Comment by pie_flavor

10 days ago

Please observe a policy of extreme wisdom: https://github.com/Fody/Home/blob/master/pages/licensing-pat...

3 comments

pie_flavor

throwaway2037 6 days ago

I do know why your post is downvoted, and I disagree with it. Here is my upvote.

I read the link that you shared. This is genius. To quote:

    > Community backed
    > Fody requires significant effort to maintain. As such it relies on financial support to ensure its long term viability.
    > It is expected that all developers using Fody become a Patron on OpenCollective.

I can remember years ago reading some posts/writings from none other than Richard Stallman (yeah, that guy). He was talking about charging people for a copy of the source code to your open source project. At the time, I thought it was weird and did not make sense. This is basically the same thing but in 2026. After watching so much bullshit around open source projects (basically, assholes expecting free service for whining the loudest), I have come to the conclusion that "money talks" and helps to realign incentives that are warped by open source.

gobdovan 10 days ago

Are you being ironic or serious? I can see both pros (encourage people to see themselves as customers) and cons (less initial adoption) to the licensing, although I'd maybe leave bug issues open for everybody.

What aspect do you think dominates?

pie_flavor 10 days ago

Serious. And although 'seeing yourself as a customer' certainly makes things slightly better, I'm also referring just to the amount of cash that enters the coffers once it's no longer a tip jar per se. It is open source on the subject of copyright, but as was described in an article on here the other day, open-source doesn't mean community. By positioning the community aspect as something you have to buy into to enter, you end up (a) selling a product for cash without compromising open source and (b) ensuring everyone you deal with is serious. It's like the Red Hat model but workable at the lower end of software at the expense of lower upside.