[thekingofh]

The only model that seems to work with GNU's philosophy while also compensating the developer fairly is that you have to create the software, or a demo of the software, and then do a kickstarter style fundraising effort BEFORE you release it. You can have it completely done, but in essence the first customer doesn't get the software until you get paid. Then they are free to do whatever they want with it once you release it. Updates can be released on the same model. NOBODY gets it until you can support yourself on the income before releasing it into the wild, because once you do, there's no way to get compensated without some kind of support contract (which is no guarantee) or restricting the user from doing what they want with their own bits.

[cycloptic]

Make no mistake, closed source mostly works out the same way except the "pre-funding" tends to come from VCs and traditional investing.

[nickelcitymario]

Well, that's certainly one model. But I don't think it's the only one.

There's a lot of ways to make money around free software.

But pretending that you can maintain the price of the software itself after you've given every buyer the right to sell or give it away for free is silly. It's not silly to give it away. It's not silly to sell it once and accept that it's not free. But it IS silly to pretend that's not what you're doing.

[cure]

It's an interesting approach, I have not seen it used (much?) for free software. Are there prominent examples that I'm not aware of?

One problem with this would be ongoing software maintenance. This could be great to launch a new piece of software; how do you fund the maintenance?