I don't mind paying for open source software, but I will not give my money to corporate entities that only want money and never care about the consumer.
@@youtubelisk OSS as in Open Source Software - its not possible to pay to "software", you can give money to foundations like Apache, GNU (OSF) etc. - here Louis wants to intruduce some new way of paying directly to the programmer that created the code, probably with some electro-newname-coins like in brave browser. If i find the software usefull i can pay for open source software - but if its open source i will probably be wise enough to compile it by myself its all about the Licence somebody gives to it - for example i cannot redistribute it like the new QMS Redis.
There is no way you exist in a capitalist economy and actually live like that I’m calling BS. Think about that claim next time you’re filling up your car with gas.
@@youtubelisk That is a great question. For me it's FairEmail, I use it on all devices, it is mind blowing how many useful features it has. I'd argue it's even better than any desktop email client. The price is very low and it is called "support" not "purchase". I also bought FUTO, but I am not using it that much. Like many people, there are many other pieces of OSS that I use I don't pay for, and tbh I never considered it. Yes, I also would like developers to listen to the message in this video and consider adding payment options. It is true I also want a world where devs get rewarded for creating free software, and actually many do want the same very thing I imagine. We could go further and challenge the whole idea of "information is free". Is it really? I see a world where good information is harder and harder to come by due to useless "content" being flooded and good, well written books and articles, become even MORE important than ever. What OSS are YOU giving money to?
I think open source will become sustainable when you can facilitate easy fractional donations of a fixed amount of money to all the open source projects you use.
Yea it would be nice if someone like the open collective had a subscription of like $10 a month and it gets split up either evenly or custom depending on how much you use it. maybe some dev could make a program that tracks your program usage and divvies up the time running the programs and divvies them up based on usage. idk.
@@JessicaFEREM SATs the smaller unit of a BitCoin can transfer on the Lightning network. The Podcasting 2.0 spec made it such that Splits could be configured... For example... If your streaming or giving 100 SATs, that 100 is Preconfigured by the podcast to go 50% to the hosts, 20% to the producers, 20 to the editors and 1% to the open source podcast app, 1% to the podcasting 2.0 initiative, etcetc... All configurable... This was just an example. I think this would work well for software...
WinRAR is not open source. It's just freeware, which even saying that is dubious because it's supposed to be a trial. Not a criticism on winrar. Just that, although similar, the categorization is wrong.
I think you may be fundamentally underestimating the problem here. The problem here is not open/closed source it is that no one pays for software period. Look at any software license, its all $500 a year per installation and either free to individuals or with an expectation of piracy (MS Office). Software either tries to scare people into buying it (Norton) or hopes to get you hooked for free and convince your fortune 500 company to buy 10k licensees. This is why most software focused companies make pretty much all their money from investors, because you cannot make money from your customers until you are in a monopolistic position. Piracy is easy, I dont personally see that Open Source is at a disadvantage at all in trying to convince people to pay for it. But people dont pay for closed source software either.
Ardour is a good example of GPL-compliant FOSS that costs money. If you pay Ardour directly, they give you a warrantied binary that is guaranteed to be production-ready and work. If you _don't_ want to pay, you can still download the source code and try compiling yourself OR find a 3rd-party binary. BUT, Ardour's developers are not obligated to help you fix bugs on 3rd party binaries, because it's compiled in an environment that they don't necessarily support.
The issue is this if basically the "pay for support not the product" model with a minor extra step for free users. And the issue with that is they wont be charging enough to cover the support and original dev time as well. Bare in mind this model encourages people to use it fre, when they hit an issue pay for support then drop payments later so a disproportionate amount of the people paying will be taking them up on the support meaning they, for sure don't get the initial dev costs remotely covered
@@ace90210aceThe way it works now for distros is you have: 1. Community support - but they are still interested in software bugs and fixing them, since it impacts paying customers. 2. Paid 24/7 support - Ubuntu Pro, RHEL, SLED/SLES. 3. Donations. The problem with donations being that as an individual you're not going to financially support the whole software stack you use of 1500-800 packages, some of it is likely maintained by big corporations like RedHat/IBM, novell/SUSE, Cannonical, Intel/AMD. I think I paid like 100-150 zł to KDE alone, but not much else beyond an Ardour license for windows use.
I miss the times when software was about solving real world problems, not about supporting the latest acronyms that do absolutely nothing for the end user besides render the last version obsolete.
This, and asking for money for your product is fine but like an artist you might not get the support you want. I stopped using WinRAR because they didn't update the UI and glad I didn't. 7zip works great and doesn't ask for a dime. And people that have paid for windows and now look at where it's at. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I have paid for some excellent software tho only because that's the only thing out there that works, and they gave me a download link that always works.
