[bad_user]

This is the dream for many of us, but I hope she comes up with a good business model that doesn't rely on the goodwill of people (e.g., open core) because FOSS is terrible for earning money. The reason is that FOSS is essentially part of the commons, but without being maintained by taxes.

In general, people just want free stuff, companies rarely pay for support, and SaaS providers will steal your business if they can. I can think of several apps that macOS users are paying for, such as Bartender, Alfred, or MailMate. Clearly, there's a market for utilities, but only with scarcity.

[oefrha]

Author's project is a command line productivity tool. I have co-authored a now-archived command line productivity tool with half the number of stars (6-7k, maybe worth more today due to inflation) in the past, and my observation is people are generally very stingy with this type of projects. We did make people's lives a little bit better, but unlike frameworks, libraries, etc., it's not going to end up in any money-making product, so people don't think it's essential (it's not), and companies which tend to donate larger sums than individuals are completely out of scope. I think the total donation (through a PayPal link in README) we got over more than half a decade was less than $100. In comparison, I once made some web-based analytic tools when playing a casual mobile game, and got a few thousand in donations over a year or two -- not much considering the time that went into it, but two orders of magnitude better than the command line productivity tool.

However, we hardly ever marketed our project and never tried to "build a following" or beg for donations in any way, so maybe the author will do a lot better than us. The server component should also help remind people it's not free.

Edit: One thing I forgot: I think command line utilities are in a worse financial position than GUI utilities, because people are accustomed to paying for GUI apps, but aren’t accustomed to paying for things in the shell at all.

[Tolexx]

>I think command line utilities are in a worse financial position than GUI utilities, because people are accustomed to paying for GUI apps, but aren’t accustomed to paying for things in the shell at all.

I think that's because command line tools are more appealing to technical people. For convenience sake and ease of use, most average computer users will use GUI tools or applications.

[oefrha]

I'm specifically talking about developer utilities. Even developers are accustomed to paying for GUI apps but not command line stuff. To be fair I've never seen anyone selling a local (non-SaaS) command line only tool either.

[radlad]

I think this is pretty accurate as a general rule. Anecdotally, the only CLI utility I pay for is Filebot: https://www.filebot.net/

And it has an optional GUI...

[anticorporate]

How to pay for the open source commons is far from a solved problem, but I'm glad individuals are trying to make it work for themselves anyway.

I wish we wouldn't act like producing software and making gobs of money are inextricably linked. Yes, we absolutely need to find a way to fund people who are building critical infrastructure. But sometimes, "I quit my job to work on open source" can be more akin to "I quit my job to hike the Appalachian Trail." I wish tech had a lot fewer people who were here for the money.

[dingnuts]

>I wish we wouldn't act like producing software and making gobs of money are inextricably linked. Yes, we absolutely need to find a way to fund people who are building critical infrastructure

Don't you see the contradiction? Critical infrastructure costs gobs of money. The software has to pay for itself, or it has to survive on crumbs; that's just reality. Software is really, really expensive to create and maintain, because it takes a lot of time, and time costs money.

I wish Richard Stallman hadn't duped a generation into thinking that they have to use licenses that make Amazon richer instead of just using proprietary licenses to protect yourself, as the licenses were designed to do, so that people with more lawyers can't just steal your work.

Why did our whole generation listen to a guy who was caught on camera eating something off of his foot?

[bad_user]

> I wish Richard Stallman hadn't duped a generation into thinking that they have to use licenses that make Amazon richer instead of just using proprietary licenses to protect yourself, as the licenses were designed to do, so that people with more lawyers can't just steal your work.

This is why I like Open Source instead of Free Software. There's no practical difference between the two in terms of licences that are compatible with the two definitions. However, Free Software is an ideology that considers proprietary software to be immoral. Whereas Open Source is a perspective that only cares about the economics of producing software, and is perfectly compatible with capitalism.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

Note, there are many scenarios for which I find Amazon getting rich off OSS work is perfectly OK, even advantageous for the contributors, since that kind of freedom and control is the whole point of OSS. It's just that being paid for your OSS contributions is probably not one of those scenarios, and people need to be aware of it, indeed.

[pompino]

There are grants, but you have to qualify for them.

https://opensource.guide/getting-paid/

https://www.state.gov/supporting-critical-open-source-techno...

https://new.nsf.gov/tip/updates/nsf-invests-over-26m-open-so...

[goodpoint]

Some grants exists but they are really tiny compared to the amount of FOSS that needs funding.

[pompino]

You have to weed out the people who just want to dick-around at home versus people who are actually providing value to society, so the bar is set very high right now.

[RamblingCTO]

The EU also has open source grants FYI

[pjmlp]

Yes, just yesterday the author of ImageSharp was complaining on Twitter that from 80 million NuGet downloads, there is hardly anyone paying.

This on a ecosystem that grew on Windows developer culture, where paying for developer tools is quite common.

Let alone in other comunities, quite hard indeed.

[conaclos]

Maybe it's crazy, but I'm one of those people who tries to make a living of the goodwill of people and companies. I am working for free since several months on Biome (https://biomejs.dev), a fast formatter and linter for JS/TS/JSX. At the moment we do not have enough donations to be paid for our contributions.

[255kb]

I can confirm that funding one's work on an open-source project through sponsoring is one hell of a ride. As you said, most people are not concerned by OSS funding, let alone companies that have a hard time justifying paying for something free...

However, OSS is not incompatible with some form of monetization, coming up with a plan to sell courses, custom services, or cloud options is probably a safer road.

[pierotofy]

While it's certainly challenging, it's not terrible, but it requires some thought and a sustainable business model, something many FOSS developers don't want to do. https://piero.dev/category/foss-funding/

[runjake]

In terms of making money, I feel like the sweet spot might be a closed source app with a rich open source ecosystem around it, such as Raycast or Obsidian Notes.

The apps themselves are closed source and making money, but the extensions and add-on functionalities are mostly open source.

[DoreenMichele]

She seems aware this is an issue.

Possibly of interest to anyone pondering doing open source:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17824166