I'm not sure it fits the free and/or libre software philosophy but I'm a big fan of releasing otherwise free and open source software as a paid version and with some exclusive QoL features in proprietary store fronts.
For example Krita. https://krita.org/en/download/ FOSS but you can buy it on Steam, Microsoft Store, Epic Store, and Apple Store. You get one exclusive feature, automatic updates (and more recently Steam Cloud sync support), and you also support the developers (on the other hand Valve, MS, Epic, and Apple also gets a cut too).
If you read for example the Steam reviews everyone points out that it's a free software but buying on Steam is also a good and very importantly straightforward way to support the devs + the platform itself has such a pull ("buying games you never play") that people buy it just for the case of having it in their library
The free software philosophy aside, I feel like another problem is that once you start accepting payments then you start accepting various forms of responsibility/liability/accountability/etc. along with it. At a high enough price it'd become worth it, but that might not be anywhere near the price that your customers/users want to support you at.
Filebot used to be open source. I bought it on the AppStore, it was a way to support development and I figured it would give me easier updates that would just happen in the background.
When Apple moved to ARM, the App Store version lagged behind. An ARM version was available, but not in the App Store. I assume this is because that ARM version was a separate download instead of being a universal app, and the x86 app would run on everything (for now).
The app is no longer open source, and is paid. To get the ARM version (due to my stubbornness in not wanting to install Rosetta), I had to pay again just to get the app through a different means of distribution.
Too many run-ins with silly issues like this can really sour a person on the “free app in a paid store” model.
That can happen regardless of which storefront you use to buy a free app. It's more of a developer-specific nitpick than a chronic problem with FOSS and freeware.
If you're happy to sponsor the app's development, then owning the App Store version should make you feel proud. The developer is still able to make a living thanks to you, and they're offering extended support if you're unwilling to use a fork of the free version. A good example of this is Dwarf Fortress, which I have bought on Steam 3 times now so that I could gift it to two of my friends. God willing, nothing will prevent me from buying a 4th and 5th copy when Christmas rolls around.
Yet by the active unique user numbers they have estimted sold at least ~168k copies and maybe upwards ~500k https://steamdb.info/app/280680/charts/ And that's Steam alone. I'd be really curious compared to this how many people click on the Donate button on the Krita homepage.
That's a lot of purchases imo for a project like this. I'm kind of ambivalent about the store cuts but they give a huge enough exposure to any game or software.
> Now, finally, I have an idea. It's gonna take 5000 words to get there, though, so if you don't have that kind of time, skip to the part about registries.
This article is full of LLMisms, which is to be expected but maybe it wouldn't be 5000 words and wouldn't need this disclaimer if they wrote it themselves
I feel like the main issue with projects switching between a permissive and less permissive license and back is that starting out as fully permissive in the first place was the main error.
If everybody would just agree to start their open source code as something like source-available or OpenRAIL -requiring companies with more than $5M in annual revenue to pay for the work - we wouldn't be in this situation.
Yeah its a bait and switch. People want the social credit, early adoption, and community embrace of being open source, but they also want a captive business model.
It's not a bait and switch because the old version of the software that was released with the old license can still be used as such. If you call this bait and switch then I suppose this means that you somehow feel entitled to future versions of the software having the same license, forever.
They won't do this, because starting out as non-free doesn't get the same traction. Now that I think about it, it's basically a form of enshitification: draw people in with one deal, then after they're onboard, change it to something less favorable.
I think the issue is more on how you audit such things. Governments struggle (partially by design, but still) to get proper audits on who uses what and how much money they make.
The theory is great, but I'm unsure how you execute this.
I'm not reading an AI slop article, but there's nothing in either the Free Software Definition or the Open Source Definition restricting the selling of software. It does prevent you from restricting people from sharing that software once they've bought it, but you could always use a threshold pledge system to ensure you get enough money before releasing anything:
Isn't this similar to the anaconda model? (Except they keep the money instead of distributing it.)
