robmensching

You really nailed the essence of the idea/solution.

Ahh, the bulk of the negative feedback has been about the draft example EULAs. Those are under review by an actual lawyer (as noted in the `IANAL` note near the top of https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/maintainers/eulas/), and any text that conflicts with any Open Source License (permissive or copy-left) will be fixed. The line "Failure to pay the Fee will result in the termination of this license. Upon termination, User must cease all use of the Software and remove it from all systems." will definitely not survive lawyer review.

(I definitely wish I just put "TBD" on the site for the EULAs instead of a pre-canned version. I wonder if I should switch it out now or if that would create more confusion).

Note: your statement that FOSS must not have anything resembling a EULA is incorrect. EULAs are allowed, but they cannot impose restrictions that contradict the open-source license. Requiring payment for distribution fees (including packaging, convenience, and maintenance) is allowed.

With all due respect, this is incorrect on both accounts. From the FSF directly:

> Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price.

> ...

> You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.

- https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

And the OSI applies to the "Open Source Software", aka the source code. The OSI does not apply to the "Open Source Project", aka the issue tracker, discussion forums, downloadable binaries (although the source code to recreate those binaries often needs to be available), etc.

In the end, the Software (the source code) must be free. But the time and effort of the maintainers keeping the Project running is not free. So, those consumers that make money are required to pay to keep the Project running. Or, they can choose not pay the Fee, not use the Project, and only use the Software.

This has been fixed and should be live on the site now. If there are any other issues, please feel free to reach out to me via the information at the bottom of this post: https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2025/02/26/introducing-t... (I'll also try to keep up with this thread on Hacker News).

That's a good point. The intent was to suggest that if a consumer keeps returning to the project, maybe they should be paying for its maintenance. However, the source code needs to remain freely available, so that part probably goes too far. I will fix it.