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> babel is used by many many corporate entities, an e.g. $5/month payment would not stop them from using it, IF that payment was trivial to make But for a corp

> babel is used by many many corporate entities, an e.g. $5/month payment would not stop them from using it, IF that payment was trivial to make But for a corporation undertaking the obligation to pay any amount of money is not trivial to do. Someone inside has to justify the expense, probably write a document about it, depending on the corporation all kind of hoops need to be jumped, decision makers convinced, checks and gates passed. It is probably not meaningfully harder to do all of these for a $50k yearly licence than for $5 monthly licence.

bornfreddy 4y ago
With proliferation of cheap monthly subscriptions I believe the processes in the businesses would adapt - but yes, it would take some time. Still, the other point (why pay if there is no obligation) is a bigger obstacle. One obvious solution is to provide paid extensions on top of free core product, but that might lead to forks if enough people are interested in the functionality and not willing to pay (/ use proprietary software). I believe the future is in "fair use" licenses - those that grant users freedom to use for their (non-competing) business and to repair as needed, but that allow original developers to charge money for extra features and for services without worrying that competition will undercut them on market (without supporting the product). I'm following the "cloud protection" licenses and hope that one of them gains enough traction to become a serious contender to FOSS.