14 ms·

Generating Income from Open Source

254 points by farazzz 3y ago

monero-xmr 3y ago
Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineers to vet its utility first before paying, with free usage for non-profits (i.e. other non-profit devs). I’m not making any comment about the merits of this model. I strictly make and sell closed-source software (SaaS). But it’s funny to me that this is essentially the same business model, but you use the threat of legal action rather than API keys to enforce your rights. “Open Source” is in the name only.
- kiba 3y ago
  Open source licenses are commercial licenses, full stop. It doesn't prevent for profit uses.
- slondr 3y ago
  Free as in free speech, not as in free beer. This has been a slogan of free software for decades. Charging money for your software is not in any way incompatible with open source.
  - chii 3y ago
    > Charging money for your software is not in any way incompatible with open source of course not. But nobody has successfully been able to charge for it, without additional things such as services/support etc.
  - chaxor 3y ago
    The main important part of open source, regardless of license, is that you have the ability to run it locally to ensure that the code written and provided is what is used for your interaction with the code (since obviously a company or entity can lie and provide code that is different than what is used as the SaS. Tailscale and Headscale come to mind.
- godelski 3y ago
  I really think these kinds of comments are counter productive to people seeing source available software (SAS, OSS, FOSS, or all three). Free to the public but not corporate is clearly not "try before you buy" and is a gross misinterpretation of this. I don't care what Citizens United ruling said, corporations are not the same as people and we should distinguish them as such. This model is in no way functionally similar to closed-source software and the comparison is laughable. The source is right there! __Stop gatekeeping__ Source available software with commercial licensing still helps the main intended target: hackers, builders, inventors, creators, learners, researchers, pen testers, and so on. Opened source code makes programs safer and encourages creativity. The article is right that you can't just live on donations and pure good will, as much as we'd love to see this you gotta pay the bills. Accountability is low in large societies and social pressure means little. SAS still helps the people, but it also puts restrictions on those that would profit off of your work and leave you high and dry. Comments like these only encourage closed source hardware as well as the lack of free software. The fucking name OSS confuses people and this has been an utter disaster. Your name should clearly indicate what is being advocated and should not conflict with a reasonable but distinctly different definition (there's a lot of this for some fucking reason). Especially when the reasonable interpretation makes more sense! Even you say that it is in the name only and we see these fights almost weekly here. Words mean what people use them as. I don't care what OSI says, OSS and SAS are the same thing. Corporations lose trademarks as words/phrases enter the lexicon, I don't know why we should defend OSI's inane definition. They have not won the culture war on what the term means.
  - ezekg 3y ago
    > Words mean what people use them as. I don't care what OSI says, OSS and SAS are the same thing. I completely agree. I’ve avoided using the term “open source” where possible for my SAS, instead opting for word-play like “open, source-available”, but it was frustrating that I felt I even needed to do that to avoid backlash from the zealots. And I’ve loosened my reigns there a bit as well as time has gone by. I think it’s silly. I want to use “open source” because that’s what it is. As an example, there’s no reason Elastic should have had to cave to OSI and start using “free & open” everywhere in place of “open source.” The reality is SAS licenses like ELv2 may not be “Open Source (tm)” but they sure as hell are “open source” to most people in our industry. FOSS !== OSS.
- csdreamer7 3y ago
  > Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineers to vet its utility first before paying, with free usage for non-profits (i.e. other non-profit devs). You really do not understand what rights Open Source licenses give you. The GPL in particular really only affects you if you distribute it (a js library vs nginx). There is no 'non-profit' exception in the GPL. > but you use the threat of legal action rather than API keys to enforce your rights. “Open Source” is in the name only. Every software company has a license that governs it's use. I am pretty certain your company will use legal threats if it's source code got out or it's frontend code was being abused. There are likely legal clauses in your employment contract over the source code that you have signed.
- memefrog 3y ago
  It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license. In fact, it is something explicitly advocated for by Richard Stallman himself and the Free Software Foundation generally: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions He's got mixed feelings, but says "I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed." If of all people rms considers something acceptable, then whatever that thing is, it certainly can't be described as "virtually closed source". If you release something as open source software, then it is open source software. The end. That's what the term means. Also licensing it under a proprietary license doesn't change that. Free software licensing is not "try before you buy", and it is not "free usage for non-profits". Open source and "not for profit" are not synonyms de facto or de jure. You can use GPL'd software in commercial products and in fact many people do, frequently. You probably have a dozen copies of Linux in your house in various appliances that you don't even know are there. There are many other examples.
  - ximm 3y ago