Kind of like how twitch streamers began working for free. Before ads and before subs, some added a paypal and it was sort of laughed at at the time. Then people realzied its just to chip in to someome you realized entertains you 6 to 8 hours per day.
VLC is just the tip of the iceberg. For example: How many libraries does VLC use under the hood? A lot of them are not even from VLC project. It is a huge and complex ecosystem.
A subset of the wordpress ecosystem does this well imo. A lot of plugins are GPL licensed but ask a fixed price to purchase the plugin and a monthly or yearly fee for continued customer support and updates It's a good way for plugin developers to profit from successful websites using their plugins while still giving their customers the freedom to modify the plugin when needed
Absolutely. If open source wishes to be competitive or sustainable, it should be paid for. That's not to say it needs to be subscription based with a ton of transactions on top. Simply buying it would be a great start
It’s how the App Store used to be too. All the classic timeless apps like angry birds were paid apps. The only way to get a free app was to get the “lite” version. There was no such thing as a free with ads app. Very sad how that has changed
I agree so long as it doesn’t turn into a slippery slope that turns open source software into the same evil greedy landscape that we’re all trying to avoid to begin with.
This has been happening for awhile in the SAAS world. One day the company is reasonable then the next day you have to pay for enterprise with no tiers in between enterprise and "community"
THAT is stupid, the money hungry corpos only get away with BS because they use closed source software. If the source is open non greedy devs will take over the project, plain and simple.
I am all for supporting and paying for open source. I have an issue with companies that do not have a realistic Tier model. I recently migrated away from an opensource product that broke community features and only offered an enterprise tier with a "contact us" button. This is horrible for business. It shows they do not care about small/medium businesses or non profits. This gives other companies trying to create products around open source a bad rep.
I love this comment, because it shows that nobody really gives a shit about being open source. In the spirit of OSS you should take the old version/current version and implement it/fix it yourself. But instead you've migrated to another platform (which is understandable, duh). The "openness" really matters only for massive projects when in these kind of cases there are enough people to maintain a fork. Would luiss idea change anything? Frankly no - if closing stuff and forcing users to higher tiers gives them more money - they will do it anyway.
I understand your frustration, but it shows the dichotomy of people's experiences in regards to what you're actually paying / not paying for. I will say that my mindset when it comes to free open source products OSP is that I take the title of ownership, so then it is my responsibility when things go wrong to which I can fix it. This troubleshooting can be done with small/medium/large enterprises. If it's open source, then there should be documentation and readable code - so I wouldn't say they don't necessarily care about most people/businesses. Can't expect every OSP startup to simply offer a multi-million dollar call center of people to address the masses of people who aren't paying a dime, or have the means to outsource one from another country. There's limitations and frankly people can't live for free.
This is kind of all over the place in my mind, and it's really software-dependent. For example, Python (or, the CPython interpreter) is free open-source software, and yet the Python Software Foundation is not stretched financially ($3 million annually). It's also not spying on us. So, a model built around donations, memberships, and conferences is financially viable.
Python is supported by the biggest tech companies on the plants. However, in comparison to their size, you'd notice that the donations look like pocket money to them. So I don't think that an unknown developer with a not well-known software would survive on only donations.
@@potatochannel1948 I concur. It's not really about the large projects that already have huge corporate pockets behind them. This is more about the independent developer who is solo/microteam. That's where this matters the most.
School districts adopted adobe, and ipads, google classroom, windows computers, and lots of other proprietary software. Part of the problem is that government invests huge amounts of money in private, proprietary, for-profit software.
@@Vicorcivius I think that's a local decision school boards should be making. So the "force" should come in the form of the local community advocacy, in my opinion.
I'm fine with paying for open source software, but I don't want to pay a monthly or annual fee just to use it. If its good enough, I will pay good money for it. Heck, I will pay $1000 if its invaluable to me, but I damn well better be able to use it wherever, whenever and however I want in perpetuity. Also, if it's $1000, I expect good customer support which involves me speaking to a real person on the phone, and having them help me work out the issue. No more of this BS talking to a chat bot, sign up to our website to file a ticket (also so we can send you promotions), back and forth emails with an outsourced worker from India telling me I need to send them logs before they can help me, only for them to tell me what I bought is no longer supported...
@@AndrewMorris-wz1vq Yup. Support has monthly costs. And working on updates sure has costs. So a good middle ground for me would be to pay one-time for a version and receive minor updates. When the next major version is out, I can get it at a discount or simply not upgrade when I don't want to. Then support is offered for 3-5 years from purchase date, and any additional support will come at a fee.
Monthly payments are much better from the business perspective. You can create plans, hire developers and other staff. Random donations can be too random to do this. That's why I am donating to one big open source project monthly.
