[dawhead]

There is no price "up front" because you get to define the price (the model is taken from Radiohead's release of "In Rainbows", actually). What non-sketchy model do you have for a demo version? We used to make one that simply didn't save your plugin settings, but then realized that users could accidentally destroy an existing session like this. So we switched to "silence after 10 mins; ask for more time; silence after 5 mins; ask for more; silence after 2 mins; ask for more; silence after 1 min; ad infinitum". If you've got a better for how to create a demo copy that has some incentive for the user to change to the full one, I'm all ears.

And as you note, you don't know what the "something that was more sustainable is", whereas I've been doing this for 16 years, and have been through almost every "how to make money with open source" idea that there is. The vast majority don't apply to niche software, even on the odd occasion that they work for some other things.

I've made a living (of some kind) from working on Ardour for nearly 8 years now, and worked on it without need of income for 8 years before that. I think i'm

[spacelizard]

Personally as a fellow free software developer, I take whatever opportunities I can to look closer at what value the software is really providing for the user. Is your primary user actually interested in the freedom and community the software provides, or are they just looking for "Pro Tools on GNU/Linux" with a low price tag? It's probably a combination of the two for most users, and as you have found there is tons of tweaking that can be done to optimize for the middle-ground. I personally choose to lean more towards optimizing for freedom and community, but the downside to this is it requires more infrastructure to support it.

From the download page it looks like your anchor point is a one-time $45 for unlimited upgrades. This is already fairly cheap for DAW software, but I would be interested to know which of your pricing options actually does generate the most revenue. That would probably give you clues as to how to build a stronger free (gratis) version that doesn't reduce overall value for the user. Subscriptions being popular means you can probably consider paid add-ons and services. User wants to use proprietary plugins? It's added maintenance costs, make them pay for it. One-time purchases being popular means you probably need to pursue sponsorships. Unfortunately I don't know a good way to do this at scale without either A) embedding obnoxious advertising, or B) finding generous corporate benefactors. Everyone obviously wants option B and option A sucks for everybody. Whoever can find the equilibrium in between these will get rich.

I also want to add that I tremendously respect what you're doing and how far you've come, and that I probably would not be a musician if Ardour did not exist :)