[ThinkBeat]

[old person rant]

There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. It used to be the norm and it is still quite common.

These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source.

However, the term open source has been used for so many different things that is has lost most shared coherent meaning. I guess that is why "Libre Software" is now being used by some.

What is plain hypocrisy to me are the people who developed "for profit" open source projects, and are angry when they dont get paid enough, when the projects they have created rely on GNU tools, the Linux kernel (Perhaps Debian), a libre software database on so on.

Their product is built on the shoulders and sacrifice of other open-source folks that often is not getting paid or not paid enough.

For profit open source should have clause of donating X% of profits downstream to the open-source projects they rely on. (Since they would have no product without them)

There are some core and vital open-source projects that have enormous importance for millions. I think supporting them should be a priority.

A lot of modern software is "open source" until it become inconvenient and they introduce "Pro", or "see source", or shift license entirely.

A lot of companies should just be "for profit". There is nothing wrong with it and nothing wrong with making money, or making money off of open source. I do nitpick on people who see open source as a way to get paid and they are angry if they dont get it.

[tm-guimaraes]

Sourcehut seems to be an exception here, Drew not only has a profitable open source business, he not only contributes upstream, but also donate to open source projects.

[robertlagrant]

There are many OSS companies. I think what the OP is (correctly) complaining about is people writing OSS and then getting upset when others sell it, or sell things based on it. I see this attitude creeping into e.g. articles on The Register. If you want to licence your software so anyone can use or resell it, don't be surprised when they do.

[pydry]

It sounds like OP is getting upset when people write OSS and then relicense it in such a way to restrict unfettered usage to provide or maintain a revenue stream.

E.g. Elastic search vs. Amazon (elastic search does run upon the Linux kernel after all)

[TheNewsIsHere]

I think it’s worth grading this sort of thing.

In my business we derive fantastic value from FOSS, and a huge part of that is the absence of countless other layers of profit between us and the upstream developers. So it makes sense for us to give a piece of that business back. More or less, the core of the business is all sitting atop FOSS projects.

But we’re small, so any contributions reflect that. And we do cumulatively use more FOSS software in our stack indirectly than we can sanely evaluate, so we probably won’t be seen contributing funds to every single one.

The Amazon ES shenanigans is a good example of a different “grade” of this situation, where they’re just money grubbing.

[imtringued]

This criticism only applies to the economic rents being extracted aka charging too much and not giving the economic rents to the producer of the economic rent. If you build a product and charge based on the incremental value you provide, there is hardly reason for criticism.

[jraph]

WordPress, Nextcloud, XWiki, Univention, Passbolt are a few other profitable open source businesses doing well. It is possible to sell open source software :-)

Now, maybe it's not as profitable, but not every wants to be as big as Apple or Microsoft.

[unmole]

I remember there was also a Prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. They were called Scarlet Caps or something similar.

[vram22]

Yes. Their Indian branch was called लाल टोपी

https://translate.google.com/?sl=hi&tl=en&text=%E0%A4%B2%E0%...

[robertlagrant]

You're thinking of Crimson Headwear?

[ZephyrBlu]

I thought it was Rose Helmet?

[TheNewsIsHere]

I remember it being Maroon Headscarf.

[RobotToaster]

>WordPress

Isn't that mostly funded through the proprietary jetpack SaaS?

[TheNewsIsHere]

It’s not very clear to me what the exact funding model is, but I don’t think if Jetpack went away it would make a seismic financial dent in WordPress.org.

A lot of that sponsored core development comes straight from Automattic, which gets revenue from WordPress.com, WooCommerce paid services, Tumblr advertising, and Jetpack too.

[noirscape]

Sourcehut is a bit of an oddball though - it's mostly profitable because it's not a free service. As in, if you want to host your product at sourcehut, Drew expects (but doesn't force) you to pay for it[0]. Contributing is free though.

Also helping sourcehut is that it's actual deployment process is uh... Interesting? It's expecting to run on Alpine (and not dockerized Alpine) and you need to be able to supply an email server. The latter especially means that the usual problem of "FOSS hosting with a price label" doesn't really pop up; nobody is going to bother cloning sourcehuts deployment setup without the fees attached because very few people want to selfhost email for a personal instance of FOSS software. (Since self-hosting email is rather annoying for maintenance since your server IP can end up in random blacklists and you won't know until the setup stops working, and sourcehut relies a lot on email.)

