[F6F6FA]

I feel this is a problem of companies being cheapskates, not of OSS maintainers. So do not make it their problem. I do not make OSS for companies, but for enthusiasts, contributing to building cool stuff, students and researchers.

Don't really want a commercialization of OSS maintainers. Does not seem in the spirit of OSS, but a convoluted way to contract a single dev to work on your stack. If you are this big company, ping your developer advocate, set aside a budget, and have them go through your dependancies and reward accordingly.

What bothers me way more, is when companies take OSS and then do not adhere to the license. Not as in forgetting to attribute you, but publishing a patent based on your code and approaches. That's easy enough to kill your motivation if you are doing it for free in the first place.

If money becomes an incentive for OSS maintainers, then they will start replying to the emails they constantly get, to buy their extension or use their CDN. Your company bet the house on a poor Polish CS student for logging or useragent parsing? Your, and only your, problem. OSS keeps on working.

[indymike]

> I feel this is a problem of companies being cheapskates, not of OSS maintainers. So do not make it their problem. I do not make OSS for companies, but for enthusiasts, contributing to building cool stuff, students and researchers.

I'm starting to do something different at my company. I'm finding the package maintainers for the non-commercial stuff we use in our product and making a donation. I'm also going to start asking the maintainers to invoice my company for support where that is possible to do.

[ttyprintk]

What do you think of hiring maintainers to audit? Answer specific questions about usage and security, with some visibility into your codebase? We’ve talked this over and hit risks concerning access to code where we’d like an NDA that a consultant may dislike.

[F6F6FA]

Consultants sometimes dislike NDA, because as a consultant, you are already expected not to disclose. It is strongly implied, like patient-confidentiality. Airing dirty laundry or competitive advantage as someone visiting many companies a year, is like a doctor amputating the wrong leg. You do this once, then you are out of a job and reputation.

Risk is on your end, so you pay for it. A 10k contract becomes a 12k contract. You clarify your risks, your mitigation method (NDA), and that the extra money is for the legal liability the consultant takes on.

[F6F6FA]

If this becomes a cultural thing, part of OSS, then more employees inside big companies will start to advocate for funding the OSS they rely on. Companies found to be profiting of OSS, while keeping a closed wall, complaining, but not contributing patches or funding, will lose market mind share, and a percentage of the best developers.

Seems doable, but still hard without centralized control and PR.

[pabs3]

Not just not adhering to the license, but rejecting the entire philosophy of OSS and changing the culture of the entire software developer community such that the philosophy is disappearing and developers no longer appreciate copyleft.

[mbrodersen]

People give away their work with a price tag of $0. So people/companies pay $0. Are you surprised? Do you normally pay more than the asking price for things you buy? If you want people/companies to pay $ then you need to put that in the license and sue companies that don’t do it. Or get a company to do it on your behalf in return for a %

[F6F6FA]

Not surprised. Sometimes give a tip for good service. If you want people/companies to pay $ then you are not working on OSS.

[mbrodersen]

I don't think you understand OSS. OSS is about Open Source not about working for free. I love OSS. It's great. But stop complaining when the world gives you exactly what you ask for. If you want to be paid $ to do OSS then put that in your OSS licence and sue people who don't pay. If you don't then grow up, accept that the world will treat your work as having $0 value and move on.