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I love the innovation. The basic idea here appears to be: - Nobody wants this to be closed source. The code is freely available, and you may do with it as you

I love the innovation. The basic idea here appears to be: - Nobody wants this to be closed source. The code is freely available, and you may do with it as you want. The marginal cost to distribute the code is 0, after all. - The maintainers, as people, don't want to do charity work for companies. Their time is limited, and if they're going to support revenue-generating activities, they want a cut of the revenue. So even if this doesn't get perfectly enforced (and it won't), that's fine! The maintainers are now free to respond to complaints with "you need to pay us for us to care." Companies that pay get some level of support; hobbyists get the same experience. Only the companies that ignore this warning will see the consequences, and it's particularly effective for reports where the author leans on "but there are a huge number of important users [to me] that are affected." Pay up if it matters! It strikes me as a pretty clean solution to a pretty common strain of open-source headache, _especially_ as AI-generated code/reports/etc. are on the rise.

majkinetor 1y ago
Anybody should be able pay up for the feature/support and it should be closed source until some threshold. That could take years or months depending on the interest/income. Eventually it will become open source. Otherwise, everybody will wait for someone to pay for the thing they want. Obviously this needs to be worked up a bit so not to maintain N forks but it can work.
- samrus 1y ago
  I think thays fine. Thats within the spirit of FOSS. The issue has always been companies demanding fixes because it affects their users, and those companies cant afford to wait. So now they can pay to have the devs spend a bit more time to get their fix out. This works
- robmensching 1y ago
  There are models out there like this. Look around the term "Fair Source" and I think you'll find them.
msgodel 1y ago
I was under the impression a number of open source projects already worked this way. There seemed to be a small industry of essentially consultants maintaining Busybox that way for example although maybe I misunderstood the situation.
orochimaaru 1y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. I’m not a Wix user so this is a general comment on the substance of this. As an open source project no one is forcing you to maintain it. Every fix you put in is something that you do of your own volition. No company can force you to accept a PR or work on it. I think FOSS developers often get stressed about this but unless you personally have financial motivations around what you’ve written you can tell people to fuck off. Yeah they can complain, but you have zero obligation to fix. The sponsorship seems to introduce a business model around what is FOSS, then it’s not FOSS anymore. The entire purpose of FOSS is anybody can copy and repurpose what you’ve built. They can fork it, take it in a different direction and create a business off of it. Depending on the license you’ve explicitly agreed to that. This sentiment is going to be unpopular but I think the outrage is unwarranted.
- nine_k 1y ago
  AFAICT, the fee applies if you're using binary releases, or if you open issues, and are also generating revenue from the project. Apparently you can grab the sources and build the binaries yourself (as per the OSS license), never ask for support (by reporting issues), and still have to pay nothing, even in a commercial setting. It looks a bit similar to the RedHat model: they release open-source software (Linux kernel is GPL2), but you may want to buy their binary releases and support. Not so rarely companies would not mind paying a small amount to help support the OSS projects they depend on. This may give CTOs an easy way to expense such support, even though becoming a GitHub sponsor is more involved than many would like; I hope Wix will introduce even easier options (Open Collective, its own non-profit, etc).
  - mikestorrent 1y ago
    > companies would not mind paying a small amount to help support the OSS projects they depend on meanwhile I've been trying to find a way to give Hashicorp some money for over a decade of depending on their tools, but their products simply are too good to need the enterprise versions! At some point we need something like a "certified B corporation" for "certified ethical fair-trade Free Software using corporation" where an independant body audits and makes sure you're donating to a sufficient % of the open source projects used in your production SaaS
calibas 1y ago
This doesn't seem terribly innovative to me, they've gone from giving away a product to selling a product. In other words, they're operating like a normal business.
- hbn 1y ago
  Well, it's a "free if you're not generating revenue" model which is similar to JetBrains' recent "free for non-commercial use" releases of their IDEs, and I believe Docker does something like that too. And famously WinRar which will nag you to upgrade every time you open it but doesn't actually force you to buy it, but expect enterprises will if they don't want to risk lawsuits.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    But why call it open source if it's no longer open source?
    - nevon 1y ago
      It is open source. The code is still available under the same license as before. They are just charging for binary builds.
      - LtWorf 1y ago
        Oh ok, I had misunderstood then.
    - samrus 1y ago
      They dont charge for the source. They charge for paying more attention to your issues, and for compiling the code for you. If you compile it yourself and do some of the work to resolve the issues (planning or an outright PR) then you wont pay anything
johannes1234321 1y ago
It is a tough thing. I want to focus on the negatives from two perspectives, as you wrote some positive: * This can make it harder to recruit further contributors as there is a two-clays system of contributors. Paid and unpaid. "Why should I fix a bug for free, while others earn the money?" * Accepting money make sit a business transaction, if I accept somebody's money they have demands towards me. Then I got to work on it. But of course the volunteer free model has sustainability issues ...
