
Faircode, an alternative to Open Source that aims to get developers paid - kiyanwang
https://hackernoon.com/faircode-an-alternative-to-open-source-89cdc65df3fa
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RobAley
The primary reasons that I, as a small business user who falls under the
threshold needed to pay, wouldn't touch Faircode licensed software are :

\- If I get invested in using the software in my product or workflow now, if I
hit the turnover threshold in a year or two's time, I have no guarantee of
what the price of the product will be then. Just because I turnover $1m, if
I'm on low margins, the developer has raised the price from the $100 per org
now to $1000 per CPU then, and I'm using on 100 CPUS on my cloud service, I'm
stuffed. They may also change the terms of the commercial license that cause
me issues. It's too much of a risk to invest time in software that I may have
the rug pulled out from under my feet at a later date.

\- I can't easily change or add to the software and distribute those changes
as I can with genuine OSS, because its not clear that any recipient would be
able to get a commercial license for the modified software.

As an aside, most Universities and many charities have a turnover/funding >
£1m, but (legitimately) limited budgets for software. They won't likely touch
Faircode licensed software, which means students won't get exposed to it,
which means they won't create a demand for it when they graduate into the
workforce. There is a reason that many commercial software companies give free
"educational" licenses.

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speedplane
As a purely practical matter, doesn't most open source software operate the
same way that "faircode" is proposing? If your small open source project makes
it into a critical system at a large company, you can be sure that they will
fund your development (or just hire you). This is already happening.

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dpc_pw
[https://github.com/copyfair/copyfair/](https://github.com/copyfair/copyfair/)

Also, AGPL + commercial license works similarly and is GPL compatible.

