> I’d rather just pay Microsoft than use a scheme where I pay by the number of dependencies.
So you wouldn't want to support OSS, you would rather support a company.
> I would not contribute to commercial packages where my labor benefits some org.
That would be your call for sure.
> And I would still release packages under a permissive license that allows for reuse without any compensation to me.
This would be your prerogative as well.
Let's pretend we have in place the infrastructure. A place where anyone can submit a bill of usage, and do payments, and this holds the payments and a person can register their software there. For your use case it would have even the possibility of you redirecting the funds you don't want into other projects. Perhaps a badge on your profile, "redirector", "open hands", wtv.
Let's imagine that every piece of software besides a "readme.md" file, has a file describing its dependencies. NPM would be able to do this like they can build a dependency graph. Your OS would be able to do this because each programs/lib would be able to do this/provide their own.
Let's say there's a piece of software that can pick all these little files and coalesce them into a single one.
Now you could build a "package" of what it would cost you, see what is in there and then just make it part of your monthly payroll.
There's no bureaucracy. If you are a company using software and not paying for it, you would be under breach of contract and could be sued legally.
Exactly. I agree to split my components into 5 pieces and use 3 of yours as dependencies. In exchange, you agree to depend on at least 3 of mine.
Next year, we each achieve 33% YoY growth by splitting one of our deps into two pieces 'for increased modularity' or some other reason totally not financially motivated.
Given it was open source you could see that happening?
You could just like, choose the dependencies you wanted to use. Like vote with your wallet or something.
Yeah definitively. But when I wrote that, I meant you as an individual consumer wouldn't need to worry about that. Or someone who writes libraries or packages. Only if you were running a for profit business. The remaining would have to be on trust of the community running the packages but I can definitively entertain the idea of it not working as expected.
I'm both an individual consumer and a professional working for a for-profit business in most computing circumstances at home. Same for my permanently working-from-home freelancer spouse.
My network gear and proxmox server and TrueNAS and Synology all run open-source software and all four of those support both personal and for-profit activities to different degrees.
The Plex container is clearly fully personal, but the Unifi controller and backups use cases are mixed, and the standalone Ubuntu container is fully for-profit, all running on a mixed Proxmox. Which ones get charged and which ones are free?
Also been thinking about a similar concept for a while. For the negative effects some have mentioned, one could also argue the possibility of a positive effect to make things more open and result in better quality / funded / open projects.
As an idea an addition to this could be a community trust score where users also get to vote on a few aspects of a project, like ‘is it well maintained?’, ‘do you understand changes in version updates?’ etc. maybe bad examples, but a few simple metrics which can give a project a good or bad rep based on what the maintainers does as presented by the community - not just nit-picked twitter quotes. Yes, these will need to be crafted carefully so that maintainer cannot game them but the result could be projects getting paid well for doing things that builds trust and makes the project more accessible.
Of course I could just look at the PR history and issues etc before I use a new package, but I would trust community feedback more than my 30 min deep dive.
Today we only have very vague metrics like npm popularity or github stars, which is very hard to accurately judge what package to choose or not.
> So you wouldn't want to support OSS, you would rather support a company.
If I’m paying for it, it’s not open source. I’d rather pay a single company with a “simple”license, than something that costs me more when someone uses a leftpad package than just writing their own. I don’t want to have to have cost decisions factor into my design at that level.
Having the legal support to plan out if I’m under breach or not is expensive.
One of the things I like about OSS is I can avoid that. Paying and still having that threat is the worse of both worlds.
Also, unpredictable prices are really hard in my org. Having my payroll vary month to month on what’s happening is really hard. Do I pay based on when I compile? When I run? What if I want to have 10 test environments, so I pay times 10. What if I need to archive and might never run it, but need to make sure I can run it, do I pay. Etc etc. There’s a million different permutations based on project needs that vary by people.
With OSS, I can clearly plan and address all these. With commercial licenses, I usually can since I get a perpetual license per seat or cpu or whatever.
This new scheme would be really complex and include a lot of latent risk, and require that I’m constantly open to audit by some org. And audits are expensive to receive and support. No thanks, I’ll just skip using it and use OSS versions.
There are many projects out there that require a license for commercial use of the software because it's an attempt to make the project more sustainable.
Don't be surprised if more and more projects go down this route. The current model of giving corporations big freebies to make lots of money off of, and then often getting no financial or developer support for that, isn't sustainable and there's a massive burnout problem because of that. Times are good now, but just wait until a few things in your core infrastructure don't get patched or worse, they get archived, because the maintainer is tired of spending evenings fixing your problems for free.
When I use the term open source, I mean “OSI license” as that’s what I think is most important. That means free.
Projects are free to do whatever they want, and choosing a closed source license that’s not free is their prerogative. More power to them. I probably will never buy anything from them, but I harbor no ill will.
But when it comes to supporting OSS, I’ll do it as I’ve been for the past few decades; using and contributing to it.
Note this is different than “fixing your problems for free” and I’ve funded a shitload of consulting to fix my problems with OSS. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a problem to be fixed for free. Just like it’s unreasonable to expect that I must pay certain developers to fix problems in open source.
I find it funny when people say things aren’t sustainable and there are 20-50 year old projects and communities that are clearly sustainable and on multiple generations of developers.
“Not sustainable for me to do it” is very different from “not sustainable.” It’s ok that not everyone who wants to make a living doing something can’t afford to do it, that’s not a problem we need to solve as a society.
It's open source except if you're profiting for it.
I don't know if my english is rudimentary or something.
No, you would pay per month, it would be automated. We could throw it on the block chain, or have an AI calculate it.
If you never run it you never run it, if it's part of your business backup plan you pay it.
With OSS for sure, you just go 0$ monthly payments, most straightforward payment plan ever, can't argue with that.
> I usually can since I get a perpetual license per seat or cpu or whatever.
> I’d rather just pay Microsoft than use a scheme where I pay by the number of dependencies.
So you wouldn't want to support OSS, you would rather support a company.
> I would not contribute to commercial packages where my labor benefits some org.
That would be your call for sure.
> And I would still release packages under a permissive license that allows for reuse without any compensation to me.
This would be your prerogative as well.
Let's pretend we have in place the infrastructure. A place where anyone can submit a bill of usage, and do payments, and this holds the payments and a person can register their software there. For your use case it would have even the possibility of you redirecting the funds you don't want into other projects. Perhaps a badge on your profile, "redirector", "open hands", wtv.
Let's imagine that every piece of software besides a "readme.md" file, has a file describing its dependencies. NPM would be able to do this like they can build a dependency graph. Your OS would be able to do this because each programs/lib would be able to do this/provide their own.
Let's say there's a piece of software that can pick all these little files and coalesce them into a single one.
Now you could build a "package" of what it would cost you, see what is in there and then just make it part of your monthly payroll.
There's no bureaucracy. If you are a company using software and not paying for it, you would be under breach of contract and could be sued legally.