- robmensching 1y ago
  > This can make it harder to recruit further contributors as there is a two-clays system of contributors. We'll see. I haven't seen any reduction in contributions (not that the project gets lots of contributions because we're the same as every other Open Source project, most consumers just consume). Also, note that the fee is just for maintenance. I've seen near 0% contribution rate for all Open Source projects to "maintenance chores". Those just don't fall into the "scratch your own itch" class of problems. > Accepting money make sit a business transaction, if I accept somebody's money they have demands towards me. Then I got to work on it. True, but I've been committed to my project for over 25 years and I want to continue to improve the project. The fee has really helped keep that motivation up (aka: sustainable). The reaction has been mostly positive which is also a plus. :) > But of course the volunteer free model has sustainability issues ... Agreed. I think the OSMF is a good way to tackle exactly that issue.
  - kvemkon 1y ago
    Free software community participants, contributors, can feel discouraged with the diving the whole community in strictly 2 class of only Maintainers vs. Consumers and then demand something like an Open Source Contributors Fee. All those investigative and reporting work about software behavior issues, hard to reproduce issues, bugs only in specific environment or specific circumstances, sharing experience, helping each other and so on, let alone fixing some issues on their owns and posting PRs.
    - robmensching 1y ago
robmensching 1y ago
You really nailed the essence of the idea/solution.
jackdawipper 1y ago
pull back the layers. This is the usual masking of the facts. A rose by any other name... is after money. FOSS is destroyed the moment that is introduced to the mix. Its like political sells - begin pushing a small degree, they wont notice the temperature as it rises over time until its closed source and corporate. This is how you kill off FOSS, or your project. "corporate creep" I call it.
- xoac 1y ago
  FOSS is destroyed with overly permissive licenses that allow entities with a lot of capital to productize software as closed source while giving back the original author/maintainer exactly 0.
  - mopenstein 1y ago
    How does that scenario alter free and open source software? The software is still open and free. But in your scenario you're just super angry you didn't figure out to make money off your work. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that you never, ever contribute to FOSS and instead just buckle down and focus on selling your blobs.
- robmensching 1y ago
  My experience is that FOSS is being destroyed by entitled consumers. Note: I'm not saying you're an entitled consumer, but I interviewed many maintainers of successful Open Source projects. The number one issue for all of them was entitled consumers.
  - jackdawipper 1y ago
    Yea that is actually more a symptom of post-war generations, so isnt exclusive to OSS. Ask any employer how its going with their new young staff members. but what I see causing far more problems in the OSS community is greedy patreon gatewallers who poach all they can from the devs, then put it behind a patreon wall and charge money for it. Them and corporate swooping in are a bigger problem than whining on a github issues board.
constantcrying 1y ago
They totally have the wrong approach. The EULA is completely bizarre and the implementation even worse. What they should have done is saying "If you aren't a sponsor we do not care about your issues." Right now clicking the download button is a violation of their EULA, which is probably something you want to avoid when trying to get companies to give you money.
- robmensching 1y ago
  I disagree. The EULA is an extremely elegant solution to activate an organization's legal team to help their procurement team sponsor Open Source projects.
  - kvemkon 1y ago
    Keeping downloads/installation behind EULA seems controversial (with all the discussed pros and cons). But prohibiting (or even making it illegal?) to open an issue seems to disrupt how free software communities work. Of course you are free to delay feedback for e.g. 2 weeks (see free access to lwn.net) or not to answer at all or to mark such an issue and move it to discussions but not to limit feedback to your project in such a way.
    - robmensching 1y ago
      You should read the EULA. You'll find it doesn't say anything about the issue tracker. The EULA is actually a very standard software license that basically says if you use the software and you make revenue, you need to pay the fee.
  - account42 1y ago
    Anything that activates an organization's legal team is a great way to get developers to look for alternatives. No one wants to involve legal.
    - robmensching 1y ago
      We used to say the same thing about Open Source licenses, and that changed. The long-term hope is that enough projects adopt the Open Source Maintenance Fee, or something like it, that it becomes the norm for companies to support the Open Source projects they depend upon. And you can say that will never happen. But the only way it will _definitely_ never happen is if we don't try... and choose to keep burning out Open Source maintainers.
mytailorisrich 1y ago
This strikes me as a problem with the widespread dogma that it has to be open source (OSI approved license). It doesn't. If you want commercial users to pay then pick a license that makes it so, it can still be source available and free (as in freedom and/or cost) to non-commercial users. > The maintainers are now free to respond to complaints with "you need to pay us for us to care." If you are a maintainer of an open source project you don't have to care about complaint and you can absolutely say that you need to charge for your work in reply to requests. In fact that has always happened.

