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acoustics a day ago

Big tech companies use open-source software primarily because it is free and unencumbered.

If an author uses a license that makes big tech pay, they will not pay. They will just not use the software. We already see a similar dynamic with AGPL.

It's easy to fall into a trap of thinking "I have several big companies using this software. If I had charged a reasonable license fee, I'd be making $100k/yr on this project." But, of course, if the project has started with this license, it never would have gotten to the point where several big companies were using it.

This is why we very rarely see successful GitHub projects that have asked for payment from the beginning. If a maintainer wants to make money on a GitHub project, the far more common path is: 1) release the software with a free and unencumbered license; 2) wait for people to adopt your software because it's free; and finally 3) once people have adopted your software because it's free, then ask them to start paying you.

In fact, in the early stages of an open source project, if someone opened an issue that said "hey do you want to set a norm of commercial users paying to use your software?" it would be rational to say no! You don't want to scare off big tech engineers. Better to wait until they're already using the software.

robmensching 20 hours ago | parent [-]

> If an author uses a license that makes big tech pay, they will not pay.

That's not my experience.

> But, of course, if the project has started with this license, it never would have gotten to the point where several big companies were using it.

That is very possible. We'll have to wait to see if any projects start with a maintenance fee then become popular.

> "hey do you want to set a norm of commercial users paying to use your software?"

My ideal would for the norm to shift such that companies think, "We're using this Open Source project, are we already paying the maintenance fee?" I don't know if that will actually work out but I know that if we don't try it will not.

The OSMF is my attempt to find out.