If you want good support that will be a subscription. And not a cheap one. Has been the case even with very expensive proprietary software you've already paid tens of thousands of dollars for at least as far back as the 80s.
I'm very willing to pay for open-source I use and I do pay for many open-source I use. Usually 1-time donations of a price that I se fair and I can pay. However, to engrain this in ppl's minds, we also need to make people more financially capable. So many people are struggling with their money because they already pay a LOT in taxes and other stuff which goes to the wrong pockets. I don't think taxes should be diverted to these, I think that, by allowing people to have more money after taxes and with some incentive, people will actually pay for these software because they see value in it. Thank you for working this hard to break this cycle.
Yeah, pay is needed. When was the last time yall donated for your browser? If the answer is never, theres a 90% chance you paid with your profile in chrome
I searched two weeks ago how to donate to firefox(mozila) but just found their paid services which i dont need at this time. I wanted to make one time donation because im using firefox for so long
@battokizu Ok but here's the question, if both options hate me openly then why would I give money to either willingly? Chromium based stuff is just going to steal my data and sell it to get money while Google openly hates me. Mozilla wants me to give them money directly but then also openly hates me.
Didn't even know donating to your browser was a thing. I''m guessing most normie users like myself didnt know either. Thats a big problem because i like how brave protects my privacy compared to chrome.
That need for the extra 10% ‘polish’ is literally why corporate open source exists. Community contributions are not going to handle government compliance, role-based access control, and other features that don’t matter to individual users.
The GPL was not intended to prevent people from selling their software. You can sell your software, you can even send the source code to the software AFTER it is paid for (however, when people contribute to the code base you're selling for free, they will often be upset by this)
The issue with GPL is that once you make a first party sale, there is very little you can do to keep payments coming in. There is no revenue protections built into the GPL to allow a dev to continue receiving payment (especially when the end user is a business or corporation). So it leaves the developer will little to nothing in the end. And the GPL allows a user to simply remove any code that would be used to help a developer receive payments, and change it to give themselves payments instead. So this is a real issue for the GPL that needs to be addressed. I have a FSF member forum thread about this topic if your interested. You'll find it in the licensing section of the member forum.
I pay Linux Mint monthly on Patreon, I gave $20 to Libre Office and I purchased both my FUTO Apps. Honestly I wish i had the money to do more. Open Source has made everything just feel better and i haven't felt ripped off once.
I really appreciate the concept. Paying for the software is much more reliable than donating. I don’t like the concept of donation, seems you are doing a favor for the developer. It’s more a psychological thing than a practical thing.
This is one of the major reason, FOSS maintainers gets burnt out maintaining solutions. Corps, small businesses hoping the maintainer will do the work for free. It's happening too often nowadays, not every project gets good corporate backing. I do 100% agree you on that it should be called "BUY". I just hate the word "DONATE" like wtf. Also I do believe changing mindset of consumer is the key, it relates more to psychology and tricks imo.
Honestly I never though about it this way. Opensource has always been free, it's Opensource, you pay for support if you want it not the product itself. Just just because that's the way it's always been doesn't mean that that's the way it should be. You're right about the donate button being the wrong word. I'm one of those who always vets a charity before I'll donate to it, so I haven't really donated to any projects I used except for the FUTO ones because they pitch it as buying a product and not as a donation, when in reality the open source ones are the ones I should be paying. You make good points. I'll have to think on this. We also use some open source at work. I'll have to think about this there as well.
If the culture behind free/open source software purchases doesn't change, I think free/open source will go away over the next few decades. As more and more developers become independent (we've seen a huge increase in this over the last 20 years) with less and less going to large corpo dev jobs, their revenue will determine what type of software they choose to build, free/open source, or closed source. We have to decide how much we value what we have and decide if having it is worth paying for it. Because if you don't change this culture, we won't have free/open source eventually, and we'll have to pay anyways for abusive close source software. Our future is in our own hands.
This is amazing!!!! Ive been huge advocate for this since you mentioned it, ITS game changer to me the amount of times ive paid for software subscription only to be out cash but disappointed and stuck with half assed software or suddenly updates like on android force you to either buy new hardware eg a phone or use a perfectly servicing one thats been cut from security updates cos they say!!! Leaves you now cash and device down and pissed off at whats told and we took as good faith now sh1tty big tech cash hungry care nothing, UNLIKE this way and appreciate the work ideas and integrity to this movement and costly to yourselves as company I wish this was done by more and this generation of needy ungratefull and spild brats would think. TY and please KEEP UP THE PUSH 🙏🏻🙏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
I weep for the future of software where the customer isn't the product. I downloaded and installed Immich, and I dig it thus far. If there comes a pay option, I'll use it.
