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by shaunpersad
1620 days ago
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I assume you mean "take a penny" = "use the software for free" and "leave a penny" = "contribute back" (money or time). With the plate there's a sign that says both "take" and "leave". In this case there is also a sign (the license) which only says "take". The intent is clear in both. It's further not comparable because taking a literal penny deprives the next person of it, whereas here using the software for free costs the other users nothing. But I'm not trying to nitpick the analogy, I only want to point out the the obligations (both social and contractual) are not the same, neither are the consequences. Again, if he wanted to make money from his software, he should've put it in the license and charged the big users for it. |
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The metaphorical sign does say take and leave, and the take vastly outweighs the leave.
> Again, if he wanted to make money from his software, he should've put it in the license and charged the big users for it.
A developer shouldn't have to ruin the open-source nature of the software to get there.
Maybe if we could invent some standardized almost-open-source license that doesn't terrify companies we could get there, but we can't even seem to define "commercial" in a way that doesn't break everything. Better still it would be nice if we could use social pressure to get companies to donate a small fraction of the money open source saves them.