    There is a subtle but important difference here though: If you publish a piece of software under two licenses, one open source and one commercial, why would anybody pick the commercial one? You cannot say "corporations have to pick the commercial one". The only way to do that would be to include a term in the open source license so it cannot be used by corporations. But then it would no longer meet the open source definition. "Free for private use but payed for commercial use" is not open source! But if the open source license is copyleft (e.g. GPL), any software that uses it would also have to be open source. So dual licensing allows corporations to pay to keep their own code a secret. This implies that dual licensing is pointless for non-copyleft licenses like MIT, and also for developer tooling that is not directly used in the final product.
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      You might want the logos
- cttet 3y ago
  > “Open Source” is in the name only. Hard to imagine this can be upvoted to this high. "Open Source" just means that the source code is open, not closed. Some people just like the source code to be open (e.g. for security reasons to examine the source code.). It is just as simple as that.
- mejutoco 3y ago
  Open source has a specific meaning clarified in each license (like truffle, truffle-flavoured in food). Each license is unambiguous about what one is allowed to do. Some licenses favor the freedom of the user, and some the freedom of the developer, in different degrees. It is not a "name only" thing, unless we insist on misinterpreting it.
larrydag 3y ago
I've always looked at charging for open source as a support service. What is the developer's time worth? If one wants new features pay a fee/salary/bounty for the development.
- nhumrich 3y ago
  This leads to the problem of stopping to pay once the feature you care about exists. Software is an interesting problem where you build once sell a lot. It's not economical if you sell once and give the rest for free. There are a lot of software products that I use, that I don't personally need more features for, so I would have no incentive to pay. My usefulness has been subsidized by others. In other words, I don't think it's a sustainable way to support open source projects
- FeetYeet 3y ago
  I used Ghost.org in a project last year and love their business model (and obviously their product). Completely open source software, but you can pay a reasonable amount for managed hosting and support. Plus obviously it supports the devs and new development. A simple line to separate DIYers from anyone who wants the convenience, peace of mind, or to support the project itself. Would love to see more of this.
hbcondo714 3y ago
> Isotope is open source But it hasn't been updated in years: https://github.com/metafizzy/isotope https://github.com/metafizzy/isotope Does the commercial license use a different repo?
- commoner 3y ago
  I don't think so. Buying a commericial license just gives you a PDF of the license, according to Isotope's docs: > Purchasing takes a minute. Our purchasing form accepts credit cards or PayPal. Once purchased, you’ll receive a commercial license PDF and you will be all set to use Isotope in your commercial applications. https://isotope.metafizzy.co/license.html#purchasing-a-commercial-license https://isotope.metafizzy.co/license.html#purchasing-a-comme...
Dalewyn 3y ago
The question of whether source code is accessible (open vs. closed) and whether you need to pay someone to do something with that source code (free vs. paid) are two different questions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Buttons840 3y ago
I recently ran across the the license for Dragonfly [1] which has some restrictions (rights reserved), but 5 years after the license date the license switches to Apache 2.0. Basically a time-limited rights reservation. I don't hate it. I might even contribute to such a project for free. I propose something like this: When I release code, it's rights-reserved for 5 years, then open-source (and this particular clause would be irrevocable). Anyone may use the software for non-commercial purposes. Anyone may contribute, those who contribute will be granted permission for commercial use if I deem their contributions significant enough. Anyone may distribute the software under these terms. If such a model became popular, I have a hard time imagining it could make things any worse. It might even accelerate open-source development by shifting societies resources to those who are actually producing this valuable software. You might say, "but it's not open-source", fair enough, but we can view it as open-source contribution with a delay. For example, if this model became widely popular this year, and we saw great progress with this model, then come 2028 we would be flooded with new open-source software and ultimately might be better off than we would have been without this model. Ultimately people choose to make their software open-source for moral reasons, and because they hope that by giving they might receive in turn--I contribute, you contribute, and we share freely (and we're both poor). This model I've talked about still achieves similar goals. People might still be willing to contribute, even for free, because I have given them an irrevocable legal promise that their contributions will be made available to all at a specific time. (This whole thing makes me rethink copyright and patents and how much they really contribute to society. Perhaps their terms should be shortened?) [1]: https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/main/LICENSE.m...
- MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
  That license is the Business Source License, created for MariaDB I believe: => https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/ https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/ MariaDB - Adopting and Developing BSL Software I've also noticed Sentry using it. I think it address one of the the main criticisms of proprietary licenses, while still allowing a company to form a considerable moat around their software. (I think we can agree, death of author + 70 years is way too long for code source, but 5 years of copyright seems perfectly reasonable.)
pabs3 3y ago
The FOSSjobs wiki has a bunch of other resources for getting paid to work on open source: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://www.fossjobs.net/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jillesvangurp 3y ago