I'm 100% there with you, Louis. While a lot of tech companies are predatory scumbags, ultimately we get what we deserve from the pathological need to get things for "free".
It's not a "pathology", it's just philosophy that it should be available for everyone, and that is alright. And no, we don't get what we deserve because it's "free", open source often doesn't have the means or budget to fight big corporations and their scummy practices that are borderline illegal. We will pay for open source when we can and whenever we can. Stop shilling for this company just because Rossman is behind it, this is fanboy behaviour.
But in a way that ending also rings true despite being sort of a sarcasm. Most people would rather sacrifice their privacy for free convenient things. No matter how many times you will try to convince them - they will never understand this topic because it doesn't affect them personally. No amount of explanations or pointing to facts will make them consider getting something else - they are already used to this thing and it's free as far as they are concerned, so why bother? ... I hate it here.
I love the idea behind FUTO and totally support the idea that Open Source Software should cost money! What are your opinions on holding 1 year of updates behind paywalls (I am against this idea but want to know your opinions too, for eg. look at new Redis License).
That's a type of channel control; the problem with time delays is that you have to control the distribution channel. There are paid versions of some foss, e.g. in steam (Krita), microsoft store (Blender), android store (OSM&), these apps make a decent chunk of money from these paid options. But also provide you with a free version via their website.
I agree with this viewpoint. Paying developers that make software that respects the users privacy and software that the user owns gives them an incentive to make more of that kind of software. Grayjay is free for example but I would happily donate (or buy it) once I have money to since it is a great piece of software and even without donation it works the same. The value Grayjay gives me (no ads, sponsorblock etc..) is worth the amount that I am being asked to give. I also would pay for the ability to self host.
When the FOSS community said "Free as in freedom, not free beer", did they expect for-profit businesses WON'T take the latter half of that message dead-ass seriously?
We, as FOSS product, are still free (as in "free beer"), but are considering adding monetization, and "FUTO Voice Input" serves as a great reference in this regard!
The problem with paying for open source software is the nested libraries used, for an example to get a working Linux desktop, you could need 1000 packages. Now if all of those open source packages each wanted a dollar each, even some of those are just a simple library like expat and groff to pick 2 obscure examples, you will quickly pass over 1000 dollars in lots of tiny payments. I am not in a financial position to be able to afford that if it was a one time purchase, hell currently I would be struggling to justify paying for a Windows license legally from Microsoft. BUT! If I built a business running this software, and it made me lots of money like Google or etc, I would think I would be OBLIGATED to pay for it, or at the very least be prepared to pay developers to take it in house to ensure that I control the foundation that my business rests on.
the problem here i think that with "inventing" (idk what word to use) a way to give compensations to indie open source devs is that would radically change the way the current ecosystem is even in unforseeable ways. I think CZcams pre and after monetization could be an example of what i mean.
When you pay for the software you are also giving your info most of the time (If I am not wrong) unless you are using something like paysafecard. And when it comes to free stuff: you forgot about kids: part of the reason why people were choosing free stuff instead of paying for things is because they started using these things as kids when: first - your options to pay online are limitted; and second - even when you make money, you probably are making very little (and don't forget about countries where currency is weak and you need to work more to have the same amount of money when converted to US dollars - which applays not only to kids)
Part of the issue is simply that there's a friction between using many pieces of software, and paying for them. I believe you'd get a lot more people paying if they had one or two places to send their monthly free software subscription fee/donation. How one might effectively set up some organizations to do that, I don't know. I don't believe the idea of calling it purchasing vs donations is useful, even if some would find it philisophically better. By my uderstanding, most people don't "pay for software" anymore other than professional software and video games. And it looks like even those are trying to move to a subscription model (Adobe, Xbox game pass, etc.). Although, of course people are paying through ads and their data. Since free/libre software is also inescapably free/gratis, a "they're giving me something, so I should give back if I can" model is likely going to be more effective than a "you have to pay for this" model. I think people will be more likely to go along with "you're a good person if you do this" than "you're a bad person if you don't", in that they're under no actual obligation, just whatever their own conscience dictates.
You end up spending more money in the long term by only paying for closed source software from companies that will abuse you and hike the prices up, than if you just spent money on open source software. It's short term thinking to not pay for open source software, but it's hard for people to think long term when these things seem so intangible. Thus, if you want to convince people to pay for a better, more secure, cheaper, and less abusive future, you need to make all the consequences of not doing so more tangible, and I am not sure how one would do so.
enshittification - degrading the quality of a service from its initial honeymoon phase and then charging more money to access the "premium" tier which is really just what you'd expect at a basic level of service. Point it out to people wherever you see it. Does open source software solve this? Well, at least so far as the technology stack goes, probably. Once you have a copy, you can always run that version. Anything that involves human labor or physical goods and services will always be somewhat vulnerable to external economic forces though.