Depending on how you count, in my research group we are like 10 and in my whoooole university we are like 60.000 employees. When they went from free to restriced for big organizations I just uninstaled it.
after reading Ford Foundation document [0] i'll go beyond and purpose FOSS not only limit commercial use but also forking [1] as it seems we have an endless stream of libraries which do the same thing, scattering even more this "fragile" ecosystem which would benefit so much of big tech's evergreen
Being able to fork your own version is a desirable goal and by design. The original author can and will probably not want to take his project in all kind of imaginable directions.
The usual pushback I get from FOSS zealots is that any time I mention things like money, popularity, increasing adoption etc. they just say none of that matters because it's "not a project goal."
In fact, often they don't even want money to be a thing at all, they think capitalism is inherently evil (cough innovation) and would prefer if everyone was just poor and lived in the woods or something.
Sorry... I like the world to be a little more interesting than that.
These are the currencies of the VC world, and many open source developers don't release their work for those reasons (myself included, limited though my contributions are). It seems strange to deride them as making the world uninteresting because of this.
Modern society has done a wonderful job proving that sentiment right. I can't blame them.
>would prefer if everyone was just poor and lived in the woods or something.
I'd prefer if everyone had proper control over the tools they used. Whether they choose to live in the woods to use such tools or use them to make society a worse place is the double edged of 'free' (as in freedom)
I completely understand those skeptical about perverse incentives from not making software 'free' (as in beer). It shouldn't be a surprise that adding monetary inventice changes the entire incentive structure.
I'm not sure it fits the free and/or libre software philosophy but I'm a big fan of releasing otherwise free and open source software as a paid version and with some exclusive QoL features in proprietary store fronts.
For example Krita. https://krita.org/en/download/ FOSS but you can buy it on Steam, Microsoft Store, Epic Store, and Apple Store. You get one exclusive feature, automatic updates (and more recently Steam Cloud sync support), and you also support the developers (on the other hand Valve, MS, Epic, and Apple also gets a cut too).
If you read for example the Steam reviews everyone points out that it's a free software but buying on Steam is also a good and very importantly straightforward way to support the devs + the platform itself has such a pull ("buying games you never play") that people buy it just for the case of having it in their library
https://store.steampowered.com/app/280680/Krita
The free software philosophy aside, I feel like another problem is that once you start accepting payments then you start accepting various forms of responsibility/liability/accountability/etc. along with it. At a high enough price it'd become worth it, but that might not be anywhere near the price that your customers/users want to support you at.
Filebot used to be open source. I bought it on the AppStore, it was a way to support development and I figured it would give me easier updates that would just happen in the background.
When Apple moved to ARM, the App Store version lagged behind. An ARM version was available, but not in the App Store. I assume this is because that ARM version was a separate download instead of being a universal app, and the x86 app would run on everything (for now).
The app is no longer open source, and is paid. To get the ARM version (due to my stubbornness in not wanting to install Rosetta), I had to pay again just to get the app through a different means of distribution.
Too many run-ins with silly issues like this can really sour a person on the “free app in a paid store” model.
That can happen regardless of which storefront you use to buy a free app. It's more of a developer-specific nitpick than a chronic problem with FOSS and freeware.
If you're happy to sponsor the app's development, then owning the App Store version should make you feel proud. The developer is still able to make a living thanks to you, and they're offering extended support if you're unwilling to use a fork of the free version. A good example of this is Dwarf Fortress, which I have bought on Steam 3 times now so that I could gift it to two of my friends. God willing, nothing will prevent me from buying a 4th and 5th copy when Christmas rolls around.
UTM is another great example of this, which is basically a GUI for QEMU. They have a Mac App store $9.99 version and the free open source version:
https://github.com/utmapp/UTM
Not a very effective way to support the devs though: only about 60% of what you pay gets to the developers, because of Steam's cut and VAT.
Yet by the active unique user numbers they have estimted sold at least ~168k copies and maybe upwards ~500k https://steamdb.info/app/280680/charts/ And that's Steam alone. I'd be really curious compared to this how many people click on the Donate button on the Krita homepage.
