[mtgx]

I'd like to see more open source software, but more importantly higher quality and much better designed open source software. To make that possible, open source software needs well paid developers. I'm tired of seeing open source software that has unreadable code from 20 years ago, and looks like it was designed 20 years ago, too. Such software from my point of view is unusable and therefore pointless.

That's why I think the best model is offering open source code that is freely available for other open source projects (to expand "freedom" and all that) OR free/gratis software (or perhaps only to non-profits), BUT if you get paid for it, you have to pay for a license. I think it's more than fair that if you make money off open source software you should give a cut back to the creators of that open source code.

Right now we're in the shameful situation where large companies making billions of dollars in profit every quarter don't even pay modest sums to projects such as OpenSSL (this changed a bit, but only after Heartbleed happened, and there are many more such projects that don't get the same benefit).

I know there are some disadvantages to this model, such as having hardware built with open source software cost more than it would otherwise, but let's face it the alternative would be hardware that comes with proprietary unverified code that may cost even more. So I think this "compromise" is well worth it, considering it can get the open source developers the money they need to keep working on it and expand the project.

[belorn]

Unreal Engine seems to have a fairly successful model of gratis for everyone except commercial products, and then it is 5% royalty on gross revenue per product. You don't have to mess around with non-profit status, or create a divide between people. A simple rule that state 5% royalty on revenue for each product, and if there is no revenue then its 5% of 0.

[ArneBab]

I agree that it’s important to have more paid developers of Free Software.

I disagree with your shism between open source projects and getting paid.

People should get paid for improving free software, because many others know that they benefit from that. Copyleft is a good tool to ensure that the improvements can flow back into the projects.

[tbrownaw]

That would get impractical very quickly.

The old-style BSD license is considered rather awful due to requiring a notice in your documentation somewhere.

Requiring money based on what you're doing with the software is more complicated, and dividing it up between all the included and depended-on projects is even worse.