3 ms·

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's perfectly ok to charge folks for software and if you're OSS project isn't motivating you like it used to, it's p

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's perfectly ok to charge folks for software and if you're OSS project isn't motivating you like it used to, it's perfectly ok to charge users for support/updates/bugfixes.

kawhah 3y ago
Yes, the main reason why people don't do this is because they aren't psychologically ready to find out that the thing which cost them a lot of effort has very little monetary value.
hahn-kev 3y ago
I agree with the sentiment. But if anyone has ever contributed now you're in a bad place because you are making money off their work which they probably didn't consent to.
- bogwog 3y ago
  A CLA could fix that, but that should be done early, and you need to be prepared to ignore people that try to pressure you into not doing it.
- eschneider 3y ago
  Only if you change the license and you don't need to do that to charge for support, etc.
IshKebab 3y ago
Yes exactly. You can say "I don't have much time to work on this project I'm afraid, but I am available for consulting if you really need this fixed."
chlorion 3y ago
This is really important. A lot of people think open source is about not paying for software, even some open source devs think this. You are allowed to sell your software even if its GPL'd or whatever. You are not obligated to give the source away for free, you can charge people for the source and for binaries, you just have to provide the source when someone does buy it. I would like to see more people try this out. The most common counterargument here is that someone can pay for your source code, and then upload it to github, or even sell it themselves, allowing people to circumvent paying (you) for it. This is true, but most software needs to be maintained in order to be useful, and you are not obligated to provide the updates to people who haven't paid you, and I think you could charge for access to the updates, even for people who have purchased your software before. You can also use trademarks, anyone who would attempt to resell it would not be able to use your "marks", which could be the project name or logo for example. Maybe there are reasons nobody is doing this, maybe its not viable, but I haven't seen any cases where someone has at least tried this.
- eschneider 3y ago
  I expect quite a few people do this, or a variation on this.

kawhah 3y ago

Yes, the main reason why people don't do this is because they aren't psychologically ready to find out that the thing which cost them a lot of effort has very little monetary value.

hahn-kev 3y ago

I agree with the sentiment. But if anyone has ever contributed now you're in a bad place because you are making money off their work which they probably didn't consent to.

bogwog 3y ago
A CLA could fix that, but that should be done early, and you need to be prepared to ignore people that try to pressure you into not doing it.
eschneider 3y ago
Only if you change the license and you don't need to do that to charge for support, etc.

IshKebab 3y ago

Yes exactly. You can say "I don't have much time to work on this project I'm afraid, but I am available for consulting if you really need this fixed."

chlorion 3y ago

This is really important. A lot of people think open source is about not paying for software, even some open source devs think this. You are allowed to sell your software even if its GPL'd or whatever. You are not obligated to give the source away for free, you can charge people for the source and for binaries, you just have to provide the source when someone does buy it. I would like to see more people try this out. The most common counterargument here is that someone can pay for your source code, and then upload it to github, or even sell it themselves, allowing people to circumvent paying (you) for it. This is true, but most software needs to be maintained in order to be useful, and you are not obligated to provide the updates to people who haven't paid you, and I think you could charge for access to the updates, even for people who have purchased your software before. You can also use trademarks, anyone who would attempt to resell it would not be able to use your "marks", which could be the project name or logo for example. Maybe there are reasons nobody is doing this, maybe its not viable, but I haven't seen any cases where someone has at least tried this.

eschneider 3y ago
I expect quite a few people do this, or a variation on this.