How would updates work with the software we buy from FUTO? Would we have to pay a yearly fee or something? Or once we pay for the software we're on our own? Also how long will certain projects be supported before FUTO decides to open source it.
Yes, its tricky of course... its like, you want people to treat their donations like they would their own repositories... like, they are contributing some token of worth, that is like, a message: "I want to see this design progress", like indirect programming. And they can store these "liked" projects on the front page... metaphorically speaking, as the emphasis is more about understanding the story. Everyone has their own story. So its just a matter of that OpenSourceRepo playing into the story they are trying to tell.
This is an interesting video because I just started a conversation on the member forums at FSF regarding this exact same topic and now this video just showed up today on my feed and it's exactly what I'm trying to convince others of within the FSF regarding what I think the GPL needs to have protections for revenue to developers. We have a lot more independent developers today compared to 20 years ago and their numbers are only going to continue growing over the next 10 years. So there needs to be a fix for the financial gap between free/open source and revenue.
In the world of SAAS and subscription plans or you lose access, this is a great way of thinking about the future of open source. I think it will take a long time to change the mindset but it's a worthwhile endeavour 👍
Your point makes a lot of sense, still we need to make FOSS a more convenient choice for non tech savvy people, otherwise we have little hope of changing the status quo
Open source is charity from the perspective of the developers. If you put your work out there its free for anyone to use. I hope one day we have a technology that allows devs to exchange software only between themselves. Kind of a distributed signature system.
Louis do you think FUTO would ever make an open source alternative to Obsidian? Obsidian is by far the best note taking software but its closed source with no plans to open source it. Thankfully it stores the data in text files so at least I know if they go under I can still access my notes but I would love to pay for an open source alternative.
I use a piece of open source software called Org Mode to do this. I use it for note taking and todo lists, scheduling, etc.. It is great. It also stores data in text files. And is really easy to use.
@@yusefaslam9675 Additionally, if you use Emacs you can also use Org Roam for Zettelkasten note-taking and org-roam-ui to generate an interactive graph of your notes similar to what Obsidian offers. Unfortunately I don't know if there's an alternative for either of these outside of Emacs.
You should DONATE to open source software. people who can't afford or can't pay for pro software for financial or sancional reasons shouldn't feel pressured into essentially pirating an open source program. many indie devs don't care if you pirate their game either as long as you spread the word. so if you can't pay with money, at least pay with lip service and/or elbow grease.
I think you kind of missed the point of the video. He addressed that. Truth is, you can't really make it on your own unless you affiliate yourself with an organization that can afford to keep track of your project. It's one of the reasons I prefer to use KDE, GNOME, Open Document foundation, and any software that has a partner page with big names. Really the only Open Source business model doing it right is Blender. They make their software free and actually go out of their way to make films AND teach people how they made those films. That's missing in literally every other foss project.
i recommend watching T2 Code Therapy Rene from his 3 day old video where paid devs wanted him to make some additional not-needed for the reported bug/fix tasks, some devs in open source are payed, port maintainers usually are not but still dont need to work on a project. If youre willing to pay and programmer wishes to accept let yout two collide :) - the title was "How to BURN OUT Open Source devs: After SENDING a patch, IBM asks me to also do a TESTCASE for FREE!" Rene is a kernel hacker with deep understanding of "non popular" architectures :)
Why is "pirating open source software" a bad thing? The license literally allows it. With this model you know it's an unfair exchange justified by your economic status, while wealthy people won't even think about it twice and buy the better software regardless of license
"indie game devs don't care about pirating" - you are just clown 🤡 Go work for 6-12 month, and then say "I don't care about how much money I will earn from my time" If some indie game dev said this, that's not because he doesn't want money. He said this because delusional ppl like you will get mad when someone says piracy is bad no matter in what context.
You should have opted for a dual license and I will try to follow-up with you (and the FUTO org) over email with more details. The current license is harsh even for enterprises that want to adopt your software and want to pay you properly for it.
There should be Open Source software that costs money for access, as well as Open Source software that has the option for payment. Im not saying all software should be paid, but there should be additional ways that developers can finance the development of Open Source software. I like that ElementaryOS for example automatically asks for a small payment to use, you have to consciously decide it isn’t worth the money / you can’t afford it in order to not donate some amount of money. We need a well financed Adobe suite alternative, that actually pays for UI / UX designers to make it usable for the people that need to use it - that alone would allow so, so many people to suddenly be able to get into creative industries more easily, or use Linux as their main OS.