[0]: https://man.sr.ht/billing-faq.md - seems to mostly be on a "were not gonna be jerks about it" - "if you're so poor you can't pay for sourcehut on the price given, send me an email and we'll work something out" basis - the goal doesn't seem to be to extract profit from every user and "fuck poor people", which is quite respectable if you ask me.

[tm-guimaraes]

> it's mostly profitable because it's not a free service.

I don't understand what you mean from this. What service doesn't charge? Either demos/trial versions, or they are actually charging someone else for your activity.

> Interesting? It's expecting to run on Alpine (and not dockerized Alpine)

there's still pleaty of admins who do preferer to not use containers. Conterners shine on "cattle" deployments, if you can get away with pets, that's not really something weird out of the enterprise or new age stuff.

> and sourcehut relies a lot on email.

well, it's literally a service to contribute by email, it would be weird if it wasn't like that.

[godelski]

> What is plain hypocrisy to me are the people who developed "for profit" open source projects, and are angry when they dont get paid enough, when the projects they have created rely on GNU tools, the Linux kernel (Perhaps Debian), a libre software database on so on.

This is a big part of why I find it so crazy that people argue that "Open Source" work isn't open when a commercial license is attached (besides the fact that "available" and "open" are synonyms and it is a clearly reasonable interpretation of the words). It strikes a balance between that "coolness" you mention while not letting big companies take your work and make massive profits while stepping on your shoulders.

I think it is completely reasonable for Open Source (aka Software Available) projects to say "Here's my work. If there's pie to be had, just be cool and share a little. If there isn't, don't fret, we're in this together." It is astounding to me that people attack those asking for a little pie when they so clearly are lifting up the pie eaters. It would be one thing if they were asking for the whole pie, but (like this article) that doesn't seem to be the vast majority of them. And if we're being honest, attacking the scaffolding seems just like it ends up in less pies overall.

[indymike]

> These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source.

Most of the time when I see people grumping about getting paid for open source, it isn't the actual developer. It's someone who thinks the developer should get paid more. Usually it's a blog post to a, "Did you know critical package x is maintained by some 70 year old dude in Dubuque, Iowa... and he's on VACATION RIGHT NOW?"

That said, the article is a pretty good summary.

[ghaff]

Based on consulting calls I've had with companies, a very common pattern is:

- They want to be "open source" because they or their VC think it's important for the marketing benefits and it seems to be of interest to customers

- But, they're not really planning to invest to make the open source development model work

- And, they sure don't want to disadvantage themselves from a business perspective (have trouble holding features back/give potential competitors a leg up)

[teddyh]

> There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it.

Sure, but the FSF (and others) may have an opinion on the license given to the paying customers, in order to not restrict them.

Otherwise, spot on; Open source is not a business model: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32287432>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31293455>

[zrail]

A beautiful thing about the world is that you don't have to care at all what the FSF have opinions on if you don't want to. The license you choose to provide to your users is between you and them.

[hutzlibu]

Yes, but please don't call it open source then, if it isn't open in the way, that people expect.

[ozim]

From what I understand from reading this thread - that is the whole point of “nothing wrong with making and selling software” - it does not and most likely should not be open source or called open source. Where only reasons for slapping open source on project is free marketing and “being cool”.

[alphazard]

B2C software increasingly needs to be at least source-available to prove security. It's hard to take a password manager or file storage product seriously if the client code isn't available for audit.

Say what you want about copyright, just revealing the source impedes your ability to commercialize it.

That means the client code can't be your secret sauce. The client code is effectively this table-stakes item that you have to release for free. The hosted server component is where you have to put your differentiators.

[bick_nyers]

I wonder if "pay to compile" would work well. In other words, open source your code to the world, but if you want to download an .exe you need to pay an upfront cost.

Obviously doesn't work with all types of software, but even something like a C++ backend library (like OpenCV) you could open source the C++, but sell access to the python bindings.

[elcritch]

I've pondered in the past about paid "documentation". You have basic opencv docs but charge for the in depth docs. Really it's sorta a thing when people buy books from SMEs on an open source project.

[imtringued]

The problem is licensing fees. The fee itself may be insignificant but you need to track who has to pay who and this requires license keys and licensing servers and all the logistics to get these things to the right places.

