
A clear-eyed view of open software funding, impediments, and possibilities - oss42
https://blog.licensezero.com/2019/08/26/but-you-said.html
======
benologist
It's funny how we sit here splitting hairs over how open source devs can get
jobs or fucked. Google's got over $100b in cash. Apple's got over $100b in
cash. AWS nets Bezos about a million in profit an hour. Open source
contributes massively to their opportunities and technologies. These companies
are dependent on open source software being written and maintained to power
their products and operations.

The missing open source funding is sitting in plain sight, held by companies
who literally colluded to not even pay their own workers market rates.

Maybe one solution is a blanket prohibition of FAANG companies using our
software until this abusive relationship is made more amicable. It sounds
stupid but any one of them could slap together an UBI for 100,000 open source
developers around the world. Together they would barely notice the cost. Isn't
that hilariously unlikely from companies utterly dependent on open source
software with perhaps more than a quarter trillion in cash between them.

~~~
kerkeslager
Would the terms of the AGPL3[1] fit what you're talking about?

The idea of the AGPL is that if you expose a service online which uses AGPL
licensed software, you're required to publish the source code with any
modifications or additions you've made to it. I'm not sure on the
enforceability of these provisions (how would we know if i.e. Amazon was using
a modified version of AGPL software and not publishing their changes?).

But, if it works as intended, the AGPL would require that these companies
publish the improvements they make to open source software. This would prevent
situations like Amazon using modified Linux on their servers without
contributing the modifications back to the community. This is a more careful
closing of the larger loophole in non-copyleft license that allows, for
example, Apple to take BSD code for MacOS X, without contributing back to BSD.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License)

~~~
benologist
No. You can't pay rent with their improvements and there's only certain types
of software, and a handful of titles, that these companies modify like that.

Funding open source development needs to be across-the-board inclusive, it is
the "R" in "R&D". Open source benefits from a massive parallel pipeline of bad
projects and inferior efforts and abandoned ideas from which comes great
stuff, but even the bad stuff can teach a lot.

~~~
cycloptic
If those improvements align with your customers' goals then yes, you can pay
rent with them.

------
vortico
Why not just release proprietary software if you want funding for your work?
Selling licenses for using software is one of the easiest ways to fund
software development since 1980. Customers have more respect for companies
with straightforward licensing plans, and well-funded software can offer
customers high levels of technical support. People know they get what they pay
for, so no need to be afraid to charge users for your quality work.

~~~
cycloptic
Free software means freedom, not price. There isn't any reason you can't offer
your users freedom as well as a quality paid product -- selling warranties,
support, and licensing exceptions are all valid business models regardless.

~~~
streetcat1
There is, the more money you make the better the product will be. Opensource
goes AGAINST quality software:

1\. Selling warranties - the better the product the less there is a need for a
warranty.

2\. Selling support - the better the product, the less there is a need for
support.

3\. Licensing exception - not sure what that is.

Again, open source today is :

1) Competitive strategy used by big companies against rival - for example
kubernetes and its eco-system as a strategy of google against AWS.

2) Bait and switch - also known as open core. For example redis or hashicorp.
I will open source a "community" edition to increase adaptation, but all the
useful features are behind a wall. I think it was mongo CEO who actually
stated that in an interview.

~~~
cycloptic
I don't believe in the mythical perfect software which has no bugs and which
requires no warranty or support. You can't write complex pieces of software
without requiring these things. By licensing exception I mean a dual-licensing
sales scheme.

I agree "open source" is mostly a corporate bait-and-switch which is why I
focus more on the "free as in free speech" aspect.

~~~
streetcat1
Thanks. My point is that I want to create as high quality software as I can,
and decrease support to zero. I want to get paid for doing tests. I want to
add fault tolerant mechanism to mask failures,etc.

However, if my pay is based on support, I have an internal conflict.

There is something to be said about code review (which was the original Linus
argument). However, I should not expect quality reviews from non paid
developers.

~~~
cycloptic
Someone has to maintain those tests. Those qualify as "support". The idea
behind code review isn't that amateur developers are going to do it, but that
other companies can independently pay someone.

------
lacker
This is missing the main way people get paid for open source work, which is to
work for a company that will pay them to work on an open source project.
Everything from Go to React to Bitcoin falls into this model.

~~~
toupeira
It's right there as option 3, "paid open gigs".

------
ahnick
I think there are more ways to make money from open source than that blog post
lays out. I thought the SFOSC docs do a good job surveying the possible
business models with open source -> [https://sfosc.org/docs/book/business-
models/](https://sfosc.org/docs/book/business-models/)

IMHO, the "free software product" model and/or the OpenSaaS model are the two
strongest choices. They both seem to have healthy revenue generation
potential, while allowing a community to form and develop around the software.

------
EGreg
What if we as a community developed a new way of paying for open source
software with micropayments, based on how widely it was actually installed and
used?

What if this system would be self-enforcing because of a network effect, like
the Brave Browser does kinda? It could be enforced with a browser extension or
by mobile web browsers.

There was a time when cryptocurrency promised to do that just, with utility
tokens before regulators made everything either act like a security token or
nothing. Before it was discovered that Ethereum wasn’t going to be scalable
enough for actual payments and tokens would just ever be for occasional
transactions between exchanges and most tokens became instruments of
speculative investment and day trading instead of actual medium of exchange
for goods and services?