This is a good overview of the options. It's worth pointing out that there are a lot of successful open source projects out there and most of them are maintained by people that are being paid by companies to do so. It's nonsense that you can't make money of open source, it's an industry that employs quite a few people and the companies that employ them get a lot of value back in return. A lot of that spending is strategic and not charitable. E.g. Google has things like Android. They make a lot of money from Android. And its built on top of a lot of OSS. Instead of passively consuming that, they employ people to work on each of the projects that are important to them and have a very active role in driving those forward. They even create open source projects themselves. In fact all of the big name software companies have people on staff that represent them in various mission critical open source projects. There are also a lot of smaller companies that are very successful that are built on top of open source projects that they either pioneered or contribute to heavily. Commercial contributions to open source are the back bone to the open source communities. Any such business is a great place to start if you are looking to make money from open source. They might employ you if you are good enough and having a track record as a top contributor is a great way into such companies. Getting involved with such projects is a great way to bootstrap your professional career in open source development. Where a lot of amateur run projects fail to make money is mis-perception of their value, unprofessional behavior by developers, or just plain poor business and communication skills. That happens a lot. Computer scientists are not great at this stuff. Also they tend to be a bit spoiled because they are constantly being pampered by companies that need their technical skills. So, not necessarily the best entrepreneurs. Built it and they will come is not how things work. It's not a business model. Making money is hard work and you have to be smart about it. Just because you think that your source code is worth a lot doesn't mean it actually is. E.g. a lot of javascript packages are a combination of tiny and a bit of a commodity. What's a commodity: something with a lot of alternate implementations. If you are cost conscious consumer of such things, you are going to be optimizing for cost and convenience and pick the cheapest (i.e. free) good enough thing. Commodities are by definition not worth a lot. And in OSS that typically means 0$. Mistake #1 with OSS companies: most of them provide commodity functionality that just isn't worth a lot to many people. Set your expectations accordingly. There can still be valid reasons to work on them. I maintain some small open source projects and I've set my expectations accordingly. I don't expect or ask for donations. Below a certain threshold the admin work on my side would cost me more than the amount I'd receive. It makes no economical sense to me to bother with low $ amount tips unless I magically can get a lot of them. For the same reason, I don't donate to OSS projects either. I reserve donations for more worthy causes. I make money indirectly via consultancy. The libraries are just there to make my life easier and they are a nice talking point that helps my clients understand that I might know what I'm talking about. Most of my clients don't actually use my OSS even. Mainly they just make my life easier. And I enjoy working on them. Nothing wrong with that.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
[old person rant] There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. It used to be the norm and it is still quite common. These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source. However, the term open source has been used for so many different things that is has lost most shared coherent meaning. I guess that is why "Libre Software" is now being used by some. What is plain hypocrisy to me are the people who developed "for profit" open source projects, and are angry when they dont get paid enough, when the projects they have created rely on GNU tools, the Linux kernel (Perhaps Debian), a libre software database on so on. Their product is built on the shoulders and sacrifice of other open-source folks that often is not getting paid or not paid enough. For profit open source should have clause of donating X% of profits downstream to the open-source projects they rely on. (Since they would have no product without them) There are some core and vital open-source projects that have enormous importance for millions. I think supporting them should be a priority. A lot of modern software is "open source" until it become inconvenient and they introduce "Pro", or "see source", or shift license entirely. A lot of companies should just be "for profit". There is nothing wrong with it and nothing wrong with making money, or making money off of open source. I do nitpick on people who see open source as a way to get paid and they are angry if they dont get it.
- tm-guimaraes 3y ago
  Sourcehut seems to be an exception here, Drew not only has a profitable open source business, he not only contributes upstream, but also donate to open source projects.
  - jraph 3y ago
    WordPress, Nextcloud, XWiki, Univention, Passbolt are a few other profitable open source businesses doing well. It is possible to sell open source software :-) Now, maybe it's not as profitable, but not every wants to be as big as Apple or Microsoft.
    - 3y ago
pcthrowaway 3y ago
While we're here, does anyone know if a sole proprietorship donating to OS projects for "sponsorship" (aka listing the donor company's name in the project's github) is deductible as Advertising expenses? Specifically wondering about Canada personally, but I'm sure people in the U.S. would benefit from this knowledge as well. Our tax law (in Canada) is so opaque, and I feel like finding ways for these monetary contributions to be deductible as business expenses would make it so much easier for businesses to justify the expense. If donations can't be written off, OS projects would then do well to add a paid tier with some useless exclusive functionality, just so donors can make it a software expense.
- unmole 3y ago
  > While we're here, does anyone know if a sole proprietorship donating to OS projects for "sponsorship" (aka listing the donor company's name in the project's github) is deductible as Advertising expenses? It is deductible in India. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, chartered accountant. Nothing I ever say should be construed as legal advice etc. > Our tax law (in Canada) is so opaque I was going to dismiss it as something people in every country complain about but then I tried to look it up myself: Depending on where you're advertising, you might be entitled to either a 100% deduction, a 50% deduction or no deduction at all. And you need to take into account if the publication has atleast 80% original content to figure out the deduction. Seriously, WTAF is that?!
