[dessant]

I'm torn about this initiative. MDN should be governed by a foundation that can be funded directly, with content that is accessible for all. By introducing a paid service with private content, it will reduce incentives to contribute insightful documentation and guides to the free version.

[obedm]

Free content drivers people to the paid version. Is not like this model doesn't work. It's on every SaaS out there.

Having a big paying community will drive more free content, as both the paying and free customers benefit from it.

If free content start sucking, less people sign up.

Plus, some content just isn't worth privatizing, like documentation.

[netsharc]

I downloaded an open-source software today, and all over the UI were the buttons to upgrade to their paid closed-source version. Freaking hell.

Since it's open source obviously someone is going to chime in that I should spend my time removing these stupid UI elements...

[ygjb]

There is an interesting conversation to be had here.

Open source software requires that developers have the ability to spend time to contribute code. People need to get paid so they can support themselves, and as they get older, their families.

There are very few successful open source models, basically: * advertising * professional services related to the OSS offering * enterprise licensing * direct user support and contribution

Anything that is not one of these four models is either a student or hobby project, or is subsidized by the businesses that are paying the developers to contribute (either explicitly by hiring folks that work on the projects, or by employing and assigning people to work on features that eventually make their way back into the ecosystem).

If you don't support people getting paid to contribute to open source software, you are ceding the role of OSS developers to people in privileged positions, or demanding that they be paupers.

And in the interest of keeping the conversation non confrontational, folks suggesting patches shouldn't remove the UI elements from the code, they should provide a UI toggle to disable the nags; choosing to support the software or not, financially speaking, is an option for users, but be very explicit if the user chooses not to support it :)