18 ms·

See, I think it's a bigger problem that it's such a taboo topic within the open source community. Not all developers have (or want) regular-paying jobs. Many o

by namuol 14y ago

See, I think it's a bigger problem that it's such a taboo topic within the open source community. Not all developers have (or want) regular-paying jobs. Many of us want to work on open source projects full-time, but cannot afford to because there's a general assumption that their software will be beer-free. Now I agree that giving stuff away for free is awesome and is a huge reason why so many open source projects have a large, sustaining community to keep them alive, but I don't think we should poo-poo developers who believe they could do a better job if they expect (EDIT: some of) their users to pay for their software.

ScottBurson 14y ago
What about this? (Shameless plug:) https://bountyoss.com/ https://bountyoss.com/
- namuol 14y ago
  I'm glad to see more things like this popping up (https://www.bountysource.com/ https://www.bountysource.com/), but it's hard to know what "the answer" is. Time may tell.
btilly 14y ago
If you expect users to pay for your software, then (literally by definition) you're not a part of the open source community. Full stop. You may be a wonderful person who creates amazing software that you deserve to be paid top dollar for. But it is proprietary software, not open source software. And trying to call something open source when it is not just confuses people. Don't do that.
- schoen 14y ago
  I am also wary of people suggesting that software whose users are "required" to pay a per-user fee could be open source. Open source software could not come with a universally enforceable requirement of this kind. "The license may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software..." But the prospect of open source developers being paid other than per-copy, per-user is plausible. Alex Tabarrok demonstrated in 1996 that it should be possible to do it even without altruism given enforcement of contracts and someone with sufficient information about demand. (I don't know if that kind of information is often achieved in practice.) Karl Fogel just ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund creation of the second edition of Producing Open Source Software, which will be distributed on terms closely parallel to open source software (all recipients of the book can redistribute and modify it, and nobody is required to pay a per-copy license fee). The payment to Karl happened up front and ahead of time. The same structure might have worked if Karl were to apply this funding to software development instead of to writing about software development -- and indeed Joey Hess did that a while ago with his git-annex-assistant Kickstarter, which as far as I know has worked out quite well. In the Kickstarter case there is a significant potential free-rider problem; for example, I didn't personally fund Joey's project but I might still benefit from his work on git-annex. Kickstarter seems to use various aspects of social norms and psychology to address free riding, often with good results. I think we need more work on this even as we continue to insist on not diluting the meaning of open source.
  - btilly 14y ago
    There are lots of models for how open source developers can be paid. The first person that I am aware of to be hired exclusively to develop open source software (though he of course called it free software) was Brian Fox in 1985. The first company that I am aware of to establish a successful commercial business exclusively around open source software (though of course again it was called free software) was Cygnus in 1989. The business model is that people developing new chips needed a compiler for their chip, and would hire Cygnus on a contract to port GCC for them. (The resulting port then got folded back into GCC.) There are thousands of people today whose paid job is developing open source software. Are there more people who want this type of work who don't get it? Absolutely. Are there a lot of useful projects that don't get funded? Of course. But there are a lot of these projects out there.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  Open source has nothing to do with cost. It is entirely possible to do it for cost, but of course adoption may suffer.
  - btilly 14y ago
    Open source has nothing to do with cost. Item 1 of http://opensource.org/osd http://opensource.org/osd disagrees with you. You may charge anything you like for open source software. But once someone gets it, they are free to redistribute it for any price that they want - including nothing. If your software does not have that property, then it is not open source. (That web page has been up for nearly 15 years, with only minor modification, and the principles of that definition go back farther than the creation of the term "Open Source" as a marketing campaign for free software almost exactly 15 years ago. I've been personally using that term for over 14.5 years.)
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      No, it doesn't. The fact that someone can redistribute it doesn't mean you don't have the right to charge for it in the first place. This works particularly well for some software when it comes to distributing binaries against cost.
      - btilly 14y ago
        I don't know what you think I said, but your response makes no sense in light of what I said. Please re-read what I wrote, without skipping the sentence, You may charge anything you like for open source software.
mseebach 14y ago
People get paid for solving problems, not writing software. Solve a problem with your software, then it's not terribly difficult to make money. The reason that people push back on the idea that you should get money because your git origin is a public GitHub repo is that that in itself does not solve any problems.

