Consulting. Services. Education. Those seem like words that might let you make money. You can attach "open source" to those words but it obviously doesnt stand on it's own as a business model.
And that's cool but to a very great degree these often boil down to an exchange of time for money (unless by services you mean SaaS which is really just a product business with a different revenue model). You can make a living but you're on a treadmill that you can't ever really afford to get off of, and it doesn't really scale other than by adding more people.
I mean it's OK, don't get me wrong - it's certainly better than a kick in the balls - and you can make a decent living from it. But I don't find it particularly appealing: I'd much rather be involved in creating products that you can sell over and over again. And, if what you've created is of value to others, why shouldn't you charge them a fee to use it?
(Btw, I'd also add paid support to your list but, again, I wouldn't want to build a business heavily based around providing support because support can really wear you down - or at least it can really wear me down. It's absolutely necessary, but not something I find at all enjoyable.)
You can, but you probably won't succeed if it's open source, because people can share it around freely without your consent.
> because people can share it around freely without your consent.
The nice thing about this approach is that big players like FAANG can't really get around it. But it doesn't matter since your software is probably already a bargain for them (all these big companies are essentially built on open source).
The one I'm interested in would be one, where viewing, modifying, recompiling the source is allowed, but redistribution is allowed only to those who had bought the license from all owners of the source and it's modifications. It would produce a nice "waterfall" effect.
It wouldn't be open-source nor free software, but most people don't really need limitless redistribution, and the source would be proof that said software isn't malicious.
Just don’t package it with a weird “open” license and pretend it’s OSS. You can dual license if needed and deal with the consequences.
Isn’t that what all business interactions end up being in the end? Yes, it is a treadmill, but life itself is a treadmill. You need to keep feeding and sheltering yourself even though you JUST ate yesterday.
I don’t think planning to support yourself indefinitely for a short period of work is a healthy expectation. Do you really think you can provide enough value to the world in a few years to provide for yourself for your entire life?
Having to work consistently is the norm, not a treadmill.
Only if you ignore capital. Many business interactions revolve around having access to or utilizing capital in some way. Renting and financing maybe the most obvious examples, but plenty of others too.
The key question is that can/should software be considered such capital asset? It being intellectual (or "imaginary" as some pundits put it), and not tangible, property.
You can also become a silent partner in some business where you collect a skim of the profits while someone(s) else do the work to make sure the business continues to produce profits.
I was answering the vein of someone who wants to put in a largely one-shot investment of time and continue to collect money over a subsequent period.
Yes, you could be a silent partner in a business.... but you likely won't get great returns, and you risk losing it all of the company goes under.
However, given sufficient capital (what's sufficient depends on what sort of income stream you're looking for), largely passive investments in various forms can produce that. After all, that's what many people are looking for when they retire.
Agreed. Work is what creates value for others. However, trading one's work for money that's designed to loose value over time via the inflation tax central banks impose on us all is why so many hard working people feel they're on a treadmill that they can't get off. If our money functioned correctly as a tool to store value over time, people could work, save, and with frugal living could actually get ahead if their work consistently created value for their clients or customers. There are systemic monetary reasons why work often resembles a treadmill.
(and, btw, my point is not that people in the USA are spendthrifts. It's that most only make enough to support themselves).
Even many businesses consider product design a "cost center" and production/manufacturing a "profit center". I prefer to think of engineering as an investment in the future.
So "open source" as a business sounds to these people like the investment has already been done for free, and production is free, so we should be able to make massive profit! But they're not providing any value unless they add something significant.
So you want to collect rent.
And businesses based on open source want to collect rent from the work other people have already done for free.
Sounds exactly like one of the reasons Free Software came along in the first place.