen medium-to-large OSS maintainers, and have a project on the back burner about this. The only conclusion I've been able to draw is that literally every approach from OpenCollective to a PayPal link demonstrably does not work. Donations do not work. You have to give people something of value, even if nominal value, to actually get corporate interest and to drive the kind of ROI that makes it viable to continue spending so much dang time on these projects. And a lot of people pfft at that and wave their hands about their right to other people's free time (or that an invisible hand will Make Things Work should those people choose to spend their free time in other ways, ignoring that that usually just means other people get to burn out instead). The only sustainable way to build open-source software is to get businesses to pay for it. And that's why we're where we are with these conversations: it's not the end-user free riders who matter, it's the commercial ones. (I don't think the Redis license is the right approach, FWIW. I think there are better ones. Happy to chat offline with folks who have a similar interest in this space; email's in my profile.)
- gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
  So release code under duel AGPL and commercial licences... Most companies won't touch AGPL and will be very happy to pay for the commercial licence.
  - eropple 7y ago
    I agree that that's part of it!
    - gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
      Basically it comes down to companies having systems for paying invoices. It's hard to get small and medium sized companies to make charitable donations - especially to open source which doesn't even help their corporate social responsibility goals.
      - eropple 7y ago
        Yes, exactly. The hard part is how, and that's what I think can be done. ;)

eropple 7y ago

So this is an area of significant interest to me. I have researched this extensively, talked to a few dozen medium-to-large OSS maintainers, and have a project on the back burner about this. The only conclusion I've been able to draw is that literally every approach from OpenCollective to a PayPal link demonstrably does not work. Donations do not work. You have to give people something of value, even if nominal value, to actually get corporate interest and to drive the kind of ROI that makes it viable to continue spending so much dang time on these projects. And a lot of people pfft at that and wave their hands about their right to other people's free time (or that an invisible hand will Make Things Work should those people choose to spend their free time in other ways, ignoring that that usually just means other people get to burn out instead). The only sustainable way to build open-source software is to get businesses to pay for it. And that's why we're where we are with these conversations: it's not the end-user free riders who matter, it's the commercial ones. (I don't think the Redis license is the right approach, FWIW. I think there are better ones. Happy to chat offline with folks who have a similar interest in this space; email's in my profile.)

gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
So release code under duel AGPL and commercial licences... Most companies won't touch AGPL and will be very happy to pay for the commercial licence.
- eropple 7y ago
  I agree that that's part of it!
  - gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
    Basically it comes down to companies having systems for paying invoices. It's hard to get small and medium sized companies to make charitable donations - especially to open source which doesn't even help their corporate social responsibility goals.
    - eropple 7y ago
      Yes, exactly. The hard part is how, and that's what I think can be done. ;)