majkinetor 1y ago

Anybody should be able pay up for the feature/support and it should be closed source until some threshold. That could take years or months depending on the interest/income. Eventually it will become open source. Otherwise, everybody will wait for someone to pay for the thing they want. Obviously this needs to be worked up a bit so not to maintain N forks but it can work.

samrus 1y ago
I think thays fine. Thats within the spirit of FOSS. The issue has always been companies demanding fixes because it affects their users, and those companies cant afford to wait. So now they can pay to have the devs spend a bit more time to get their fix out. This works
robmensching 1y ago
There are models out there like this. Look around the term "Fair Source" and I think you'll find them.

msgodel 1y ago

I was under the impression a number of open source projects already worked this way. There seemed to be a small industry of essentially consultants maintaining Busybox that way for example although maybe I misunderstood the situation.

orochimaaru 1y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. I’m not a Wix user so this is a general comment on the substance of this. As an open source project no one is forcing you to maintain it. Every fix you put in is something that you do of your own volition. No company can force you to accept a PR or work on it. I think FOSS developers often get stressed about this but unless you personally have financial motivations around what you’ve written you can tell people to fuck off. Yeah they can complain, but you have zero obligation to fix. The sponsorship seems to introduce a business model around what is FOSS, then it’s not FOSS anymore. The entire purpose of FOSS is anybody can copy and repurpose what you’ve built. They can fork it, take it in a different direction and create a business off of it. Depending on the license you’ve explicitly agreed to that. This sentiment is going to be unpopular but I think the outrage is unwarranted.

nine_k 1y ago
AFAICT, the fee applies if you're using binary releases, or if you open issues, and are also generating revenue from the project. Apparently you can grab the sources and build the binaries yourself (as per the OSS license), never ask for support (by reporting issues), and still have to pay nothing, even in a commercial setting. It looks a bit similar to the RedHat model: they release open-source software (Linux kernel is GPL2), but you may want to buy their binary releases and support. Not so rarely companies would not mind paying a small amount to help support the OSS projects they depend on. This may give CTOs an easy way to expense such support, even though becoming a GitHub sponsor is more involved than many would like; I hope Wix will introduce even easier options (Open Collective, its own non-profit, etc).
- mikestorrent 1y ago
  > companies would not mind paying a small amount to help support the OSS projects they depend on meanwhile I've been trying to find a way to give Hashicorp some money for over a decade of depending on their tools, but their products simply are too good to need the enterprise versions! At some point we need something like a "certified B corporation" for "certified ethical fair-trade Free Software using corporation" where an independant body audits and makes sure you're donating to a sufficient % of the open source projects used in your production SaaS

calibas 1y ago

This doesn't seem terribly innovative to me, they've gone from giving away a product to selling a product. In other words, they're operating like a normal business.

hbn 1y ago
Well, it's a "free if you're not generating revenue" model which is similar to JetBrains' recent "free for non-commercial use" releases of their IDEs, and I believe Docker does something like that too. And famously WinRar which will nag you to upgrade every time you open it but doesn't actually force you to buy it, but expect enterprises will if they don't want to risk lawsuits.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  But why call it open source if it's no longer open source?
  - nevon 1y ago
    It is open source. The code is still available under the same license as before. They are just charging for binary builds.
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      Oh ok, I had misunderstood then.
  - samrus 1y ago
    They dont charge for the source. They charge for paying more attention to your issues, and for compiling the code for you. If you compile it yourself and do some of the work to resolve the issues (planning or an outright PR) then you wont pay anything

johannes1234321 1y ago

It is a tough thing. I want to focus on the negatives from two perspectives, as you wrote some positive: * This can make it harder to recruit further contributors as there is a two-clays system of contributors. Paid and unpaid. "Why should I fix a bug for free, while others earn the money?" * Accepting money make sit a business transaction, if I accept somebody's money they have demands towards me. Then I got to work on it. But of course the volunteer free model has sustainability issues ...

