
I will now charge my clients a fee to support open source projects - gilad
https://dev.to/manuelbieh/i-will-now-charge-my-clients-a-fee-to-support-open-source-projects-277
======
derekp7
The problem is that enterprises have one mechanism to purchase software, and a
totally separate mechanism for charitable donations. The two budgets are run
by separate groups, and never interact.

The solution? Offer your code under an open source license, but also have a
purchase option to buy a commercial license. In many cases, the commercial
version is a compiled and validated official executable, available with a
support contract. But there is no reason that the came code can't be made
available under both licenses, or that the commercial license can't actually
be the same GPL (or whatever) license the open source one is offered under.

This way, the technical team that chooses the software has an invoice that
they can send to purchasing, to get corporate support dollars to the open
source project.

~~~
chii
Then the bean counters say "why are you buying this software, when you could
have gotten it for free."

"what do you mean it's like donating to a charity? we already have a corporate
social responsibility budget, and it's spent on XYZ. We don't need to donate
anymore".

~~~
Spooky23
You use a license that’s hard for corporate counsel to accept like GPL3.

~~~
devoply
Affero GPL 3 :)

~~~
StudentStuff
If a company can't stomach AGPLv3, then they shouldn't be using software I
write.

I seek contributions back, while not leaving a gaping hole for SaaS vendors to
extend & close my codebase.

------
acconrad
This seems like a bad PR move. Having been in consulting everything is about
perception of value. Why not just plan to spend some of your money (say 5%) on
supporting open source projects and just raise your rates by 5%?

Ticketmaster is the perfect example of this. You buy a concert ticket for $35,
but after all of their exorbitant bullshit fees, it's more like $50-55. But if
they just told you "$50 is what you pay" then you'd probably not care at all.

So go ahead and charge whatever you want for a fee. Just don't penalize your
customers for the things you want to personally support.

~~~
chii
My guess is that by itemizing the open-source donation, the higher fees
(compared to your competition's) is justified.

If you just raised your price by X%, you are now more expensive relative to
your competitor's (and they don't donate, so thus out-competing you).

------
peterwwillis
The most amusing thing about companies' technology budgets is their fear of
price tags.

Pay for Enterprise support for that open source product? Way too expensive, no
way.

Pay for 5 engineers in completely separate teams to badly implement, partially
support, and later replace part of the Enterprise features as proprietary
extensions over 2-3 years, while company's actual product languishes without
the functionality it could have used? Take my money.

Meanwhile, keep paying for SaaS and proprietary software, because there's no
alternative, supposedly.

~~~
brianberns
It's because the engineers are on staff and you're paying them anyway. Trying
to justify a separate purchase, even if would be cheaper on paper, is way
harder.

~~~
dotancohen
That, and NIH. I've literally last week told my project manager that the
better business decision would be to buy the very software that I'm
developing. There is more than enough work for me to do already. But the
broader picture requires us to develop in-house.

I don't mind, I'm learning something new. I suppose that in itself adds value
to the company.

~~~
peterwwillis
> I don't mind, I'm learning something new. I suppose that in itself adds
> value to the company.

It would if the information got imbued back into the rest of the company, but
it most often manifests as domain experts, who when they go away, someone else
has to learn the thing all over again.

------
rahimiali
specifically: "I will ask my clients for an hourly rate that is 1 Euro higher
than I originally negotiated or I would usually charge. I will take that money
(up to ~160 Euros per month) and support those projects on Open Collective
that I'm basing my work upon in my client's project."

------
swalsh
I've never been to church, except for the occasional funeral. So i'm not
really familiar with how collection plates or tithes work. But maybe the
church of open source could find a priest to get some advice. Or at the very
least, lecture people about how much better a person you can be for supporting
open source.

~~~
pricechild
ESR is making an attempt:
[http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8387](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8387)

~~~
dotancohen
So is the developer of Zig, in response to the whole V language fiasco.

[https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-donating-to-musl-libc-
proje...](https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-donating-to-musl-libc-project.html)

------
jnpaw
[https://twitter.com/adamrackis/status/931195056479965185](https://twitter.com/adamrackis/status/931195056479965185)

If you think your software is valuable enough to cost money (instead of
offering it for free) then do so.

------
hokus
Its not my area of expertise but....

There are so many corrupt non-profits to which one can make tax deductible
donations. Would it be possible to reform/tweak/hack the [existing] donations
to help their bottom line?

I bet someone out there is already doing this.

------
vbsteven
I wonder if some sort of structure can be used where you split the invoice in
two separate invoices. One for the work and a smaller one for the open source
donation that can be deducted from taxes as an actual donation. It might not
be legal because of tax evasion.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
If Walmart can ask you for a dollar charity on your bill, so can some
independent contractor.

------
NetOpWibby
The comments on that article are better than the article itself.

------
mjl-
to which projects do you donate? the ones you used in your paid work? the ones
you wish would improve? the ones which need it most?

~~~
jbrooksuk
Could you imagine donating to everyone in `node_modules`?

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kirankn
Like the idea !

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masonic
I hope the writer puts some of those proceeds toward a proofreader.

------
revskill
Imagine from the beginning of github, you do that, then OSS will die from day
1.

I'm sure it's not the right way to make OSS sustainable.

The only way (which i believe) to make OSS sustainable, is that, you open
source the core or toolings, let others fork it, and you make contract to
support enterprise clients, to support the open core.

~~~
doesnt_know
FLOSS existed before Github and it will exist long after it is gone. Financial
sustainability has always been a problem for the movement but it's independent
of a single repository host.

