Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

Instead of forcing Github to force users to pay a fee to support OSS, why don't OSS maintainers just charge for their work? Then that requires 0 coercion and those who feel undervalued for their work/projects can be compensated as the market dictates the value of their projects.

There are a lot of dumb and even disagreeable open source projects. Why should someone be de facto forced to fund those projects?

It's like this ass-backwards way of selling something because you're allergic to markets or something. Honestly, it's quite rude to go on and on about free software and liberation and all these things and then turn sour grapes years later because everybody took you up on it. Nobody is forcing anyone to maintain any of these projects.

And maybe if you wrote some software that forms the basis of a trillion dollar + company and you're still sitting in the basement you're kind of dumb for giving it away and that's your fault.

View on HN

> And maybe if you wrote some software that forms the basis of a trillion dollar + company and you're still sitting in the basement you're kind of dumb for giving it away and that's your fault.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe if it wasn't released as MIT but released as GPLv3 you'd actually get compensated in the form of patches, bugfixes, features, etc in "your" software.

The whole RIIR movement is doing this - replacing as many GPL components as possible with rewritten MIT components. I find this completely disrespectful: trying to displace pro-user software with pro-business software.

You just read the title don't you?

> GitHub should charge every org $1 more per user per month

It's about org, not about every single person using Github.

The idea is basic and should have been written in the article. When a contributor release FOSS, it's fair to compensate if you business rely on it.

A contributor wouldn't like a free for personal use either. The ideal license is the Unreal one free for « Individuals and small businesses (with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue) »

> you're kind of dumb for giving it away and that's your fault.

It happens so many times and no just about software (but then it's not a million dollar company). It's not that you are dump, you done the right thing and some companies with money/power/opportunity to capitalize on it, did it and didn't compensate you fairly.

> When a contributor release FOSS, it's fair to compensate if you business rely on it.

Nope.

Put it in the license, sell the software, or work for free, but stop complaining about it.

It's nice if businesses who benefit from specific software packages want to pay or show support, but it's not nice to release something "for free" but then jump on a moral grandstand and demand everyone pay so you can feel good about your ideology at the expense of everyone else.

> The ideal license is the Unreal one free for « Individuals and small businesses (with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue)

Then make that your license?

You're not wrong, but I feel like a lot of people are hung up on the purism of the OSI definition, and a license that's not so blessed may prevent a project from gaining significant traction, if that is part of their goal.

I think it would be nice if there were a license that was more widely accepted that introduced a monetary component that could compensate the developer(s).

> why don't OSS maintainers just charge for their work?

What if we turn this from a rhetorical question to an actual question?

My totally unverified take:

1. Missing transaction / Payment infrastructure. The same reason why paid music streaming services were successful depite piracy being a thing.

2. Bureaucracy associated with earning money. In many countries, going from "unpaid" to "€1 per month" is a nightmare.

... and a suggestion to make both less dire: A transaction infrastructure that allows small projects (that wouldn't be a cash cow anyway) to forward all payments to another project of the project Author's choice.

Edit: See https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/d2ic2e/krita_is_now_...

I don't disagree with any of what you wrote here, but I don't think the solution is "well we haven't figured this out, OSS who talk all the time about free as in beer free software now all of a sudden want to get paid for their work" is to just go around uncharging other people/organizations to support their projects, especially if not all OSS projects are worth supporting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com