Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

Sounds to me like a scrappy clone of Codementor.

I think the real way to equalize OSS software is to make it partially OSS ... maybe any company w/ < 10 mill profits it's FOSS, any company over that has to pay in man-hours (contributions) or $$ to use the product.

Amazon/FB/Microsoft and other Faang's could easily reproduce any oss software to meet their needs using their own staff...

Maybe even just have a github like site to host software and each organization pays based on their value, w/ startups/small companies under 10 million annual revenues essentially having free access.

Larger companies would pay a per employee fee, that fee would be divided up among all FOSS software that company uses. They could get some refunds for any contributions accepted to FOSS. It'd basically be like patreon for software in a semi-walled garden.

Small members could also 'opt-in' to pay $x per month that would also be divided up among other OSS projects. Either random, or they could pick by grouped projects or just pick their favorites to receive a % of their monthly donation.

> I think the real way to equalize OSS software is to make it partially OSS ... maybe any company w/ < 10 mill profits it's FOSS, any company over that has to pay in man-hours (contributions) or $$ to use the product.

A friendly reminder that it is Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer. Doing what you suggest is a good approach for Free Beer, not Freedom.

Qt has the perfect business model for OSS. Respect the LGPL license for Qt and get it for free without any extra restrictions. Or go straight for a commercial license. Plus they sell add-ons and other software and support around Qt.

And considering all the places where Qt is used, I would say they are very successful at it.

I definitely like the model that's used by the Python foundation and the like -- respecting Freedom, but making profit through consultancy. That was what kind of inspired me to make Immutable Coffee.

> making profit through consultancy

This incentivizes making software that requires consultancy (or at best, disincentivizes fixing issues with the software that would lessen the income from consultancy).

Your profit should come from the software being the best it can be (not to be confused with having the most bloated feature checklist) by itself, not by anything surrounding it.

And how do you suggest we pay devs to make the best free software they can make?

> Qt has the perfect business model for OSS.

Except for that part where their business model incentivizes them to bloat the library towards what is actually paying (car and smart fridge dashboard UIs) instead of what most people would want Qt to focus on (desktop widgets - see pretty much every thread whenever a Qt release or news is posted).

> And considering all the places where Qt is used, I would say they are very successful at it.

Since we're talking in the context of money instead of popularity, 1000000 projects using the LGPL version of Qt for free doesn't make Qt successful, it only makes it popular.

>Except for that part where their business model incentivizes them to bloat the library towards what is actually paying (car and smart fridge dashboard UIs)

That will happen to any project that takes any form of sponsorship money. People sponsoring will always want to prioritize their needs.

> instead of what most people would want Qt to focus on (desktop widgets - see pretty much every thread whenever a Qt release or news is posted).

KDE, with it's very successful suite of OSS, cross platform apps, Plasma Desktop and Plasma Mobile would like to disagree. You should remember that Qt is the only cross platform toolkit for desktops that is small, performant and actually works without compromises.

> Since we're talking in the context of money instead of popularity, 1000000 projects using the LGPL version of Qt for free doesn't make Qt successful, it only makes it popular.

Those 1000000 projects include Krita and Kdenlive, the successful and premiere apps in their categories that even give proprietary tools a run for their subscription money while being completely free and cross platform. KDE Plasma is the only fully featured independent DE that runs across Linux and BSD's.

Qt and it's business model is a success by all terms.

> That will happen to any project that takes any form of sponsorship money. People sponsoring will always want to prioritize their needs.

Right, this is exactly what i wrote.

> KDE, with it's very successful suite of OSS, cross platform apps, Plasma Desktop and Plasma Mobile would like to disagree.

Disagree on what? They wouldn't like Qt developers to focus on desktop widgets?

Besides, KDE and its suite is only a small fraction of what Qt is used for. It acts as a nice cheerleader but Qt is used by a LOT more than just KDE.

> You should remember that Qt is the only cross platform toolkit for desktops that is small, performant and actually works without compromises.

That sounds like marketing buzzwords.

> Those 1000000 projects include Krita and Kdenlive, the successful and premiere apps in their categories that even give proprietary tools a run for their subscription money while being completely free and cross platform. KDE Plasma is the only fully featured independent DE that runs across Linux and BSD's.

How much of that money goes to Qt's developers? I mean, how do you go from what you wrote here to:

> Qt and it's business model is a success by all terms.

And last time i checked, the money Krita (i don't know about Kdenlive) gets is a pittance.

This would however also mean giving up on the core principles of free/opensource software and turning it into shareware(?). Why would I want to contribute to that software?

I think the patreon-like idea is great! Similarly to how netflix turned lots of people that previously watched movies for gratis on streaming sites into paying customers, making paying money for software easy and convenient should have a large impact.

The big question are who should handle the financials of this and how the money is then divided.

Never seen Codementor before -- but thanks for pointing it out to me.

I guess that in functionality the sites are similar, but hopefully the overarching goals of the project will bring them in different directions.

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