4 ms·

Commercial FOSS software is in a weird situation The code is open, so anyone can compile it for free, and when enough people care, any of them with a bit of fr

Commercial FOSS software is in a weird situation The code is open, so anyone can compile it for free, and when enough people care, any of them with a bit of free time is permitted to distribute builds, like people do for Ungoogled Chromium. Also, the teams and organizations that create Free Software are often non-profit organizations and volunteers, where customer care and market analysis is nonexistent. The idea of selling free software is something that I see a lot in theory but almost never in practice. Sometimes I think it was just Stallman preaching what was applicable in his time bit it's not realistic in today's world.

phpisthebest 4y ago
It is more realistic in today's world. There are a TON of open source projects I would be willing to support with corporate money if I could charge it as a "Sale" to my corp card, or invoice it as a "software sale" not a "Donation to a non-profit" I need no approval to buy software, I need approval to donate company money.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Personally, I'd like to see more of a "support contract" business model. You pay amount X to the lead developer(s), and in exchange get assistance for issue troubleshooting, preferential treatment of feature wishlists... The problem with this approach is that a lot of open source software is internationally developed, and it creates a two tier class of developers: those who can benefit from the customer payments and those who (have to) work on the software on their own time with no material benefits. As soon as you introduce financial benefit into any kind of organizations, power balances and group dynamics will always massively change, which often enough then leads into forks, splits or in the worst case in lawsuits (e.g. about trademarks). It becomes particularly complex if the developers are outside of the US and EEA legal areas: dealing with non-profits or international payments/employment is pretty much a settled thing there. But for developers outside these areas, there are a host of issues, some of which delve deep into uncharted legal territory: how to employ them, do you need fixed contracts or project-based ones, which taxes and how much apply, how to pay bribes (in some lesser developed countries, that is absolutely necessary to get permit applications processed), how to get any money transferred in the first place, are sanctions at play (e.g. the US sanctions Cuba, the EU does not, or the entire clusterfuck regarding Russia)...
  - pabs3 4y ago
    There is a startup called Ringer that is working on facilitating the support contract model. Also, lots of different projects have pages to connect freelancers with people needing support for the project. https://www.ringerhq.com/ https://www.ringerhq.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32764701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32764701 https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#freelancing https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#freelanc...
- pabs3 4y ago
  What do you need to change "donation" to "sale"? In theory they are the same for open source, the project gets money, you get the project even if you didn't spend money on the donation/sale.
- pabs3 4y ago
  One way you can convert "donation" into "sale" is sponsoring conferences, you get "advertising" for your company and the projects get money, some of which goes to conference expenses (inc travel etc) and the rest goes to the project.
diffeomorphism 4y ago
There are trademarks available for this use case. See for instance redhat and centOS or firefox and iceweasel. The main difficulties are that you have to provide some value/convenience (e.g. see krita on steam) and that if you mess up your project people might actually leave. For instance if the new MS office is dramatically worse people will drag their feet but will eventually buy it anyway, but when people did not like the direction of openoffice they did not stand for it and made libreoffice.

phpisthebest 4y ago

It is more realistic in today's world. There are a TON of open source projects I would be willing to support with corporate money if I could charge it as a "Sale" to my corp card, or invoice it as a "software sale" not a "Donation to a non-profit" I need no approval to buy software, I need approval to donate company money.

mschuster91 4y ago
Personally, I'd like to see more of a "support contract" business model. You pay amount X to the lead developer(s), and in exchange get assistance for issue troubleshooting, preferential treatment of feature wishlists... The problem with this approach is that a lot of open source software is internationally developed, and it creates a two tier class of developers: those who can benefit from the customer payments and those who (have to) work on the software on their own time with no material benefits. As soon as you introduce financial benefit into any kind of organizations, power balances and group dynamics will always massively change, which often enough then leads into forks, splits or in the worst case in lawsuits (e.g. about trademarks). It becomes particularly complex if the developers are outside of the US and EEA legal areas: dealing with non-profits or international payments/employment is pretty much a settled thing there. But for developers outside these areas, there are a host of issues, some of which delve deep into uncharted legal territory: how to employ them, do you need fixed contracts or project-based ones, which taxes and how much apply, how to pay bribes (in some lesser developed countries, that is absolutely necessary to get permit applications processed), how to get any money transferred in the first place, are sanctions at play (e.g. the US sanctions Cuba, the EU does not, or the entire clusterfuck regarding Russia)...
- pabs3 4y ago
  There is a startup called Ringer that is working on facilitating the support contract model. Also, lots of different projects have pages to connect freelancers with people needing support for the project. https://www.ringerhq.com/ https://www.ringerhq.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32764701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32764701 https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#freelancing https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#freelanc...
pabs3 4y ago
What do you need to change "donation" to "sale"? In theory they are the same for open source, the project gets money, you get the project even if you didn't spend money on the donation/sale.
pabs3 4y ago
One way you can convert "donation" into "sale" is sponsoring conferences, you get "advertising" for your company and the projects get money, some of which goes to conference expenses (inc travel etc) and the rest goes to the project.

diffeomorphism 4y ago

There are trademarks available for this use case. See for instance redhat and centOS or firefox and iceweasel. The main difficulties are that you have to provide some value/convenience (e.g. see krita on steam) and that if you mess up your project people might actually leave. For instance if the new MS office is dramatically worse people will drag their feet but will eventually buy it anyway, but when people did not like the direction of openoffice they did not stand for it and made libreoffice.