Discussion

Open source isn't a tip jar – it's time to charge for access

chuckadams: The tip jar is fine, the problem is that most corporations have no process to drop anything in the tip jar without purchase orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.The same process is why open source is such a hit among the developers that actually accomplish real work in such corporations.

bpt3: This article conflates multiple issues:Paying for hosting costs seems straightforward. Sonatype has decided to host Maven Central and treat it effectively as a marketing expense, and they are free to change that if they want. Same for the hosts of PyPi, RubyGems, etc.Developer labor is a separate issue and what most people (including the article author) seem most confused about. Open source developers generally fall into one of a few different categories: Hobbyists looking for enjoyment, aspiring professionals looking for experience, startups looking for exposure and adoption, and corporate employees maintaining software their business relies on.Contributors to vast majority of usable software fall into the last category, yet all of the focus is on the subset of people in the first category that attract a userbase that is meaningful enough to theoretically warrant some support, which is probably the smallest faction of open source developers by a large margin.I do not understand the angst over this. If a hobbyist gets tired of their hobby, they are free to move on. If they feel exploited by some big corporation, change the license going forward, make the repo private, push harder for compensation until they feel properly compensated, or take whatever other action resolves their internal issue.All the other categories of developer are fine as is, and this category could be as well if they took more agency over the situation.

spongebobstoes: no, I work on open source because I want it to be freely available to all, without conditionsI view it as a type of charity. I know not everybody can afford to use their time without compensation. that's ok!but I will personally never charge, and I oppose this commercial mindset

albinn: I admire this mindset, and this is what I try and do as well with my projects.But for larger projects, on which the giants rests, (I'm thinking cURL, ffmpeg etc.) it most likely stops becoming/feeling like charity. Especially, since a lot of people do not see it as charity, and thus tries to force the maintainer(s) to do even more unpaid work.

timcobb: The onus is on the maintainer(s) to work on the project as much as they can and want to, if people are creeps who try to socially manipulate maintainers to do free work, I think we need mechanisms to help mitigate that. For example, I think maintainers should be encouraged to delete GH comments they find offensive or harassing. It's their domain, they should keep it in a way they find enjoyable.But turning open source into a job? No thank you! Adding money to something, overwhelmingly almost always in my experience, makes it that much worse and stressful. Money is not the answer!

timcobb: But also does it even have to be a construed as charity? Why do we need to put it in economic terms? Why not just -- something you do because otherwise it wouldn't exist? And you want it to exist?In any case, +1, I find these posts to be pretty tiresome, and honestly, at this point irritating. Open source is open source, it's code we build in the open, together. If you don't have the or energy to contribute, please let other people take over. It's not open source if it feels like work you should be compensated for. In my opinion, you should save that mentality for your job.

lionkor: I highly suspect that these people who push for paid open source are NOT open source maintainers.If I wanted to get paid for the software I make in my free time, I would put a price on it.If someone likes what I do personally, they can donate on my Patreon or kofi or whatever.If I want my project to only be used for other free software, then I make it GPL or AGPL. That's it.If someone uses my software and works for a company and needs support, we can talk about a support contract.

some_random: Some definitely are, but I think you're right to keep an eye out. I don't think that the thing open source needs is more foundations with compensated presidents and community managers and fundraising departments

PurpleRamen: This seems more about infrastructure than open source itself. It seems fair to let them pay for the additional unnecessary costs they create, especially when they can do better.

RcouF1uZ4gsC: > We must realign how businesses work with open source so that payment is no longer an optional charitable gift but a cost of doing business. To do that, we need an organization to create a viable, supportable path from big business to individual programmer. It's time for someone to step up and make this happen. Businesses, open source software, and maintainers will all be better off for it.Congratulations, you rediscovered commercial software - where you are legally obligated pay to use software.

ThrowawayB7: The 50th anniversary of Bill Gates' "An Open Letter To Software Hobbyists" was a couple of months ago and the letter was literally about developers deserving to be compensated for the hard work put their code. Now that much of the FOSS community is starting to say the same, it's time for them to finally admit that Bill Gates turned out to right in the end.

amelius: It would be great if all open source required payment of at least 1 dollarcent for enterprises, to make sure the purchase accounting layers are working in case anyone wants to send more money.For 1 cent, we can still call it "free" even as in beer, the amount is small enough for that to be fair.

chuckadams: And if the penny isn't paid, no source? Then it's not open source. And practically speaking, no one will pay that.

PurpleRamen: If all they need is an invoice and some papers, then it seems like a business-opportunity? Offer the service to manage their donations to OSS-projects, maybe offer some additional software for managing which OSS they are using and how much those need in donations. Seems like something the FSS should offer.

user2722: I like Cryptomator's solution: donate to get a pretty banner.Also, it didn't work -- Mountain Duck is closed source.Personally I donate €50 every now and then when the average of the donation goes below a certain value (varies by project) but it requires tracking in a Spreadsheet.

amelius: If the penny isn't paid, they can still have the source.But their legal department will have a problem.I hope you understand the point now.

some_random: This is absurd, it's not open source if you charge for access that's just a product.

graemep: Much of the article is about getting people to pay for services around open source, specifically package registries. Big users paying to use a package registry hardly sounds unreasonable.its not actually clear what the article is about, and it has the usual journalistic conflation of concepts (market cap is not the same thing as income!).

bpt3: You just described Github Sponsors, Tidelift, and a couple other less well known competitors. It's a business opportunity, but not a great one from what I can tell.