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Oh it's even worse, it mainly talks about advertising in "periodicals", but doesn't say anything about internet advertising (such as social media ads, paid sponsorships with influencers, sponsoring a github repo, etc.) You can deduct expenses for advertising, including advertising in Canadian newspapers and on Canadian television and radio stations. You can also claim any amount you paid as a finder's fee. Certain restrictions apply to the amount of the expense you can deduct for advertising in a periodical. You can deduct all the expense if your advertising is directed at a Canadian market and the original editorial content in the issue is 80% or more of the issue's total non-advertising content. You can deduct 50% of the expense if your advertising in a periodical is directed at a Canadian market and the original editorial content in the issue is less than 80% of the issue's total non-advertising content. You cannot deduct expenses for advertising directed mainly at a Canadian market when you advertise with a foreign broadcaster. That section about the periodical having >=80% "editorial content" (whatever that means) is going to age well with LLM material sneaking in.
trippsydrippsy 3y ago
[dead]
AntonCTO 3y ago
It is not a widely held opinion, but I enjoy, or even prefer, using BSL-licensed products like CockroachDB or ElasticSearch. The license grants me the freedom to use them as I wish, with the exception of competing with their cloud services. Additionally, there is a high probability that these products have a sustainable business model and will continue to be developed.
derekkraan 3y ago
There are some companies out there who want to help devs commercialize their libraries. These are the ones that I know about: https://codecodeship.com/ https://codecodeship.com/ (JS, Ruby, .NET, Rust, Elixir) https://anystack.sh/ https://anystack.sh/ (PHP, Ruby, JS, Python) https://www.privjs.com/ https://www.privjs.com/ (JS) Full disclosure: I built Code Code Ship
fossweaver 3y ago
[My Opinion] I think this is completely alright as long as there is a contribution to the open source, support to the community from the companies who use OSS to generate income. There are 2 ways of looking at it. 1. Solve the operationalisation of the different OSS tools 2. Value addition on top of OSS. For instance: Here is one such company (https://opsverse.io https://opsverse.io) that specialises on both #1 and #2. Community and OSS are 2 things that are at the center of everything that OpsVerse does. OpsVerse provides "few clicks and you are up and running" sort of suite of devops tools entirely powered by OSS tools, and without the trouble of managing/scaling the tools.
4kimov 3y ago
I'd say it's also important to remember the types of projects that are easier to monetize. About a decade ago I wrote an OSS library that gained some nice traction, and it wasn't really monetizable (granted I didn't want that anyway). Then there's companies that write open-source software and are not only successful in charging for it, but also have funding. I run Fossfox [0] that indexes companies that have either open-sourced their main products (eg ClickHouse) or that heavily contribute to open-source (eg OpenAI). The ones that open-source their main products: some of them do use copyleft licenses, but most surprisingly go with Apache 2.0 (and of course use some dual licenses; with "ee/" directories). The one thing a lot of them have in common is providing hosted versions of their software. A lot of customers don't want the hassle of running it themselves, and do pay for hosting and support. [0] https://fossfox.com/ https://fossfox.com/
birk 3y ago
Great article! I started https://polar.sh https://polar.sh to help maintainers get more funding + insights about their customers & their needs. Long-term building tooling for managing all up sold services and customer management. I definitely agree that 1) we need to convert companies more, but 2) it won’t happen with the traditional sponsorship/donations model. They need to be able to quantify the value of their investments. With the first version of Polar, we aim to provide that while giving maintainers better insight on needs & funding to develop efforts that align with their vision.
shipscode 3y ago
Closed source that thing and charge for it or I will. All open source makers are leaving tons of bread on that table. I see these donation numbers where they’re netting $200/mo for some wildly successful tool. Closed sourcing it + marketing and you’ll be at $2-$3k/mo in 6 months with moderate effort. Open source is cool for a communal app with a lot of different vectors. Openpilot for example is smart for me. For everything else though? It’s an easy way for software to become unmaintained. Good luck finding someone to work for free in perpetuity.
sneak 3y ago
If the license restricts you to personal use only, it is not an open source license.
- imtringued 3y ago
  Good thing the license allows personal use rather restricting only to personal use. People don't understand that in these constellations the project is commercially released first and then the open source license allows things that have not been covered by the commercial license. This is the opposite of restriction.
yboris 3y ago
I created Video Hub App which is MIT License https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App I also sell it for $5 and have sold just over 5,000 copies last month (5 years old app). Importantly, $3.50 of every purchase goes to a cost-effective charity, GiveWell recommended Against Malaria Foundation (see website for details). https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/ I call this charityware and I wrote about it years ago: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-proceeds-from-software-purchases-e48e66a5d1a https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...
jzombie 3y ago
I am interested in knowing if anyone has any book recommendations regarding making money with open source.

