The Open Source Definition
opensource.org
Introduction Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open source software must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution The licens…

There has been a lot of talk about companies and individuals adopting licenses that aren’t OSI opensource to protect themselves from mega-corp leechers. Developers have also been condemned who put donation notices in the command-line or during package installation. Projects with opensource cores and paid extensions have also been targets of vitriol.

So, let’s say we wanted to make it possible for the majority of developers to work on software that strictly follows the definition of opensource, which models would be acceptable to make enough money to work on those projects full-time?

  • Deckweiss@lemmy.world
    12·
    5 months ago

    Personally I like the following two approaches:

    1. Free and open source for selfhosting, paid when hosted by the company (e.g Nextcloud, gitea, cal.com)

    2. Free and open source with basic features, paid for proprietary business addons (e.g Portmaster, Xpipe)

    I think those approaches are fully compatible with the open source definition, but please correct me if I am wrong. (The examples I mentioned are just some of which I personally know and use, but of course they are many others)

    • onlinepersona@programming.devOPEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      Free and open source for selfhosting, paid when hosted by the company (e.g Nextcloud, gitea, cal.com)

      Do you believe anything should be done if a large competitor takes over the business of hosting for other companies and hosting is the major revenue stream of the opensource project?

      Free and open source with basic features, paid for proprietary business addons (e.g Portmaster, Xpipe)

      That sounds like Open Core and I am for this, but there seems to be a dissatisfaction within the loud part of the opensource community regarding it. They don’t consider it “open-source”. Do you still count it as opensource?

      Your proposals concern services or applications. Do you have any thoughts on opensource that isn’t that e.g libraries, frameworks, protocols, and so on?

      Anti Commercial-AI license

  • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    5 months ago

    Three examples of open source software where at least one developer could give up their regular job and work full-time on the open source project. I’m sure there’s more (The Linux kernel maybe ?) :

    In both cases possible because of people donating. The last example is quite remarkable given the personal history of the developer and the fact that it was “just” a fun project with the developer sharing videos about programming for the fun project.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 months ago

    1. Premium support channels - This is basically how RedHat and Canonical make their money, while offering FOSS for individuals.

    2. Donations - KDE and GNOME are largely donor-backed, both by individuals and corporate entities.

    3. Commissions on features - Collabora for example is commissioned by Valve to improve KDE and SteamOS.

    4. Software licenses - Certain FOSS licenses may permit paid access to software as long as the source is open i think? There are also source-available eg. Asperite that are open source, but only offer binaries for customers.

    5. Add on services - Your FOSS web app can offer paid hosting and management for clients. Your distro can offer ISOs with extra pre-downloaded software for a fee (Zorin). You can partner with hardware to distribute your software (Manjaro, KDE).

    6. Hired by a company to work on your project and integrate with their own stack. This is what Linus Torvalds did with Linux when he was first hired by Transmeta - part of his time was spent working on Linux to work better with the technology Transmeta used.