I tried to help monetize Open source projects. People hated it | Hacker News Reader

I tried to help monetize Open source projects. People hated it

4 pointspmestha5 comments

Hello all, You might already know that codefund.io shut a few days back. Most of the OSS developers only rely on sponsorship for their projects yet don't make much money. Being a full time OSS contributor is a difficult path to move forward. I attempted to help monetize OSS packages by building a marketplace (privjs.com) for "PRO" nodejs libraries where OSS developers could release a PRO version of their existing libraries and help cater the paid users better. Posted it on reddit and it was flooded with hate comments.

I just do not understand - what's wrong in monetizing OSS? And, why is it so hard to monetize? Why do people hate paying for code that saves hours/days of their time?

-Prasanna

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IMO, you're fighting the culture of OSS. I see that culture as "give some, take some". Where we exchange help and knowledge rather than payment. Adding explicit payment cheapens my involvement - and passion and creativity - because now, like everything else, there's an expectation of compensation. Even if I'm not involved, I'm now a second tiered citizen compared to "pro" packages because "if it was any good, wouldn't you sell it?". It taints the entire system. We have jobs for that.

But here's the thing, there are examples of commercializing open source software. Red Hat, MeteorJS, GhostJS, and more that I can't remember. These companies add value and most are appreciated. Your business model ignores this and feels like a "fuck you, pay me".

If I was you, I'd find a way to keep OSS exactly the way it is, but make consulting around those OSS projects extremely easy.

How do you expect to deal with the licences? In particular, if the normal library has a GPL licence.

The GPL explicitly allows for code to be sold. Indeed pretty much all open source, and free, licenses allow you to charge money - for your own or anyone else's work.

I agree, but in many cases of project monetization the GPL version is free and they charge you for a non-GPL version because many business are too afraid of the virality of the GPL. But to sell (the same or an improved version of) the code with another licence, the mantainer/owner must have all the copyright, so it is a problem. (Unless the project has a CLA, but I really dislike CLA.)

You're assuming that to sell it, it needs a different license. As I understand it the OP was not changing the license.

It's not hard to sell GPL code - people have been doing it forever. This makes sense since raw code is only a tiny, tiny part of any software purchase.

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