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Open source maintenance fee (opensourcemaintenancefee.org)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/opensource@programming.dev

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Note: This uses github sponsors, which is a microsoft owned middleman as @poVoq@slrpnk.net mentioned. I heavily recommend https://liberapay.com/ as an alternative. The idea of the project is solid, though

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27040265

I personally think this is a good idea. FOSS is amazing but it needs some funding in reality. What are your thoughts?

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[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Pretty unclear if this has any actual teeth - if you don't pay it says "don't create issues" etc. but is anyone going to stop you?

But let's assume that it did stop you. I'm going to give a dissenting opinion - I don't think it's a necessarily bad idea. Phabricator had that business model for years; without paying you got zero support. No ability to open issues, etc.

My company ended up paying for support... so that we could get support. There's absolutely no way they would have paid if it was a standard license and you could just open a GitHub issue, even if the issues were ignored.

Annoying for non-corporate users though I guess.

[–] Umbrias@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

many for profit companies have done this before, however:

Think about the incentive structure here, it incentivises not learning about bugs in the software. it incentivises as this always does, that those with money to swing around get additional explicit systemic power to dictate the features and bugs that get fixed. this is a bounty system with extra steps and not learning about bugs. and to boot, if a company really wants to pay, they can probably pay a dev of their own to work on many of these issues. it doesnt seem like this really solves any issues and just imposes a pay-to-speak system. ick.

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah true. It definitely has downsides. But so does begging corporations for money...