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Comment by rock_artist | Hacker News Reader

I've used WiX for a specific project in my work when I've needed MSI.

TBH, enforcing maintenance fee for anyone who makes revenue feels unfair.

There are other open-source libraries that has dual-license with some kind of GPL variant and a commercial license. but there's at least some threshold.

Imagine indie developer or someone who wants to try and create something but without much revenue (eg 1k / year). so 10% of your revenue goes to the installer of your product...

I'm all in sponsoring open-source and investing in software but part of being sustainable is making it accessible. so maybe that indie developer who used WiX for their indie project ended up going to 100k/year and now can contribute. But if originally it was capped, they might choose other solution that fits the "indie" tight budget better.

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> Imagine indie developer or someone who wants to try and create something but without much revenue (eg 1k / year). so 10% of your revenue goes to the installer of your product...

You can always download the source and build the software yourself, or acquire the binary from another person willing/able to build it. The fee only applies to binary distribution from the project itself, and support from the project.

>TBH, enforcing maintenance fee for anyone who makes revenue feels unfair.

I have terrific news! You can start your own open source project that people use to make money and don't contribute back to.

>Imagine indie developer or someone who wants to try and create something but without much revenue (eg 1k / year). so 10% of your revenue goes to the installer of your product...

I have terrific news! That indie developer can create their own installer or start their own open source project that others can make money off of and not contribute back to.

>I'm all in sponsoring open-source and investing in software but part of being sustainable is making it accessible.

I have some bad news here. 99% of people aren't all in on this. We see time and time again that even mission critical open source projects struggle to get people to fund it. The projects that do tend to survive are the ones that build businesses around the project. It's very rare to have an open source project be well funded solely for existing with no business around it. Of course there are exceptions, but that model has failed near completely. That's the reality.

> We see time and time again that even mission critical open source projects struggle to get people to fund it.

I think you've missed my point.

The problem (imho) is when actors that can easily pay, are avoiding it. And that's where a threshold of revenue (and also different tiers), feels more fair (again, from my perspective).

That is my point! We have to live in reality and in reality that does not happen. This dev is trying to get some sort of compensation for their efforts because the reality is the status quo is not working for them. We can "in a perfect world" all we want but we don't live in a perfect world.

> Small organization (< 20 people): $10/mo

If you went to 100k/year and still a solo dev, that's just 0.12% of your ARR. The percentages here are meaningless; $10/month should be doable for anyone that wants to run a business, even someone solo.

> so 10% of your revenue goes to the installer of your product...

In this case you can install your product yourself.

Not sure why you were downvoted, but I agree with you.

Anyway, you may want to take a look at nsis, at least when I needed an installer for a windows application many years ago, it worked fine for me. It doesn't produce an .msi but on the other hands it's fast.

Another meanwhile somewhat out-of-date option is squirrel, but it offers a auto-updater, which is very useful.

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