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This is going to sound heretical, but sometimes burnout is a blessing in disguise, and a sign that you shouldn't be pouring your heart and soul into something t

This is going to sound heretical, but sometimes burnout is a blessing in disguise, and a sign that you shouldn't be pouring your heart and soul into something that isn't benefitting you, and might not even be benefitting others. I think a lot of FOSS projects have bad "product-market-fit", and if they were paid products they would be ignored, but since they're free, they get a lot of drive-by downloads from people who are just curious, but still might file a lazy bug report or complain that you used C and not Rust or something. Sometimes I wonder if FOSS projects should start as paid (or at least freeware) and once the product is proven to be useful to people, then open-source it.

duskdozer 6mo ago
MIT: >THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED GPL: >THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED It's legal CYA, sure, but to me the spirit of the project is in the license choice. I guess most people don't think of licenses like I do.
ValdikSS 6mo ago
> Sometimes I wonder if FOSS projects should start as paid Why only start? Moreover, you're encouraged to sell other's people free (as in beer) software, if you want to. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html >if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it. FOSS projects does not have to be publicly available somewhere on the internet. That's only the "common expectation" (see all social aspects from my other comments). I sell others' software, successfully. And contribute back, both code and money to the projects I sell. And everybody are happy! I wonder why this isn't used much often.

duskdozer 6mo ago

MIT: >THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED GPL: >THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED It's legal CYA, sure, but to me the spirit of the project is in the license choice. I guess most people don't think of licenses like I do.

ValdikSS 6mo ago

> Sometimes I wonder if FOSS projects should start as paid Why only start? Moreover, you're encouraged to sell other's people free (as in beer) software, if you want to. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html >if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it. FOSS projects does not have to be publicly available somewhere on the internet. That's only the "common expectation" (see all social aspects from my other comments). I sell others' software, successfully. And contribute back, both code and money to the projects I sell. And everybody are happy! I wonder why this isn't used much often.