For one thing, I don't think they think they have a silver bullet here. I think they want some financial support and if some users of the project pay the fee that will be some success.

To the specifics, it's not a software license fee -- they aren't selling access to the software. It's a "maintenance fee", to fund the project. So the license of the code isn't a problem, you can (still) choose to license that under whatever terms are available.

From their FAQ[0]:

> Q: What if I don’t want to pay the Maintenance Fee?

> That’s fine. You can download the project’s source code and follow the Open Source license for the software.

> Do not download releases. Do not reference packages via a package manager. Do not use anything other than the source code released under the Open Source license.

> Also, if you choose to not pay the Maintenance Fee, but find yourself returning to check on the status of issues or review answers to questions others ask, you are still using the project and should pay the Maintenance Fee.

[0] https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/consumers/faq/

I really don't think they can limit who can download their releases with their license.

>If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that complies with this license.

>each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce its contribution, prepare derivative works of its contribution, and distribute its contribution or any derivative works that you create.

I'm not sure how their rules comply with their own license, and I truly don't think they do. They're granting additional restrictions to a binary they're distributing (if you download this give us money). They're just hoping to scare some contributors into handing over some cash.

Maybe some licenses do allow for this, but the one they chose for Wix almost certainly does not.

> > Also, if you choose to not pay the Maintenance Fee, but find yourself returning to check on the status of issues or review answers to questions others ask, you are still using the project and should pay the Maintenance Fee.

I think this is going to hard against the "economy of gift" and isn't going to play well in the end. If they were hosting their own forum / mailing list, charging to access the community would make sense. But the forum is hosted by a company that gives it away for free. The people posting are posting freely (and may not be associated with the project). Some of the people posting answers are members of the project, but some are not. If the maintainers get an answer from someone else are they obligated to pay the answerer a maintenance fee?

I would limit this to "if you find yourself asking about an issue or posting an issue", since those are points where you are looking for help not just from the community at large, but from the maintainers in particular.

> I don't think they think they have a silver bullet here.

I don't think there is a silver bullet. But I do think we can do better than we are today supporting the sustainability of Open Source projects. The OSMF is an attempt to do just that.