Comment by 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?
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.