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 am annoyed by people who do bait and switch, like „we are open and promise free forever” - just after they build community or they manage to get some VC to talk with suddenly they start charging for project taking in all work contributors also created with it.
On the other hand there is bunch of cool projects that started like that and even if they bait switched it is hard to be angry at them.
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.")
ozim · · focus · HN ↗
I am annoyed by people who do bait and switch, like „we are open and promise free forever” - just after they build community or they manage to get some VC to talk with suddenly they start charging for project taking in all work contributors also created with it.
On the other hand there is bunch of cool projects that started like that and even if they bait switched it is hard to be angry at them.