

Open-source cannot live on donations alone - pytrin
http://www.binpress.com/blog/2013/04/14/open-source-cannot-live-on-donations-alone/

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olivier1664
The title should be: "making a good living by publishing your code on
Binpress.com"

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pytrin
Not sure if being snarky or not. If you have concrete feedback / criticism,
we'd love to hear it.

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btilly
Concrete feedback: once I hit the phrase "license generator" it became unclear
to me whether the projects that had been commercialized by you still were
actually open source.

I've had enough bad experiences with people who wanted the open source label
while not being open source that I don't give the benefit of the doubt any
more. And I'm not interested enough to go to your site to investigate for
myself.

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pytrin
By open-source we are talking about the availability and sharing of code, for
the benefit of everyone involved. The choice of whether to use an existing
open-source license, a generated license (with the developer's choices) or a
combination (i.e, what most big open-source companies do, such as MySQL,
Magento, etc) - is up to the developer. We are trying to promote the sharing
of code - even code that would not have been released under free open-source
licenses.

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autarch
So you've redefined a term that already has a well defined meaning to mean
something totally different.

Just because I can look at the source of something does not mean it's open
source. If it doesn't have an open source license it's just proprietary code
that ships in source form.

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pytrin
I didn't redefine anything. You are welcome to read about [1] Commercial Open
Source. You talk as though the availability of the source-code has no value.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open-
source_applicat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open-
source_applications)

~~~
autarch
The only relevant thing in that link is dual-licensed software. But looking at
binpress it seems like much of the software there is only available under a
proprietary license. The license generator can easily be configured to
generate a proprietary license.

I didn't say that source code has no value, but providing source is not the
same as an open source license, which has significantly more value.

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pytrin
Our "developer" license is very similar to a free open-source license in the
liberties it provides, except for a non-compete clause which says you can't
redistribute "as-is" (you can, however, as part of a larger / modified work).
This is a big concern for a lot of people working on commercial products - if
adding this clause gets them over the hump to release their code - we think
there's tremendous value in that.

On the other hand, almost all of our licenses include an SLA - which no free
open-source license does. In fact, one of the main reasons often cited by
people releasing code with FOSS licenses is that they don't have to support it
(doesn't mean they won't, they just don't have to). We think the guarantee of
support is worth a lot in certain sectors (such as SMBs and enterprise).

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rwbt
I've checked out binpress a few times before and they do have some interesting
stuff. I say its more like a source code marketplace, which makes it easy for
code authors to sell small utilities and libraries at no or low cost. I hope
they succeed and become more popular, since sometimes it is very difficult to
find easy to license source code.

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neilxdsouza
I've been looking for a service like this for my Open Source project. We
started out wanting to make this a business. I hope your idea takes off and I
will browse around your site to figure out how to submit my project

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pytrin
Glad to hear it. If you have specific questions, feel free to reach out to
eran[at]our domain.com

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Qantourisc
Sure it can, but the donations need to be bigger, then you can quit your job
and get a new job in Open-Source. But that can lead to financial troubles if
the donations stop...

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macco
I always wonder: Why not try to sell Open-Source-Software. For example The
Gimp, sell it via the Ubuntu Software-Center, maintain the current version,
maybe pack it with some great plugins and done. I am sure there are quite a
few people willing to pay for that service.

Gimp is the perfect example in my oppinion, because it's such a great project
without decent funding. Imagine what the could achieve with better funding.

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fablord
You may want to check Chupamobile out. It is the only marketplace 100% focused
on source code for Mobile apps. Authors in the marketplace are already making
thousands a month.

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shizzy0
Can the generated licenses be used without signing up for binpress?