254 points by farazzz 3y ago

Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineers to vet its utility first before paying, with free usage for non-profits (i.e. other non-profit devs). I’m not making any comment about the merits of this model. I strictly make and sell closed-source software (SaaS). But it’s funny to me that this is essentially the same business model, but you use the threat of legal action rather than API keys to enforce your rights. “Open Source” is in the name only.

kiba 3y ago
Open source licenses are commercial licenses, full stop. It doesn't prevent for profit uses.
slondr 3y ago
Free as in free speech, not as in free beer. This has been a slogan of free software for decades. Charging money for your software is not in any way incompatible with open source.
- chii 3y ago
  > Charging money for your software is not in any way incompatible with open source of course not. But nobody has successfully been able to charge for it, without additional things such as services/support etc.
- chaxor 3y ago
  The main important part of open source, regardless of license, is that you have the ability to run it locally to ensure that the code written and provided is what is used for your interaction with the code (since obviously a company or entity can lie and provide code that is different than what is used as the SaS. Tailscale and Headscale come to mind.
godelski 3y ago
I really think these kinds of comments are counter productive to people seeing source available software (SAS, OSS, FOSS, or all three). Free to the public but not corporate is clearly not "try before you buy" and is a gross misinterpretation of this. I don't care what Citizens United ruling said, corporations are not the same as people and we should distinguish them as such. This model is in no way functionally similar to closed-source software and the comparison is laughable. The source is right there! __Stop gatekeeping__ Source available software with commercial licensing still helps the main intended target: hackers, builders, inventors, creators, learners, researchers, pen testers, and so on. Opened source code makes programs safer and encourages creativity. The article is right that you can't just live on donations and pure good will, as much as we'd love to see this you gotta pay the bills. Accountability is low in large societies and social pressure means little. SAS still helps the people, but it also puts restrictions on those that would profit off of your work and leave you high and dry. Comments like these only encourage closed source hardware as well as the lack of free software. The fucking name OSS confuses people and this has been an utter disaster. Your name should clearly indicate what is being advocated and should not conflict with a reasonable but distinctly different definition (there's a lot of this for some fucking reason). Especially when the reasonable interpretation makes more sense! Even you say that it is in the name only and we see these fights almost weekly here. Words mean what people use them as. I don't care what OSI says, OSS and SAS are the same thing. Corporations lose trademarks as words/phrases enter the lexicon, I don't know why we should defend OSI's inane definition. They have not won the culture war on what the term means.
- ezekg 3y ago
  > Words mean what people use them as. I don't care what OSI says, OSS and SAS are the same thing. I completely agree. I’ve avoided using the term “open source” where possible for my SAS, instead opting for word-play like “open, source-available”, but it was frustrating that I felt I even needed to do that to avoid backlash from the zealots. And I’ve loosened my reigns there a bit as well as time has gone by. I think it’s silly. I want to use “open source” because that’s what it is. As an example, there’s no reason Elastic should have had to cave to OSI and start using “free & open” everywhere in place of “open source.” The reality is SAS licenses like ELv2 may not be “Open Source (tm)” but they sure as hell are “open source” to most people in our industry. FOSS !== OSS.
csdreamer7 3y ago
> Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineers to vet its utility first before paying, with free usage for non-profits (i.e. other non-profit devs). You really do not understand what rights Open Source licenses give you. The GPL in particular really only affects you if you distribute it (a js library vs nginx). There is no 'non-profit' exception in the GPL. > but you use the threat of legal action rather than API keys to enforce your rights. “Open Source” is in the name only. Every software company has a license that governs it's use. I am pretty certain your company will use legal threats if it's source code got out or it's frontend code was being abused. There are likely legal clauses in your employment contract over the source code that you have signed.
memefrog 3y ago
It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license. In fact, it is something explicitly advocated for by Richard Stallman himself and the Free Software Foundation generally: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions He's got mixed feelings, but says "I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed." If of all people rms considers something acceptable, then whatever that thing is, it certainly can't be described as "virtually closed source". If you release something as open source software, then it is open source software. The end. That's what the term means. Also licensing it under a proprietary license doesn't change that. Free software licensing is not "try before you buy", and it is not "free usage for non-profits". Open source and "not for profit" are not synonyms de facto or de jure. You can use GPL'd software in commercial products and in fact many people do, frequently. You probably have a dozen copies of Linux in your house in various appliances that you don't even know are there. There are many other examples.
- ximm 3y ago
  There is a subtle but important difference here though: If you publish a piece of software under two licenses, one open source and one commercial, why would anybody pick the commercial one? You cannot say "corporations have to pick the commercial one". The only way to do that would be to include a term in the open source license so it cannot be used by corporations. But then it would no longer meet the open source definition. "Free for private use but payed for commercial use" is not open source! But if the open source license is copyleft (e.g. GPL), any software that uses it would also have to be open source. So dual licensing allows corporations to pay to keep their own code a secret. This implies that dual licensing is pointless for non-copyleft licenses like MIT, and also for developer tooling that is not directly used in the final product.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    You might want the logos
cttet 3y ago
> “Open Source” is in the name only. Hard to imagine this can be upvoted to this high. "Open Source" just means that the source code is open, not closed. Some people just like the source code to be open (e.g. for security reasons to examine the source code.). It is just as simple as that.
mejutoco 3y ago
Open source has a specific meaning clarified in each license (like truffle, truffle-flavoured in food). Each license is unambiguous about what one is allowed to do. Some licenses favor the freedom of the user, and some the freedom of the developer, in different degrees. It is not a "name only" thing, unless we insist on misinterpreting it.

