[djake]

Why don't npm/yarn/github/etc have explicit support for premium packages that cost money? It can provide revenue for the registry, too.

Napster and LimeWire were cool because people got something for free and, all else being equal, people prefer free to not free; but all else is not equal because free is not necessarily sustainable. If there were literally no way to monetize music at scale, it would not have worked out well for consumers in the long wrong, because there would be far less to consume.

People pay for software regularly. Package managers are marketplaces for software, so it doesn't seem like a huge leap for them to facilitate the exchange of funds. Then feross can charge money for standard if he wants, and people that don't think it's worth it won't pay him and won't see an ad and won't use the software.

[zawerf]

I think github is already trying to do many of those things. They started Github Sponsors[1] and Github Package Registry[2] recently.

Regular github already makes it pretty easy to choose an open source license for your project. If they add better support for creating a commercial license integrated with their package registry and automating revenue splitting among contributors, I can see it working.

[1] https://github.com/sponsors [2] https://github.com/features/package-registry