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I believe we need a way to charge companies of any size for the value that they generate out of using open source tools as part of their SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.
by fxtentacle 6y ago
I believe we need a way to charge companies of any size for the value that they generate out of using open source tools as part of their SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc. offering. If your cloud makes money by hosting an open source project as a service, that open source project should be entitled to a share of the revenue.
And, actually, we already have something quite similar, but I predict it won't fly with open source communities, most of which hate it unequivocally:
patents
- phkahler 6y agoDual license: AGPL and commercial. Simple.
- im3w1l 6y agoAGPL requires you to disclose any changes to the source you make to an SaaS. But it allows making money. If you want to disallow making money you have to use an even stricter license.
- phkahler 6y agoNo free license disallows making money. But the requirement for making source code available means people dont need to pay. To make money you need to offer something more than just one program. Adding value outside the code itself is viable.
- amelius 6y agoPatents are broken. But they can perhaps be fixed by effectuating a challenge-period after a patent application starts, whereby the patent can be invalidated if someone comes up with an implementation. Also there should be better protection against trolling, for example by requiring the holder of the patent to have a product implementing that patent. Further, a patent should not provide a strict monopoly on the technology for a given period (blocking competitors), but the rules should be so that anyone can buy a license for a reasonable price.
- im3w1l 6y agoThe issue with patents was that they were used for silly landgrabbing of obvious stuff and locking them up for a long time. Now that things have matured a bit, I think 5-10 year long patents would be perfectly healthy.