by namuol 14y ago

ScottBurson 14y ago

What about this? (Shameless plug:) https://bountyoss.com/ https://bountyoss.com/

namuol 14y ago
I'm glad to see more things like this popping up (https://www.bountysource.com/ https://www.bountysource.com/), but it's hard to know what "the answer" is. Time may tell.

btilly 14y ago

If you expect users to pay for your software, then (literally by definition) you're not a part of the open source community. Full stop. You may be a wonderful person who creates amazing software that you deserve to be paid top dollar for. But it is proprietary software, not open source software. And trying to call something open source when it is not just confuses people. Don't do that.

schoen 14y ago
I am also wary of people suggesting that software whose users are "required" to pay a per-user fee could be open source. Open source software could not come with a universally enforceable requirement of this kind. "The license may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software..." But the prospect of open source developers being paid other than per-copy, per-user is plausible. Alex Tabarrok demonstrated in 1996 that it should be possible to do it even without altruism given enforcement of contracts and someone with sufficient information about demand. (I don't know if that kind of information is often achieved in practice.) Karl Fogel just ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund creation of the second edition of Producing Open Source Software, which will be distributed on terms closely parallel to open source software (all recipients of the book can redistribute and modify it, and nobody is required to pay a per-copy license fee). The payment to Karl happened up front and ahead of time. The same structure might have worked if Karl were to apply this funding to software development instead of to writing about software development -- and indeed Joey Hess did that a while ago with his git-annex-assistant Kickstarter, which as far as I know has worked out quite well. In the Kickstarter case there is a significant potential free-rider problem; for example, I didn't personally fund Joey's project but I might still benefit from his work on git-annex. Kickstarter seems to use various aspects of social norms and psychology to address free riding, often with good results. I think we need more work on this even as we continue to insist on not diluting the meaning of open source.
- btilly 14y ago
  There are lots of models for how open source developers can be paid. The first person that I am aware of to be hired exclusively to develop open source software (though he of course called it free software) was Brian Fox in 1985. The first company that I am aware of to establish a successful commercial business exclusively around open source software (though of course again it was called free software) was Cygnus in 1989. The business model is that people developing new chips needed a compiler for their chip, and would hire Cygnus on a contract to port GCC for them. (The resulting port then got folded back into GCC.) There are thousands of people today whose paid job is developing open source software. Are there more people who want this type of work who don't get it? Absolutely. Are there a lot of useful projects that don't get funded? Of course. But there are a lot of these projects out there.
lucian1900 14y ago
Open source has nothing to do with cost. It is entirely possible to do it for cost, but of course adoption may suffer.
- btilly 14y ago
  Open source has nothing to do with cost. Item 1 of http://opensource.org/osd http://opensource.org/osd disagrees with you. You may charge anything you like for open source software. But once someone gets it, they are free to redistribute it for any price that they want - including nothing. If your software does not have that property, then it is not open source. (That web page has been up for nearly 15 years, with only minor modification, and the principles of that definition go back farther than the creation of the term "Open Source" as a marketing campaign for free software almost exactly 15 years ago. I've been personally using that term for over 14.5 years.)
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    No, it doesn't. The fact that someone can redistribute it doesn't mean you don't have the right to charge for it in the first place. This works particularly well for some software when it comes to distributing binaries against cost.
    - btilly 14y ago
      I don't know what you think I said, but your response makes no sense in light of what I said. Please re-read what I wrote, without skipping the sentence, You may charge anything you like for open source software.

mseebach 14y ago

People get paid for solving problems, not writing software. Solve a problem with your software, then it's not terribly difficult to make money. The reason that people push back on the idea that you should get money because your git origin is a public GitHub repo is that that in itself does not solve any problems.