Comment by yu3zhou4
2 years ago
I'm on the same boat, so I built a marketplace for devs to charge for our software. Blueprint here: https://github.com/poss-market
Long story short: I recently put the marketplace down, because I lack business skills
If any of you is able to help with business side of the project, please reach out - mail in my profile
Let me just copy-paste it for easier access:
- Your company's perspective: Pay for the software to receive reliable products from trusted vendors
Business receives reliable open source software that is maintained on a daily basis, features are constantly developed and they receive a support from open source creators
- Why?
It's cheaper to pay a few (dozens / hundreds / thousands) bucks each year for a library, tool, component, etc instead of build it on your own, maintain, test, take care of security updates, do customer support
- Yours (open source developer's) perspective: Get paid to build, maintain and support your software
You as a developer make money by selling licenses to your open source software
- Why not free open source?
Because you still need a day job and do your open source after hours. Thousands (millions?) of companies make millions (billions?) dollars each year by incorporating your software in their products or using your software in their ecosystem, but you are left with $0 profit from it
- But I want my open source to be available to regular people for free
With poss market license it remains free for non-profit/personal/scientific users, if you choose to. It's just MIT License slightly modified
That non profit license it's a big turd. It's nonfree. Period.