larrydag 3y ago

I've always looked at charging for open source as a support service. What is the developer's time worth? If one wants new features pay a fee/salary/bounty for the development.

nhumrich 3y ago
This leads to the problem of stopping to pay once the feature you care about exists. Software is an interesting problem where you build once sell a lot. It's not economical if you sell once and give the rest for free. There are a lot of software products that I use, that I don't personally need more features for, so I would have no incentive to pay. My usefulness has been subsidized by others. In other words, I don't think it's a sustainable way to support open source projects
FeetYeet 3y ago
I used Ghost.org in a project last year and love their business model (and obviously their product). Completely open source software, but you can pay a reasonable amount for managed hosting and support. Plus obviously it supports the devs and new development. A simple line to separate DIYers from anyone who wants the convenience, peace of mind, or to support the project itself. Would love to see more of this.

hbcondo714 3y ago

> Isotope is open source But it hasn't been updated in years: https://github.com/metafizzy/isotope https://github.com/metafizzy/isotope Does the commercial license use a different repo?

commoner 3y ago
I don't think so. Buying a commericial license just gives you a PDF of the license, according to Isotope's docs: > Purchasing takes a minute. Our purchasing form accepts credit cards or PayPal. Once purchased, you’ll receive a commercial license PDF and you will be all set to use Isotope in your commercial applications. https://isotope.metafizzy.co/license.html#purchasing-a-commercial-license https://isotope.metafizzy.co/license.html#purchasing-a-comme...

Dalewyn 3y ago

The question of whether source code is accessible (open vs. closed) and whether you need to pay someone to do something with that source code (free vs. paid) are two different questions.

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Buttons840 3y ago

I recently ran across the the license for Dragonfly [1] which has some restrictions (rights reserved), but 5 years after the license date the license switches to Apache 2.0. Basically a time-limited rights reservation. I don't hate it. I might even contribute to such a project for free. I propose something like this: When I release code, it's rights-reserved for 5 years, then open-source (and this particular clause would be irrevocable). Anyone may use the software for non-commercial purposes. Anyone may contribute, those who contribute will be granted permission for commercial use if I deem their contributions significant enough. Anyone may distribute the software under these terms. If such a model became popular, I have a hard time imagining it could make things any worse. It might even accelerate open-source development by shifting societies resources to those who are actually producing this valuable software. You might say, "but it's not open-source", fair enough, but we can view it as open-source contribution with a delay. For example, if this model became widely popular this year, and we saw great progress with this model, then come 2028 we would be flooded with new open-source software and ultimately might be better off than we would have been without this model. Ultimately people choose to make their software open-source for moral reasons, and because they hope that by giving they might receive in turn--I contribute, you contribute, and we share freely (and we're both poor). This model I've talked about still achieves similar goals. People might still be willing to contribute, even for free, because I have given them an irrevocable legal promise that their contributions will be made available to all at a specific time. (This whole thing makes me rethink copyright and patents and how much they really contribute to society. Perhaps their terms should be shortened?) [1]: https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/main/LICENSE.m...

MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
That license is the Business Source License, created for MariaDB I believe: => https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/ https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/ MariaDB - Adopting and Developing BSL Software I've also noticed Sentry using it. I think it address one of the the main criticisms of proprietary licenses, while still allowing a company to form a considerable moat around their software. (I think we can agree, death of author + 70 years is way too long for code source, but 5 years of copyright seems perfectly reasonable.)

pabs3 3y ago

The FOSSjobs wiki has a bunch of other resources for getting paid to work on open source: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://www.fossjobs.net/

