If you want people to pay you for your software, stop writing it for free. Conversely, if you write it for free, don't expect people to pay you for it. Otherwise you are no better than someone at an intersection with a bottle of Windex and a squeegee who, unsolicited, cleans a windshield and then demands the driver to pay for it.
The original authors of Free Software and open source were career academics and others who were paid to do other things, or were sponsored by scientific and defense research grants. I don't know how anyone got the nutty idea that you could make money on FOSS itself. Practically every time someone has tried to make money on FOSS it has failed.
(Edit: this comment previously ended with "...from Netscape on down.")
I assume you mean "sell it before you open source it."
If you found one willing buyer while it was still closed source, odds are there are others. Why deprive yourself of additional income? Open sourcing does happen from closed source, but usually that's long after the income stream has exhausted itself (see, e.g., <a href="https://github.com/microsoft/ms-dos" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/microsoft/ms-dos).
There's nothing stopping you, true. But I think you will find that nobody is going to buy software for whatever thousands of dollars it took you to make it. So the limitation in this case is a practical one, not a legal or moral one.
That's kind of black and white thinking though. No one is going to pay a million dollars for QuickBooks, but a lot of people paid several hundreds. Just because no one pays you to develop a new QuickBooks (at least pre LLM), doesn't mean there's not a market there.
Isn't that the whole point of crowdfunding platforms like kickstarter?
Developer presents the idea and how much it costs. If enough people pitch in, then the idea is funded, the developer gets the money as a lump sum and can turn the idea into reality.
I can't possibly take this at face value since it's obvious that people (businesses) pay others many tens or hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to build software for them. So, what do you really mean?
Honestly, there's a real elegance to this model.
I'd argue the best possible model for goods that have no marginal costs (aka IP) is the "pay me to create it" model.
As in, let a creator decide how much they value creating the work. Then pay them that to create it - then release it free for everyone.
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No ridiculous societal restraints that cost time and money to enforce (poorly) as IP law. Compensation is happening. Creating is encouraged.
Practical constraints make it unlikely we'll get much closer to this than Kickstarter (and equivalents) but it's a very honest model, that works with intellectual property by default.
I think Kickstarter and similar are a great model for creating open source software. It's more problematic for maintaining it. It could work for some features and bugs, but it doesn't scale down super well (maybe have campaigns for a packet of related features and bugs?), and more importantly it isn't great to have security fixes dependent on a successful funding campaign.
Please go read about the origins of Free software; Richard Stallman is a good starting point. Or even read a FOSS licence and tell me where it says you can't sell it.
otterley · · focus · HN ↗
The original authors of Free Software and open source were career academics and others who were paid to do other things, or were sponsored by scientific and defense research grants. I don't know how anyone got the nutty idea that you could make money on FOSS itself. Practically every time someone has tried to make money on FOSS it has failed.
(Edit: this comment previously ended with "...from Netscape on down.")
askvictor · · focus · HN ↗
otterley · · focus · HN ↗
If you found one willing buyer while it was still closed source, odds are there are others. Why deprive yourself of additional income? Open sourcing does happen from closed source, but usually that's long after the income stream has exhausted itself (see, e.g., <a href="https://github.com/microsoft/ms-dos" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/microsoft/ms-dos).
limagnolia · · focus · HN ↗
bigstrat2003 · · focus · HN ↗
otterley · · focus · HN ↗
rpcope1 · · focus · HN ↗
yjftsjthsd-h · · focus · HN ↗
matheusmoreira · · focus · HN ↗
Developer presents the idea and how much it costs. If enough people pitch in, then the idea is funded, the developer gets the money as a lump sum and can turn the idea into reality.
Why did this model fail?
HeyLaughingBoy · · focus · HN ↗
horsawlarway · · focus · HN ↗
I'd argue the best possible model for goods that have no marginal costs (aka IP) is the "pay me to create it" model.
As in, let a creator decide how much they value creating the work. Then pay them that to create it - then release it free for everyone.
---
No ridiculous societal restraints that cost time and money to enforce (poorly) as IP law. Compensation is happening. Creating is encouraged.
Practical constraints make it unlikely we'll get much closer to this than Kickstarter (and equivalents) but it's a very honest model, that works with intellectual property by default.
thayne · · focus · HN ↗
daedrdev · · focus · HN ↗
yjftsjthsd-h · · focus · HN ↗
askvictor · · focus · HN ↗