robmensching 1y ago
> This can make it harder to recruit further contributors as there is a two-clays system of contributors. We'll see. I haven't seen any reduction in contributions (not that the project gets lots of contributions because we're the same as every other Open Source project, most consumers just consume). Also, note that the fee is just for maintenance. I've seen near 0% contribution rate for all Open Source projects to "maintenance chores". Those just don't fall into the "scratch your own itch" class of problems. > Accepting money make sit a business transaction, if I accept somebody's money they have demands towards me. Then I got to work on it. True, but I've been committed to my project for over 25 years and I want to continue to improve the project. The fee has really helped keep that motivation up (aka: sustainable). The reaction has been mostly positive which is also a plus. :) > But of course the volunteer free model has sustainability issues ... Agreed. I think the OSMF is a good way to tackle exactly that issue.
- kvemkon 1y ago
  Free software community participants, contributors, can feel discouraged with the diving the whole community in strictly 2 class of only Maintainers vs. Consumers and then demand something like an Open Source Contributors Fee. All those investigative and reporting work about software behavior issues, hard to reproduce issues, bugs only in specific environment or specific circumstances, sharing experience, helping each other and so on, let alone fixing some issues on their owns and posting PRs.
  - robmensching 1y ago

robmensching 1y ago

You really nailed the essence of the idea/solution.

jackdawipper 1y ago

pull back the layers. This is the usual masking of the facts. A rose by any other name... is after money. FOSS is destroyed the moment that is introduced to the mix. Its like political sells - begin pushing a small degree, they wont notice the temperature as it rises over time until its closed source and corporate. This is how you kill off FOSS, or your project. "corporate creep" I call it.

xoac 1y ago
FOSS is destroyed with overly permissive licenses that allow entities with a lot of capital to productize software as closed source while giving back the original author/maintainer exactly 0.
- mopenstein 1y ago
  How does that scenario alter free and open source software? The software is still open and free. But in your scenario you're just super angry you didn't figure out to make money off your work. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that you never, ever contribute to FOSS and instead just buckle down and focus on selling your blobs.
robmensching 1y ago
My experience is that FOSS is being destroyed by entitled consumers. Note: I'm not saying you're an entitled consumer, but I interviewed many maintainers of successful Open Source projects. The number one issue for all of them was entitled consumers.
- jackdawipper 1y ago
  Yea that is actually more a symptom of post-war generations, so isnt exclusive to OSS. Ask any employer how its going with their new young staff members. but what I see causing far more problems in the OSS community is greedy patreon gatewallers who poach all they can from the devs, then put it behind a patreon wall and charge money for it. Them and corporate swooping in are a bigger problem than whining on a github issues board.

constantcrying 1y ago

They totally have the wrong approach. The EULA is completely bizarre and the implementation even worse. What they should have done is saying "If you aren't a sponsor we do not care about your issues." Right now clicking the download button is a violation of their EULA, which is probably something you want to avoid when trying to get companies to give you money.

robmensching 1y ago
I disagree. The EULA is an extremely elegant solution to activate an organization's legal team to help their procurement team sponsor Open Source projects.
- kvemkon 1y ago
  Keeping downloads/installation behind EULA seems controversial (with all the discussed pros and cons). But prohibiting (or even making it illegal?) to open an issue seems to disrupt how free software communities work. Of course you are free to delay feedback for e.g. 2 weeks (see free access to lwn.net) or not to answer at all or to mark such an issue and move it to discussions but not to limit feedback to your project in such a way.
  - robmensching 1y ago
    You should read the EULA. You'll find it doesn't say anything about the issue tracker. The EULA is actually a very standard software license that basically says if you use the software and you make revenue, you need to pay the fee.
- account42 1y ago
  Anything that activates an organization's legal team is a great way to get developers to look for alternatives. No one wants to involve legal.
  - robmensching 1y ago
    We used to say the same thing about Open Source licenses, and that changed. The long-term hope is that enough projects adopt the Open Source Maintenance Fee, or something like it, that it becomes the norm for companies to support the Open Source projects they depend upon. And you can say that will never happen. But the only way it will _definitely_ never happen is if we don't try... and choose to keep burning out Open Source maintainers.

mytailorisrich 1y ago

This strikes me as a problem with the widespread dogma that it has to be open source (OSI approved license). It doesn't. If you want commercial users to pay then pick a license that makes it so, it can still be source available and free (as in freedom and/or cost) to non-commercial users. > The maintainers are now free to respond to complaints with "you need to pay us for us to care." If you are a maintainer of an open source project you don't have to care about complaint and you can absolutely say that you need to charge for your work in reply to requests. In fact that has always happened.