Same thing for another Linux distribution called Zorin OS, you can use nearly all the features for free, but you have the option to pay for it and get some cool new features. It makes a lot of sense this way and everyone is happy, those that have the money and like the software have the option to buy it. Those that don't have the money or do not like the software can use it for free and not buy it.
I have no problem paying for software (open source included) if the software respects the user. I also wish more people had the mindset that you should pay for the software that is valuable to you.
i so want paid open source to work, but i just don't know if it's possible when everyone already associates open source with completely free code you can leech and compile/edit yourself. need a really frickin catchy term for FUTO-esque software that really sticks, and that people recognise i think. gotta distance from the term "open source" imo and create a better one.
I like the option of paying for open source, user respecting software that I like using. But that same software is also able to be used for free, and the source code can be inspected etc.. If I really like this piece of software that I use I want the ability to pay for it.
Are you talking about paying money for the open source license to use the software? Or are you talking about actual ownership in the same sense of a physical product you paid for at the store?
Finding FUTO Keyboard was the greatest thing... I was literally watching your videos and thinking, man if only there was a keyboard that didn't track. That's kind of the first step. Protect the input sources, else everything else is exposed. Boom you have voice AND keyboard input options that do just that. Not only that- they are GOOD pieces of software. Thanks Louis and FUTO for fighting the good fight
I mostly agree with you. However, the fundamental problem lies in ownership. Who owns the software? Open source could be a community effort where every contributor contributes to the software. Not for helping out, but because they get to use that software. It is a collective effort on building and improving things. Everyone is a beneficiary of the collective effort. No one in particular owns the software. Everyone owns it, in a sense. This is the reason why developers frown when their community contributions were used and owned by the maintainer(s). If a corporate owns the software (of course, open source), community help is to be considered as corporate work. In this sense, open source is not as much about community as much as it is about transparency and freedom. So yes, if the software is owned by one entity, paying for open source makes perfect sense. But if it is owned collectively, who is actually paid? This is the crux of the matter. Contribute because it's a collective project with every member as a beneficiary, or contribute because it is open source? If the software is owned by one entity, free (as in gratis) contribution is free labor. If not, it is volunteering for a cause you believe in- a collective project.
I would love if someone would make a service that would allow you to divvie up a set price a month or week where you could choose where your money goes. maybe Open Collective could have a subscription service that lets you subscribe and it'll take one payment a month and split it between multiple programs.
Ever since I started using Linux as my daily driver I opened my eyes to how fantastic open source software can be. I adopted the practice of paying $10 to any open source software I use every month, since it's what I can afford, and I think it would be nice if more people joined the train, regardless of how much per month they can pay up - every bit goes a long way.
It is almost guaranteed to be a losing battle. There is a veeeery slim chance you might get part of the way there if you build in at least some nag-ware to regularly remind non-payers to pay but even that won't be enough.
Rossmann is the dollar store Stallman 😂and has no idea what he is talking about by reintroducing the old donationware licensing model by spite. What gets open source projects REALLY going is financial backing from (ugh...) corporations. Blender and OBS are very proud of their Nvidia/Intel/AMD money. This type of relationship is what is really advancing FOSS despite its conflicting nature.
Won't corporations back FOSS projects iff it benefits them? We want open source in order to become less dependent on corporations, not FOSS to be dependent on corporations.
@@mikeuk1927yeah, the whole IBM and Novell vs SCO thing wasn't a benevolent thing they did to make Linux free for all. They just wanted to kill SCO. Which was good, because SCO was caught trying to scrub OSS licenses from the code they copied, but I doubt IBM cared about that
@@mikeuk1927yep many corporations product is just to turn an open source project into a paid product then never donate to the original open source project lmao.... its not like they legally have to, its just scummy and common
Yeah but there are thousands upon thousands of projects that do not get that type of attention. This is where the donations or a paid version come in. There are many models out there.
You guys should make a streaming stick device like Roku Stick / Fire Stick. I'd Gladly buy that. Most people are dissatisfied with it but there aren't any real competitors.
Once money gets involved, things might get ugly. But I'm just saying what came to mind and definitely haven't thought this through as much as the video
I mostly agree with this sentiment. However, the thing with immich leaves me a bit perplexed and perhaps it shouldn't but... Right now, my use of immich is extremely . I have it on a server in my home for internal use only and only for very specific things. So while I dont mind pay $100 for the software, I dont think I use it enough to justify that expense AT THE MOMENT. But I do feel eventually that I there is a descent chance I will make more use of it. So I want to give them something to support continuation of the product. I realize I could just buy a single user license and then later buy a server license. But that just f"eels", wasteful for some reason. And I know I could just pay nothing unless and until I decide to make heavier use of it. But then I feel wrong in that I am not contributing "something" which is why I like the donation options.