[phkahler]

>> There are some core and vital open-source projects that have enormous importance for millions. I think supporting them should be a priority.

I'm going out on a limb here, but what have you done to support them? Apologies if you have, but a lot of people seem to want someone else to support their favorite free thing.

[TheNewsIsHere]

I got tired of being that guy at some point within the past few years and started personally contributing.

I’m not taking any sides here, but GitHub’s sponsor feature makes this _very_ easy to do, and that’s valuable to me.

Edit to add: Agility in contributing money to FOSS projects is not where it could be, and that’s absolutely a place we could do better in to drive more direct funds into the FOSS ecosystem.

[pessimizer]

They're far more likely to have donated than the millions that depend on the software, because this is another developer, so more likely to be empathetic because developers know how unrewarding and important FOSS development can be. That's not a solution, that's the status quo.

Also, it's not helpful to go out of your way this much to disqualify someone from having an opinion. It's essentially an accusation of hypocrisy, made absolutely blindly and randomly at a person you don't know anything about who expressed an opinion you didn't like.

[lamontcg]

I don't understand this argument at all.

> There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. It used to be the norm and it is still quite common.

Yes, agreed.

> These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool".

Yes, agreed.

> That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source.

Well, yes, they got pulled in by the hype and then realized that they needed some kinds of cashflows to make it sustainable.

> I do nitpick on people who see open source as a way to get paid and they are angry if they dont get it.

Why? Because they made one mistake up front and picked the wrong model and didn't realize until they were several years into their project that open source was wrong for them? So you decide to crucify them for that, even though if they'd made that decision right from the start you would have 100% fully supported them?

I didn't realize that open sourcing something was a perpetual indefinite infinite-year long contract that requires endless toil and slavery to the cause. Perhaps we should be a bit more clear about that up front.

[TheNewsIsHere]

I consider it a feature that some FOSS licenses are effectively bound to their licensed code forever but don’t necessarily prohibit forking and relicensing in future.

I do think moving the goalposts or being dishonest about your intentions are wrong.

What I’d like to see when this happens is honesty about relicensing with a view toward profit (or whatever you’re after), and not attempting to scrub your more liberally licensed code from the face of the planet.

I’m not asserting that everyone does this, but it’s certainly been done many times.

If you think you might one day make money on it, just say that up front and don’t be greedy when you finally do.

[lamontcg]

> I do think moving the goalposts or being dishonest about your intentions are wrong.

> If you think you might one day make money on it, just say that up front and don’t be greedy when you finally do.

You're implicitly assuming that they're doing a deliberate bait and switch instead of just realizing after the fact that they screwed up.

There seems to be an open source fundamental attribution error here where someone changing their mind is evidence that they plotted all along to do evil.

It is also a failure to apply Hanlon's Razor--the original choice to open source license probably was ignorant/naive/stupid and not done with malice in mind.

[TheNewsIsHere]

My comment doesn’t apply to every situation.

There are certainly cases where there has been an intentional (or effective) bait and switch, but I’m not laboring under the assumption that this is always the case.

I’m not applying any assumption of malice to initial licensing decisions.

The idea I was communicating was that in some cases developers _do_ have intentions that are incompatible with FOSS licenses from the start. Not that this is always the case.

[FiberBundle]

> What is plain hypocrisy to me are the people who developed "for profit" open source projects, and are angry when they dont get paid enough, when the projects they have created rely on GNU tools, the Linux kernel (Perhaps Debian), a libre software database on so on.

Why do you exclusively point out "for profit" open source projects here? What about basically any commercial software that leeches on open source software without donating anything?

[Kinrany]

GP is pointing out that it's hypocritical to expect to be paid for open source contributions and at the same time pay nothing to upstream projects.

[NotMichaelBay]

But they're saying that it's also hypocritical to release commercial software and expect people to pay you without contributing anything to upstream open source projects.

[pydry]

GP thinks wanting to be able to eat and pay rent is hypocrisy if you release open source software that depends on open source software.

[amelius]

> What is plain hypocrisy to me are the people who developed "for profit" open source projects, and are angry when they dont get paid enough, when the projects they have created rely on GNU tools, the Linux kernel (Perhaps Debian), a libre software database on so on.

We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. I don't see the hypocrisy here.