Open Source is usually $0 cost because I believe there is a problem with Stallman's guidelines. They fail to show how developer's can protect price: > When we

Open Source is usually $0 cost because I believe there is a problem with Stallman's guidelines. They fail to show how developer's can protect price: > When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” There are two problem I see here, 1) totally free redistribution means price cannot be protected, as resellers can make a too-easy profit giving out discounts, and 2) unrestricted access leads to theft, people will eventually steal once they learn there are no impediments. I think Open Source needs to move to a Low Cost model similar to the modern media industry. A $10/month subscription to sites like Github. Limited access to projects for non-subscribers. Subscribers can download as much as they want. Fees are redistributed to projects based on subscriber downloads. License prohibits anyone but project owner from re-hosting on other sites. Developers are free to modify your source, and get compensated for it, but just because they touch a small part of it, they don't then get all your revenue, instead rather than project forks, they can do project patches or do their own rewrites. Copyright is protected but the definition for copyright of source code should be softened to be more aligned with standards for other media, so copyright for source should be simply defined as 'obviously equivalent to an average programmer'. So then any programmer is allowed to superficially rewrite code, just as authors superficially rewrite articles, it needs to have some originality to an average programmer. This would both incentivize/support developers and keep away restrictions from improving code.