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You entirely miss the point of open source. Open source is not about your ability to charge for the software. It is about the ability of the users of your soft

You entirely miss the point of open source. Open source is not about your ability to charge for the software. It is about the ability of the users of your software to modify it. "Open-source software has its roots in the culture of source code sharing that dates back to the origins of computing in the 1950s. The term was formalized in 1998 with the founding of the Open Source Initiative, succeeding the free software movement initiated in the 1980s, with the intention of overcoming the ambiguity of the word "free" — meaning both freedom and gratis — to better appeal to the business world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source You seem to be caught up in the 'free' part of 'free software'. It does not mean 'gratis software'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

otterley 14d ago
I know what it means. The problem is that people are expecting to be paid after they've already released it to the public for free.
- otherme123 14d ago
  You can make it work. Odoo is making money selling services, and there are many businesses making money re-selling Odoo in one form or another: partially rebranding, SaaS, support... A non negligible amount of FOSS follows a similar path: yes, they are OSS, but if you really need it, you'll be better served paying a fee to someone who knows how to make it work properly.
  - otterley 14d ago
    That's a different business model from trying to sell the software itself. Plenty of consultants make a living doing integration work. They don't claim to be in the business of selling FOSS software, though. Another model is selling an enterprise-grade release that builds atop the FOSS version, but with closed-source features and support. This is the model that nginx (now F5) and haproxy use.
0dayz 14d ago
I think a small issue with foss and monetization is that you can accept money for said software hell even release it with expectations that you have to pay for it, but you can't insert a clause in the license that stipulates that the foss rights only applies to paying or paid customers. Thus there is no legal protection you really got if you go foss as a developer when it comes to ensuring fair compensation.
- jacquesm 14d ago
  There is plenty of legal protection: copyright law so far held up pretty well. With the AI laundromat in play it's a completely different story though.
hn_throwaway_99 14d ago
Is there any well known, successful FOSS that isn't also free as in gratis? I understand the distinction but have literally never encountered it in practice.
- fragmede 14d ago
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux is almost that. Technically they can't lock it all down, but they play tricks so that's practically the case.
  - pjmlp 14d ago
    Companies pay for support, CentOS reason to be was people wanted Red-Hat work putting out a great distro, while not wanting to pay for it. Also very few software can be sold only on having support, regular users don't care about support.

otterley 14d ago

I know what it means. The problem is that people are expecting to be paid after they've already released it to the public for free.

otherme123 14d ago
You can make it work. Odoo is making money selling services, and there are many businesses making money re-selling Odoo in one form or another: partially rebranding, SaaS, support... A non negligible amount of FOSS follows a similar path: yes, they are OSS, but if you really need it, you'll be better served paying a fee to someone who knows how to make it work properly.
- otterley 14d ago
  That's a different business model from trying to sell the software itself. Plenty of consultants make a living doing integration work. They don't claim to be in the business of selling FOSS software, though. Another model is selling an enterprise-grade release that builds atop the FOSS version, but with closed-source features and support. This is the model that nginx (now F5) and haproxy use.

0dayz 14d ago

I think a small issue with foss and monetization is that you can accept money for said software hell even release it with expectations that you have to pay for it, but you can't insert a clause in the license that stipulates that the foss rights only applies to paying or paid customers. Thus there is no legal protection you really got if you go foss as a developer when it comes to ensuring fair compensation.

jacquesm 14d ago
There is plenty of legal protection: copyright law so far held up pretty well. With the AI laundromat in play it's a completely different story though.

hn_throwaway_99 14d ago

Is there any well known, successful FOSS that isn't also free as in gratis? I understand the distinction but have literally never encountered it in practice.

fragmede 14d ago
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is almost that. Technically they can't lock it all down, but they play tricks so that's practically the case.
- pjmlp 14d ago
  Companies pay for support, CentOS reason to be was people wanted Red-Hat work putting out a great distro, while not wanting to pay for it. Also very few software can be sold only on having support, regular users don't care about support.