I like open source software because I can modify and contribute to it. If it’s useful for me and I use it and I need to approve it then I don’t have to pay money, I can just contribute, even if it’s just filing bugs sometimes
Open Source programmers put time and effort into their projects for free. There is absolutely no discussion .. send some bucks their way! (I never want to go back to Windows...)
I think its time to rethink your business model. Something new that can be accessible and sustainable. The truth of the matter is world wide there are so many people that just simply don't have the resources or the means of acquiring them. So its not an easy solution but I believe there could be a way.
3:50 - :( TRUE, that same goes for socialism communism :( 9:09 - OK - show us what you got to sell :) - i would really like some new idea of coins that cant be affected by speculation nor by deflation... the whole idea behind GNU is that it could be sold and the person who compiles it, installs it or just copies the data can charge whatever they want for the service, but the source code needs to be available after the change they applied.
How exactly do you plan to pay the thousands of contributors the can participate in a project at any given moment? Who decides how much each person gets paid, and how? I absolutely agree with the donations model, but requiring users to pay for open source is exactly what will lead to open source becoming the very thing that open source was designed to prevent.
One problem is that tax money gets funneled into Microsoft, Facebook etc. They can pay MS 10K USD per user, but they can't even pay a single dollar for software that is actually used. We still use software like Putty, Filezilla etc at my govt. workplace. And would it cost 1 dollar for say a lifetime license, they would say "noooo" and then go and buy MS software. Because? I don't know. Bribes I guess.
EXACTLY. I would pay more for open source software that respects me and my privacy. Yet some people cannot understand that people who make FOSS software need to pay their bills too. Micro$oft software is garbage and I would pay more for FOSS software.
I think the more realistic version of this looks like open-source software with a license check and packaged builds on app stores (mobile) and websites (PC) that include this check
I buy your stuff, but most people in this country aren't financially comfortable. Many struggle. And many who come from struggle still feel the struggle despite having money. These people will probably never buy something they don't have to unless incredibly passionate about it.
Some open source projects are just projects that people do in the spare time, other are collaborative effort to have alternative software, most open source software doesn't have a business plan or pay itself in other ways, a company may decide to open source a software library to get other developers to do the work for them for free while the developers save a lot of time by no having to create a entire library from zero. Other open source projects pay themselves by giving the users valued added features for some fee that people are happy to pay for.
Those are still problematic. Spare time apps have undefined responsibilities. The hobbiest is either unfairly pushing technical issues onto users who don't have the skills, or are unfairly putting responsibilities onto themselves to care for users who they have no real relationship with. There is no way to make it fair.
there is 1 aspect though. Some projects are published as open source due to contractul obligations of the developers in clauses like non-compete. Some open source software is sponsored by multiple big companies to facilitate a standard, other are sponsored by the same corporations to raise the entry bar for new companies. So the title of the video should better reflect the scope of your movement because it does not target the above.
Paying is no problem, the problem is the incentive created to add functions and stuff, then it becomes bloat. Or you can donate lots of money and people like the Gnome team ignore bugs for years. If YOU make and maintain a Gnome fork with dash to dock, dash to panel, system tray, that the gnome extensions menu and gnome tweaks are not separate programs but just options on the general menu i would buy it, and i hate Gnome with a passion btw.
I don't mind paying for open source software, but I will not give my money to corporate entities that only want money and never care about the consumer.
What OSS are you giving money to?
@@youtubelisk OSS as in Open Source Software - its not possible to pay to "software", you can give money to foundations like Apache, GNU (OSF) etc. - here Louis wants to intruduce some new way of paying directly to the programmer that created the code, probably with some electro-newname-coins like in brave browser. If i find the software usefull i can pay for open source software - but if its open source i will probably be wise enough to compile it by myself its all about the Licence somebody gives to it - for example i cannot redistribute it like the new QMS Redis.
There is no way you exist in a capitalist economy and actually live like that I’m calling BS. Think about that claim next time you’re filling up your car with gas.
So *US & Canada Corporate?*
@@youtubelisk That is a great question. For me it's FairEmail, I use it on all devices, it is mind blowing how many useful features it has. I'd argue it's even better than any desktop email client. The price is very low and it is called "support" not "purchase".
I also bought FUTO, but I am not using it that much. Like many people, there are many other pieces of OSS that I use I don't pay for, and tbh I never considered it. Yes, I also would like developers to listen to the message in this video and consider adding payment options. It is true I also want a world where devs get rewarded for creating free software, and actually many do want the same very thing I imagine.
We could go further and challenge the whole idea of "information is free". Is it really? I see a world where good information is harder and harder to come by due to useless "content" being flooded and good, well written books and articles, become even MORE important than ever.
