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.")
Netscape basically died and was replaced by Firefox which doesn't/can't effectively charge users for the software so instead makes money by selling default search engine, etc.
Netscape existed as the internet was coming into existence. You used to have to buy a physical copy in the store to install it. People barely knew how to use their computers so the activation cost for bypassing their "pay wall" was high enough.
Netscape lost the ability to charge before it went open source. Among other things, Microsoft released internet explorer for free (part of embrace, extend, extinguish, afaik).
The open sourcing of Netscape 5.0 happened in early 1998, and AOL purchased Netscape later that year. Firebird/Firefox came a few years later.
> You used to have to buy a physical copy in the store to install it.
That is not true. They also made it available to download over the internet free of charge (and, as others said, they licensed it to ISPs to distribute to their customers). You were expected to buy a commercial license if you used it for business, though. Practically everyone had a copy of it in 1997 and used it as their primary browser, paid or not, until Microsoft shipped Internet Explorer.
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.")
singpolyma3 · · focus · HN ↗
nnutter · · focus · HN ↗
Netscape existed as the internet was coming into existence. You used to have to buy a physical copy in the store to install it. People barely knew how to use their computers so the activation cost for bypassing their "pay wall" was high enough.
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
toast0 · · focus · HN ↗
The open sourcing of Netscape 5.0 happened in early 1998, and AOL purchased Netscape later that year. Firebird/Firefox came a few years later.
otterley · · focus · HN ↗
That is not true. They also made it available to download over the internet free of charge (and, as others said, they licensed it to ISPs to distribute to their customers). You were expected to buy a commercial license if you used it for business, though. Practically everyone had a copy of it in 1997 and used it as their primary browser, paid or not, until Microsoft shipped Internet Explorer.