That's a lot of purchases imo for a project like this. I'm kind of ambivalent about the store cuts but they give a huge enough exposure to any game or software.
> Now, finally, I have an idea. It's gonna take 5000 words to get there, though, so if you don't have that kind of time, skip to the part about registries.
This article is full of LLMisms, which is to be expected but maybe it wouldn't be 5000 words and wouldn't need this disclaimer if they wrote it themselves
I feel like the main issue with projects switching between a permissive and less permissive license and back is that starting out as fully permissive in the first place was the main error.
If everybody would just agree to start their open source code as something like source-available or OpenRAIL -requiring companies with more than $5M in annual revenue to pay for the work - we wouldn't be in this situation.
https://fair.io/
Yeah its a bait and switch. People want the social credit, early adoption, and community embrace of being open source, but they also want a captive business model.
It's not a bait and switch because the old version of the software that was released with the old license can still be used as such. If you call this bait and switch then I suppose this means that you somehow feel entitled to future versions of the software having the same license, forever.
That’s the thing with software, you can automate most future updates, with LLMs and whatnot.
Also, the initial software probably didn’t have a lot of known cves when it was sold.
[delayed]
They won't do this, because starting out as non-free doesn't get the same traction. Now that I think about it, it's basically a form of enshitification: draw people in with one deal, then after they're onboard, change it to something less favorable.
Why is it enshittification if you only have to pay when you have >$5M in revenue? Is your world so shit if you cross that threshold?
I think the issue is more on how you audit such things. Governments struggle (partially by design, but still) to get proper audits on who uses what and how much money they make.
The theory is great, but I'm unsure how you execute this.
Well, that's even more reason to not complain about it.
I think I'm starting to forget, but could someone maybe tell me what the F in FOSS stands for?
"Free as in speech, not free as in beer."
I'm not reading an AI slop article, but there's nothing in either the Free Software Definition or the Open Source Definition restricting the selling of software. It does prevent you from restricting people from sharing that software once they've bought it, but you could always use a threshold pledge system to ensure you get enough money before releasing anything:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system
Isn't this similar to the anaconda model? (Except they keep the money instead of distributing it.)
Depending on how you count, in my research group we are like 10 and in my whoooole university we are like 60.000 employees. When they went from free to restriced for big organizations I just uninstaled it.
You seem to be forgetting the most important word in FOSS..
For them it is not the most important word, apparently.
But it is one of the words.
It can still be free for most people but paid for companies who make >$5M revenue.
Conditionally free is also free.
after reading Ford Foundation document [0] i'll go beyond and purpose FOSS not only limit commercial use but also forking [1] as it seems we have an endless stream of libraries which do the same thing, scattering even more this "fragile" ecosystem which would benefit so much of big tech's evergreen
[0] https://www.fordfoundation.org/learning/library/research-rep... [1] https://happort.org/constraining_freedom
Being able to fork your own version is a desirable goal and by design. The original author can and will probably not want to take his project in all kind of imaginable directions.
The usual pushback I get from FOSS zealots is that any time I mention things like money, popularity, increasing adoption etc. they just say none of that matters because it's "not a project goal."
In fact, often they don't even want money to be a thing at all, they think capitalism is inherently evil (cough innovation) and would prefer if everyone was just poor and lived in the woods or something.
Sorry... I like the world to be a little more interesting than that.
> money, popularity, increasing adoption
These are the currencies of the VC world, and many open source developers don't release their work for those reasons (myself included, limited though my contributions are). It seems strange to deride them as making the world uninteresting because of this.
>they think capitalism is inherently evil
Modern society has done a wonderful job proving that sentiment right. I can't blame them.
>would prefer if everyone was just poor and lived in the woods or something.
I'd prefer if everyone had proper control over the tools they used. Whether they choose to live in the woods to use such tools or use them to make society a worse place is the double edged of 'free' (as in freedom)
I completely understand those skeptical about perverse incentives from not making software 'free' (as in beer). It shouldn't be a surprise that adding monetary inventice changes the entire incentive structure.