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jillesvangurp 3y ago

This is a good overview of the options. It's worth pointing out that there are a lot of successful open source projects out there and most of them are maintained by people that are being paid by companies to do so. It's nonsense that you can't make money of open source, it's an industry that employs quite a few people and the companies that employ them get a lot of value back in return. A lot of that spending is strategic and not charitable. E.g. Google has things like Android. They make a lot of money from Android. And its built on top of a lot of OSS. Instead of passively consuming that, they employ people to work on each of the projects that are important to them and have a very active role in driving those forward. They even create open source projects themselves. In fact all of the big name software companies have people on staff that represent them in various mission critical open source projects. There are also a lot of smaller companies that are very successful that are built on top of open source projects that they either pioneered or contribute to heavily. Commercial contributions to open source are the back bone to the open source communities. Any such business is a great place to start if you are looking to make money from open source. They might employ you if you are good enough and having a track record as a top contributor is a great way into such companies. Getting involved with such projects is a great way to bootstrap your professional career in open source development. Where a lot of amateur run projects fail to make money is mis-perception of their value, unprofessional behavior by developers, or just plain poor business and communication skills. That happens a lot. Computer scientists are not great at this stuff. Also they tend to be a bit spoiled because they are constantly being pampered by companies that need their technical skills. So, not necessarily the best entrepreneurs. Built it and they will come is not how things work. It's not a business model. Making money is hard work and you have to be smart about it. Just because you think that your source code is worth a lot doesn't mean it actually is. E.g. a lot of javascript packages are a combination of tiny and a bit of a commodity. What's a commodity: something with a lot of alternate implementations. If you are cost conscious consumer of such things, you are going to be optimizing for cost and convenience and pick the cheapest (i.e. free) good enough thing. Commodities are by definition not worth a lot. And in OSS that typically means 0$. Mistake #1 with OSS companies: most of them provide commodity functionality that just isn't worth a lot to many people. Set your expectations accordingly. There can still be valid reasons to work on them. I maintain some small open source projects and I've set my expectations accordingly. I don't expect or ask for donations. Below a certain threshold the admin work on my side would cost me more than the amount I'd receive. It makes no economical sense to me to bother with low $ amount tips unless I magically can get a lot of them. For the same reason, I don't donate to OSS projects either. I reserve donations for more worthy causes. I make money indirectly via consultancy. The libraries are just there to make my life easier and they are a nice talking point that helps my clients understand that I might know what I'm talking about. Most of my clients don't actually use my OSS even. Mainly they just make my life easier. And I enjoy working on them. Nothing wrong with that.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

[old person rant] There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. It used to be the norm and it is still quite common. These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source. However, the term open source has been used for so many different things that is has lost most shared coherent meaning. I guess that is why "Libre Software" is now being used by some. What is plain hypocrisy to me are the people who developed "for profit" open source projects, and are angry when they dont get paid enough, when the projects they have created rely on GNU tools, the Linux kernel (Perhaps Debian), a libre software database on so on. Their product is built on the shoulders and sacrifice of other open-source folks that often is not getting paid or not paid enough. For profit open source should have clause of donating X% of profits downstream to the open-source projects they rely on. (Since they would have no product without them) There are some core and vital open-source projects that have enormous importance for millions. I think supporting them should be a priority. A lot of modern software is "open source" until it become inconvenient and they introduce "Pro", or "see source", or shift license entirely. A lot of companies should just be "for profit". There is nothing wrong with it and nothing wrong with making money, or making money off of open source. I do nitpick on people who see open source as a way to get paid and they are angry if they dont get it.

tm-guimaraes 3y ago
Sourcehut seems to be an exception here, Drew not only has a profitable open source business, he not only contributes upstream, but also donate to open source projects.
- jraph 3y ago
  WordPress, Nextcloud, XWiki, Univention, Passbolt are a few other profitable open source businesses doing well. It is possible to sell open source software :-) Now, maybe it's not as profitable, but not every wants to be as big as Apple or Microsoft.
  - 3y ago

pcthrowaway 3y ago

While we're here, does anyone know if a sole proprietorship donating to OS projects for "sponsorship" (aka listing the donor company's name in the project's github) is deductible as Advertising expenses? Specifically wondering about Canada personally, but I'm sure people in the U.S. would benefit from this knowledge as well. Our tax law (in Canada) is so opaque, and I feel like finding ways for these monetary contributions to be deductible as business expenses would make it so much easier for businesses to justify the expense. If donations can't be written off, OS projects would then do well to add a paid tier with some useless exclusive functionality, just so donors can make it a software expense.

