[GuB-42]

Choose your license well. If you are using a permissive licence (MIT, Apache, BSD, etc...) you are begging for it. If that's what you want (and it may be what you want), go for it, but don't expect it to pay the bills.

If you are using a copyleft license, especially AGPL, you may not get paid either, but you may get valuable contributions in return. It is also a good way to avoid having big companies profit from your work, if that's what you want.

If you want to make money but still want to open source, use a non-free "source available" licence (ex: "non-commercial"). They tend to be unpopular in the open source community and it is probably not the best way to get known.

And then you can have dual-licences, like GPL + commercial. Qt is probably the most popular software using that scheme.

But I don't really understand the people who publish software under a permissive licences and get forked by some tech giant and complain. That's what permissive licenses are for!

[abnercoimbre]

From the POV of an indie dev selling closed-source binaries, would a source-available license gain any goodwill in this space? And how would you tackle pricing?

[GuB-42]

I don't really have a say since I don't buy nor sell software. As a technical guy, I may have an influence, but usually, finance decides and not always the way I'd like.

That being said, I highly value having access to the source code, even under a restrictive license. The source code is the best documentation, it doesn't lie. Also being able to make small changes, recompile with different libraries, etc... but for me, the "documentation" aspect is the most important. I don't do security, but I guess being able to audit the code is a good thing too.

For me, open source goes beyond the "freedom" aspect. Also, AFAIK, most commercial game engines are "source available" too.

[caleblloyd]

I would prefer the BSL with some sort of trial period grant and source available to closed source.

Other nice thing about BSL is it converts to an Open Source license after 3-4 years which addresses the concern “what if the software vendor goes out of business”. You can support it yourself or another vendor can pick it up and support it after that time period.

[overfeed]

> But I don't really understand the people who publish software under a permissive licences and get forked by some tech giant and complain

They want to have their cake and eat it.

[Aloisius]

Licenses only work if it's copyrightable and weights, almost certainly, aren't.

The code would be, but I'm not sure that's much of a barrier.

[pabs3]

Even the copyleft licenses need lengthy costly lawsuits to enforce them, so they aren't that useful for many developers who can't afford to pay lawyers for ages.