Maybe we should turn our open source projects into businesses? At least make it clear we're open to taking money for extra features and/or support?
I mean, I have a whole list of projects I would like to support in a meaningful way through a subscription for some service, but it seems finding a way to do this is itself a hoop to jump through. Even if I'm super benevolent maybe I'm not willing to do HR/accounting work in order to exercise my benevolence.
I know about Gittip and the like, but if you're a business (the only kind of entity with meaningful money to throw at this problem), you'd rather have a clearcut way to pay for a service, not a platform for dropping pennies.
Assembly(.com) is the place for working on or participating in open source projects. I met their evangelist at an event and heard about the model. Your contribution will turn into 'points' which are basically equities.
I am still not convinced all ideas fit in that model e.g a mobile app shouldn't be open sourced because other people can release your product as well, yet a library/framework probably doesn't have a direct business model.
Maybe we should turn our open source projects into businesses? At least make it clear we're open to taking money for extra features and/or support?
In the past few years, that's become the stable way of generating returns on open source software. But "OSS-as-company" is still a huge leap for any given single popular developer since it takes much more dedication (company+sales+taxes+accounting+employees) and long-term planning than just creating+improving+maintaining code alone.
Isn't taking money for extra features in desktop software the oldest trick in the book?
Either way I don't think the problem is one of individual users not paying for their apps. I think the major problem is that of huge companies who get business value from the code use it to make money and give back nothing in return.
As proprietary software yes, but the moment you have something free with source code available, why should I pay you for it?
This is why most successful desktop open source desktop software, actually live from another sources of funding, but it hardly created the same changes as with developer tools.
I mean, I have a whole list of projects I would like to support in a meaningful way through a subscription for some service, but it seems finding a way to do this is itself a hoop to jump through. Even if I'm super benevolent maybe I'm not willing to do HR/accounting work in order to exercise my benevolence.
I know about Gittip and the like, but if you're a business (the only kind of entity with meaningful money to throw at this problem), you'd rather have a clearcut way to pay for a service, not a platform for dropping pennies.