[szastamasta]

Oh man, sorry to hear about the dev burnout. But what do you expect? We made software worthless by giving away ready products for free. It’s not a library for other devs to use, so we can all „stand on the shoulder of giants”. Stuff like this should be paid from the start.

[trashburger]

Absolutely not, and there are two reasons:

1) Someone paying for my product means that they now expect support and maintenance for me. When I release my software under a Free license, I release it "AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED", which I think is the best part of Free Software. You are responsible for using my software.

2) As soon as you start accepting compensation for your project, you now have to deal with a whole bunch of legal overhead, taxes etc.

I think the main issue is people releasing their software under a license which they don't necessarily agree with beyond a certain point.

[navane]

I'm pretty sure you can sell software and still take zero responsibility in the software being correct.

[carlosjobim]

> they now expect support and maintenance for me.

In worst case you give a refund if the software doesn't work as promised for the customer. You're not forced to fix bugs or problems that are beyond your capability or interest.

Taxes are not a big deal and can be ignored until you start making decent money on the business and can afford your accountant. The taxman understands and is not going after people in the starting phase.

[meiraleal]

> I think the main issue is people releasing their software under a license which they don't necessarily agree with beyond a certain point.

It's a ego thing then. Anybody doing free/open source software should make peace with the fact that their work is given for free. Imagine Linus Torvalds complaining that people are selling his work.

[phoronixrly]

what... No, what should happen is that we should dispense of the expectations that anyone should provide maintenance and support for free.

You solve your problem and share the code for everyone to use. They can fork and change it to solve their own problems, you've finished working on it a while ago.

[matheusmoreira]

That's why it's either AGPLv3 or copyrighted all rights reserved. "Permissive" anything is just unconditional transfer of wealth from well meaning developers straight into the pockets of corporations.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120620103603/http://zedshaw.co...

> Why I (A/L)GPL

> I want people to appreciate the work I’ve done and the value of what I’ve made.

> Not pass on by waving “sucker” as they drive their fancy cars.

https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/

[nurple]

Stuff like this should be done however the author wants. Your view of FOSS is perverted.

[moepstar]

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/

And yes, being paid should always be an option.

The only question seemingly no one has solved is: how?

...especially so that everybody wins - individuals and corporations, benefitting from said software, the maintainers _and_ their collaborators (sidenote: that's something that kinda grinds my gears - sponsored projects receive all the dough, with their various collaborators essentially working for free??) etc. etc.

[phoronixrly]

My best tool to benefit corporations is to release my code under the AGPL. Always. No exceptions.

[aaomidi]

It is solved. It’s called AGPL.

Folks are just ignorant of licensing the majority of the time. GPL is why Linux is still around :)

[bluGill]

The continued existance of bsd proves you are wrong, it isn't the license.

[dartos]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the popularity of Linux helps BSD as well