unmole 3y ago
> While we're here, does anyone know if a sole proprietorship donating to OS projects for "sponsorship" (aka listing the donor company's name in the project's github) is deductible as Advertising expenses? It is deductible in India. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, chartered accountant. Nothing I ever say should be construed as legal advice etc. > Our tax law (in Canada) is so opaque I was going to dismiss it as something people in every country complain about but then I tried to look it up myself: Depending on where you're advertising, you might be entitled to either a 100% deduction, a 50% deduction or no deduction at all. And you need to take into account if the publication has atleast 80% original content to figure out the deduction. Seriously, WTAF is that?!
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Oh it's even worse, it mainly talks about advertising in "periodicals", but doesn't say anything about internet advertising (such as social media ads, paid sponsorships with influencers, sponsoring a github repo, etc.) You can deduct expenses for advertising, including advertising in Canadian newspapers and on Canadian television and radio stations. You can also claim any amount you paid as a finder's fee. Certain restrictions apply to the amount of the expense you can deduct for advertising in a periodical. You can deduct all the expense if your advertising is directed at a Canadian market and the original editorial content in the issue is 80% or more of the issue's total non-advertising content. You can deduct 50% of the expense if your advertising in a periodical is directed at a Canadian market and the original editorial content in the issue is less than 80% of the issue's total non-advertising content. You cannot deduct expenses for advertising directed mainly at a Canadian market when you advertise with a foreign broadcaster. That section about the periodical having >=80% "editorial content" (whatever that means) is going to age well with LLM material sneaking in.

trippsydrippsy 3y ago

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AntonCTO 3y ago

It is not a widely held opinion, but I enjoy, or even prefer, using BSL-licensed products like CockroachDB or ElasticSearch. The license grants me the freedom to use them as I wish, with the exception of competing with their cloud services. Additionally, there is a high probability that these products have a sustainable business model and will continue to be developed.

derekkraan 3y ago

There are some companies out there who want to help devs commercialize their libraries. These are the ones that I know about: https://codecodeship.com/ https://codecodeship.com/ (JS, Ruby, .NET, Rust, Elixir) https://anystack.sh/ https://anystack.sh/ (PHP, Ruby, JS, Python) https://www.privjs.com/ https://www.privjs.com/ (JS) Full disclosure: I built Code Code Ship

fossweaver 3y ago

[My Opinion] I think this is completely alright as long as there is a contribution to the open source, support to the community from the companies who use OSS to generate income. There are 2 ways of looking at it. 1. Solve the operationalisation of the different OSS tools 2. Value addition on top of OSS. For instance: Here is one such company (https://opsverse.io https://opsverse.io) that specialises on both #1 and #2. Community and OSS are 2 things that are at the center of everything that OpsVerse does. OpsVerse provides "few clicks and you are up and running" sort of suite of devops tools entirely powered by OSS tools, and without the trouble of managing/scaling the tools.

4kimov 3y ago

I'd say it's also important to remember the types of projects that are easier to monetize. About a decade ago I wrote an OSS library that gained some nice traction, and it wasn't really monetizable (granted I didn't want that anyway). Then there's companies that write open-source software and are not only successful in charging for it, but also have funding. I run Fossfox [0] that indexes companies that have either open-sourced their main products (eg ClickHouse) or that heavily contribute to open-source (eg OpenAI). The ones that open-source their main products: some of them do use copyleft licenses, but most surprisingly go with Apache 2.0 (and of course use some dual licenses; with "ee/" directories). The one thing a lot of them have in common is providing hosted versions of their software. A lot of customers don't want the hassle of running it themselves, and do pay for hosting and support. [0] https://fossfox.com/ https://fossfox.com/

birk 3y ago

Great article! I started https://polar.sh https://polar.sh to help maintainers get more funding + insights about their customers & their needs. Long-term building tooling for managing all up sold services and customer management. I definitely agree that 1) we need to convert companies more, but 2) it won’t happen with the traditional sponsorship/donations model. They need to be able to quantify the value of their investments. With the first version of Polar, we aim to provide that while giving maintainers better insight on needs & funding to develop efforts that align with their vision.

shipscode 3y ago

Closed source that thing and charge for it or I will. All open source makers are leaving tons of bread on that table. I see these donation numbers where they’re netting $200/mo for some wildly successful tool. Closed sourcing it + marketing and you’ll be at $2-$3k/mo in 6 months with moderate effort. Open source is cool for a communal app with a lot of different vectors. Openpilot for example is smart for me. For everything else though? It’s an easy way for software to become unmaintained. Good luck finding someone to work for free in perpetuity.

sneak 3y ago

If the license restricts you to personal use only, it is not an open source license.

imtringued 3y ago
Good thing the license allows personal use rather restricting only to personal use. People don't understand that in these constellations the project is commercially released first and then the open source license allows things that have not been covered by the commercial license. This is the opposite of restriction.

yboris 3y ago

I created Video Hub App which is MIT License https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App I also sell it for $5 and have sold just over 5,000 copies last month (5 years old app). Importantly, $3.50 of every purchase goes to a cost-effective charity, GiveWell recommended Against Malaria Foundation (see website for details). https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/ I call this charityware and I wrote about it years ago: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-proceeds-from-software-purchases-e48e66a5d1a https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...

jzombie 3y ago

I am interested in knowing if anyone has any book recommendations regarding making money with open source.