Thanks again for this library.
Paying license fees for tools or software, on the other hand, is commonplace enough that small amounts are usually at a manager's discretion with little oversight. Offering to send an invoice for a 'license' that doesn't offer any additional benefits may be a way to simplify things for companies like this that want to pay to support the open source they use.
An invoice is enormously easier than making a donation. Most large scale organisations give even low level managers an authority limit (up to X amount) where they don't need to engage the full Contracts and Procurement process. If you're asking for less than $1k per annum, you'll find a lot of large scale organisations will happily pay. And the people using these tools are often very supportive of open source, and want to support these projects. It's in their interests; you maintain the library, they get the benefits of having bugs fixed.
Does it work? Do Caddy donations and support contracts cover your bills?
Donations never did cover more than a few meals per month. That was nice, but sponsorships and the Engineering Package allow me (and my business partner) to dedicate more time on development and invest back into the community for the project's growth. Still not at the break-even point yet, but I'm hoping that won't take too long...
Ahyeah, so the sponsorship part is what I meant by "better copy for getting donations" :-) Hope you'll go break-even soon!
Have you considered offering support contracts, or a dual licensing approach? I don't mean to butt in and offer a bunch of unsolicited advice, just more curious because I might be trying to do similar stuff with some of my projects, so always on the lookout to see what works and what doesn't.
Thanks again for making papaparse it's really fast and has really helped me get some projects off the ground a lot faster than I would have otherwise!
I did consider a dual license, however I don't want to fragment the project, given that it's pretty much "done" and someone would just use a fork from before the license changes anyway. As for offering paid support, I could definitely still fall back on that if I need some extra income, but it takes time. So right now I'm leaning on my graduate research.
One method I have found somewhat successful (but I am still flushing out) through another project, Caddy, is selling sponsorships. They give me some flexibility to put more time into the project to benefit everyone, rather than a single customer.
Makes me think, there was that old Y Combinator experiment of letting HN posters vote for funding in a small funding round. Combine that notion with a karma-weighted transparent proposal voting fund ("DAO" style) and something interesting might happen?
This applies to things like date pickers and html5 charts as well. While these could be separated into a separate category based on the fact that their markets are oversaturated, the result is the same: why pay when there are perfectly usable options that are free, or can be done in-house on the cheap if necessary?
That's just such irrational thinking (which is all too common unfortunately). If it saves you any time, even after paying, then it makes sense to pay!
Could learn from the Pharma industry where they use techniques like changing the formulation or introducing a new drug administration route to "renew" the patent.
Instead of debating it, if it were me, I would just give a people a reason to pay and see if it works.
You could have the same product presented as: Lil Papa "recommend for individual use" - FREE/DONATE Fat Papa "recommended for business use" - 1 MILLION/month (the same thing but we send you one emoji a month and give you a proper invoice)
Looks like you already have people trying to pay you and they could easily do it if there was invoiced paid option.
If folks can make money off of "Laundry Balls" there is no reason you shouldn't off of work like papaparse.
Closed source also need enforcement. What is she/he going do if companies download it from a warez site? Who has time, energy and money to spend on lawyers to hunt down those people, but do not have the same time, energy and money if the license conditions happens to be GPL?
Look at highcharts, you can use it commercially without anyone noticing it because its all client side JS but they are doing fine in terms of revenue because enough people pay for the software/support