In the meantime, I am volunteering for a non-profit that helps FOSS projects secure sustainable funding, and goodness, that is soooo hard! Enterprises (where money is) are afraid of FOSS, and many prefer to engage commercially with commercial open source companies, backed by VCs
Open-source sustainability won't be solved by donations alone. As highlighted in the article, donating is incredibly convenient nowadays, so when companies or individuals don't contribute, it's typically due to a lack of willingness.
To take on and compete with the proprietary model, one must generate comparable revenues and attract similar levels of investment. The solution to open-source sustainability is straightforward: people pay for what they genuinely need. Commercial open-source excels in this aspect!
However, as you may know, it comes with its challenges. When a company profits from an open-source program, decision-making authority about what to implement or exclude lies firmly with that company, diverging from the open-source ethos. Yet, the real issue isn't the existence of a business model and revenue, but rather the absence of community control.
This underscores the importance of addressing the root of the issue. To enhance open-source sustainability, we must identify what currently works best and tackle its associated problems. This means embracing a commercial open-source business model while ensuring that decisions about the software aren't solely in the hands of a select few developers or corporations. Instead, a democratic approach should be embraced, where the user community plays a significant role in shaping these processes. Community control guarantees that the software evolves in a way that aligns with the needs and values of its users.
There is no commercial open source model. What happens is that you might get open source software here and there that will be so specialized as to require insane resources to adapt and modify.
At least a solid team.
When was the last time you have submitted a patch to say PowerShell?
Democratic process does not exist when everyone is free to start a project. Users also often do not know what they want either until it's shown to them. Surprisingly also true when it's a tool made for other developers.
What you seem to be suggesting is to replace open source model with grant academia model if I'm being generous, and that would kill it.
If I were less generous, you're suggesting to have say Microsoft tell OpenSSL devs what they want of them and do it.
> Democratic process does not exist when everyone is free to start a project. Users also often do not know what they want either until it's shown to them.
Apparently do not have the same definition of "democracy". The definition that I use is more or less the Swiss system. At the top, a group of people that takes decisions that they think it is the best - and the people that have the power to override the decision if they organize a vote or propose a new law.
> What you seem to be suggesting is to replace open source model with grant academia model if I'm being generous
Nope... Read what open-source-economy.com or tea.xyz - that is the future of OSS IMO.
> The solution to open-source sustainability is straightforward: people pay for what they genuinely need. Commercial open-source excels in this aspect!
I define this in the post as "Open Source subsidization, not sustainability."
It's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. It works for products, but it doesn't work well for libraries, frameworks, dev tools, and the like.
> donating is incredibly convenient nowadays
It's convenient to get started but not to scale. I run one of the foremost corporate Open Source donation programs (imo, obv):
GitHub Sponsors is very difficult to use at scale (100s or 1000s of deps). Thanks.dev is better but still has a lot of room to grow.
> addressing the root of the issue
Open Source is a common pool resource, and these are funded through collective social pressure, the limit case of which is taxation. More on this in a future post.
> It works for products, but it doesn't work well for libraries, frameworks, dev tools, and the like.
That is why we need to create an open-source ecosystem where projects that get paid redistribute to their dependencies.
I have in mind 2 OSS ecosystems: open-source-economy.com and tea.xyz
1. Open source is about the code belonging to the community
2. Open source projects can not survive without funding - as you develop
3. So, both (open source and company) can be compatible if and only if funding belong to the community. In other world, if the open source company is decentralised and democratic. And that is what we need to fight for.
That's the legal reality of it, but I think what the GP meant was that the idea is that code effectively belongs to the communes (of course, credit is still due). It doesn't matter if this is done by licensing or releasing into the public domain. That's just the means to an end.
The last time I checked the statistics, approximately 75% of the industry's codebase was open source—a significant portion! However, when it comes to the earnings of open-source developers, it's almost negligible.
I strongly believe that open-source contributors should be compensated for their work. So, in my opinion, there's a real need to establish an open-source economy where contributors can be fairly compensated for their work without compromising open-source principles.
I'm currently working on finding a compensation solution for OSS contributors. If you're interested in learning more, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me (see my profile).
To be fair a huge portion of the open source code being used by industry comes from industry.
Don't get me wrong though I love me a good open source project. I think the idea of being compensated might increase the quality, but let's point fingers at github. It would be as simple as adding a "support contributors" button on repos.
I don't know how divide the winnings fairly. But it should be possible.
The sustainable route for open source projects is individuals being paid by an company to implement functionality that the employer wants in a given project, and then being obligated under the license to share those changes. Those individuals could be employees of the company, or contractors, including the person who wrote the software in the first place.
I think in the minds of many, software patents are the means of getting people to disclose their source. But they currently don't work that way anywhere.
(edit: actually IIRC it's fine to sometimes promote what you're doing on HN, so long as it's not Every Single Post) . Can you tell us a bit more?
Open Source Projects should take inspiration from how companies pay people. There are some very good ideas in how companies distribute revenues and compensate individuals. We just need to take the best parts of this approach and blend them with our open-source principles, and we will have the best of both worlds.
Did you know that your article was one of the reasons I quit my paid job to attempt to find a solution for open-source funding?
At that time, I was exploring existing solutions like Gitopia, Tea, or even Polar. I believed that these solutions would not meet your needs, so perhaps it would be a good idea to create a solution that would.
In the meantime, I am volunteering for a non-profit that helps FOSS projects secure sustainable funding, and goodness, that is soooo hard! Enterprises (where money is) are afraid of FOSS, and many prefer to engage commercially with commercial open source companies, backed by VCs