~~~
carapace
I've heard that Giordano Bruno said that whatever has the most value and the
least cost of storage becomes money. FWIW.

------
carapace
Let me say up front that I'm a _Free_ software fanatic. RMS was correct. I
don't really understand _Open_ source philosophy. I'm not trying to start a
flame war, just disclosing my bias.

The point of Free Software is sharing without letting the other guy hoard
improvements or lock you out of sharing.

Recall that the whole thing got started when RMS wanted to fix the software in
his printer and Xerox said "no". _That 's_ the genesis of the GPL.

Getting paid is _orthogonal_ to writing Free software. RMS himself makes his
money by writing new software on contract _not_ by somehow selling his
existing code.

This works.

Bash and readline are maintained by one guy
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20772053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20772053)

> Ramey has now worked on Bash and Readline for well over a decade. He has
> never once been compensated for his work—he is and has always been a
> volunteer.

You have perhaps used that code for years and never thought to pay Mr. Ramey,
eh?

I'm using a Prolog compiler that's written and maintained by one guy, an
Associate Professor at _Centre de recherche en informatique_ at the Sorbonne:
[http://www.gprolog.org/](http://www.gprolog.org/)

If you are paying for software and do not have a truly novel application in
2019 then you are wasting your money.

If you want to get paid for writing software that isn't solving a truly novel
problem then I don't know what to tell you, I think you're kind of deluded.
(If you want to get paid for software you already wrote then IMO you're a
_miser._ )

"He who works for the fruits of his labors is a miser"

~ Krishna

------
jkaufmann_
I think it's a careful balance between contributing for the greater good and
hoping it compensates you later on (whether that be fame or fortune).

IMO, the perfect storm is to create a software that solves the layperson's
problems just fine (enticing adoption). And then has a proprietary section
that makes more sense for those who have the money (re: @beneologist).

------
liveoneggs
these efforts are attempting to turn npm into a platform for monetization, but
it's too low-level for that and the consumers of it are other programmers, who
clearly aren't paying for jack.

The consumer needs to be a customer of an actual thing (like a finished
product), not the neat-shaped-nail that you designed that is 1/100000th of the
finished product.

Does npm already support commercial licensing of libs (I honestly don't know)?

The most successful platform for open source money making is wordpress, as far
as I can tell and by a very big margin.

Wordpress powers thousands of real small businesses and is a massive informal
economy all on its own. It is what success in the bazaar looks like as far as
I can tell.

I would love to document all similar platforms (wordpress plugins/themes, aws
appliances, classic shareware/indy games, ????)

------
UglyToad
There's an extent to which this whole discussion feels 'close but no potato'.

While we generally agree that open source software is good for business,
consumers, society and developers and as open source developers we enjoy
developing and sharing open source code; we also have to make rent and buy
food.

The responses to that fall into one of two categories:

\+ This is obviously unfair, the world sucks, but no one particularly wants
more closed-source software/libraries/frameworks so quit your bitching and
suck it up, after all if <team name here> can do it why can't you (neglecting
that donation driven models don't scale for all the components of an open
ecosystem)?

\+ We should change our licenses so that people with money have to pay for it.

No one was lied to here particularly, the license terms are there and they
tell you you're surrendering rights to your work when you choose a permissive
license. But equally modern development is almost impossible without open
source components and businesses aren't willing to pay their way or do
everything in house.

Where do we go from here? Well, I think these licensing discussions are in
general harmful to open source (ignoring free software here because, just
because). We all benefit from knowledge being a commons and from being able to
see, repurpose and audit source code. But if the system is rewarding nonsense
(basically all modern software development, every social media app, every
advertising platform, almost all enterprise software, etc, etc.) while the
developers of the genuinely socially useful stuff go hungry then maybe the
system isn't fit for purpose.

I don't have concrete suggestions beyond telling people to think bigger than
just which license to choose and to stop trying to harm the open source
ecosystem to get paid. System change needs a coordinated effort from people
working together, we have to build and articulate a demand for change that
comes from the masses of developers, not solely a few people. Again this is
all thoroughly hand wavey and sadly I don't have any answers but I'd be
interested in building a socialist vision of software as a public good and
knowledge as a commons that enriches everyone, rather than creating minefields
for litigation with new licenses.