What OSS are YOU giving money to?
I think open source will become sustainable when you can facilitate easy fractional donations of a fixed amount of money to all the open source projects you use.
Its about removing as much friction as possible.
If only there was something that would do this lighting fast...
People are a lot less likely to give if you call it a donation rather than what it really is: a payment for their hard work.
Yea it would be nice if someone like the open collective had a subscription of like $10 a month and it gets split up either evenly or custom depending on how much you use it.
maybe some dev could make a program that tracks your program usage and divvies up the time running the programs and divvies them up based on usage. idk.
@@JessicaFEREM SATs the smaller unit of a BitCoin can transfer on the Lightning network.
The Podcasting 2.0 spec made it such that Splits could be configured... For example... If your streaming or giving 100 SATs, that 100 is Preconfigured by the podcast to go 50% to the hosts, 20% to the producers, 20 to the editors and 1% to the open source podcast app, 1% to the podcasting 2.0 initiative, etcetc... All configurable... This was just an example.
I think this would work well for software...
I am completely on board with this! It's crazy how WinRAR was so ahead of its time with this type of model.
WinRAR is not open source. It's just freeware, which even saying that is dubious because it's supposed to be a trial. Not a criticism on winrar. Just that, although similar, the categorization is wrong.
@@HaloHunter2552 Thank you for the clarification. I didn't know this, and I probably should have looked it up before commenting ':)
I think you may be fundamentally underestimating the problem here. The problem here is not open/closed source it is that no one pays for software period. Look at any software license, its all $500 a year per installation and either free to individuals or with an expectation of piracy (MS Office).
Software either tries to scare people into buying it (Norton) or hopes to get you hooked for free and convince your fortune 500 company to buy 10k licensees.
This is why most software focused companies make pretty much all their money from investors, because you cannot make money from your customers until you are in a monopolistic position.
Piracy is easy, I dont personally see that Open Source is at a disadvantage at all in trying to convince people to pay for it. But people dont pay for closed source software either.
Ardour is a good example of GPL-compliant FOSS that costs money. If you pay Ardour directly, they give you a warrantied binary that is guaranteed to be production-ready and work. If you _don't_ want to pay, you can still download the source code and try compiling yourself OR find a 3rd-party binary. BUT, Ardour's developers are not obligated to help you fix bugs on 3rd party binaries, because it's compiled in an environment that they don't necessarily support.
This.
The issue is this if basically the "pay for support not the product" model with a minor extra step for free users. And the issue with that is they wont be charging enough to cover the support and original dev time as well. Bare in mind this model encourages people to use it fre, when they hit an issue pay for support then drop payments later so a disproportionate amount of the people paying will be taking them up on the support meaning they, for sure don't get the initial dev costs remotely covered
@@ace90210aceThe way it works now for distros is you have:
1. Community support - but they are still interested in software bugs and fixing them, since it impacts paying customers.
2. Paid 24/7 support - Ubuntu Pro, RHEL, SLED/SLES.
3. Donations.
The problem with donations being that as an individual you're not going to financially support the whole software stack you use of 1500-800 packages, some of it is likely maintained by big corporations like RedHat/IBM, novell/SUSE, Cannonical, Intel/AMD.
I think I paid like 100-150 zł to KDE alone, but not much else beyond an Ardour license for windows use.
This is a very good model, and I've been thinking about this. Glad to see an existing example of this.
@@ace90210ace 100%
I miss the times when software was about solving real world problems, not about supporting the latest acronyms that do absolutely nothing for the end user besides render the last version obsolete.
This, and asking for money for your product is fine but like an artist you might not get the support you want. I stopped using WinRAR because they didn't update the UI and glad I didn't. 7zip works great and doesn't ask for a dime. And people that have paid for windows and now look at where it's at.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I have paid for some excellent software tho only because that's the only thing out there that works, and they gave me a download link that always works.
Freedom isn't free, as they say
Kind of like how twitch streamers began working for free. Before ads and before subs, some added a paypal and it was sort of laughed at at the time. Then people realzied its just to chip in to someome you realized entertains you 6 to 8 hours per day.
RIP Reckfull, he was first person to add option to donate.
6-8 hours a day to watch some clown playing a game LOL Get yourself checked out.
And then we deal with the chargebacks...
VLC is just the tip of the iceberg. For example: How many libraries does VLC use under the hood? A lot of them are not even from VLC project. It is a huge and complex ecosystem.
Yep, xkcd 2347. How does the guy in Nebraska get paid? A lot of political and economic strife could be solved if we can answer that question.
@@DFPercush it qas a prophecy about the xz incident that happened three months ago. Huge safety issue if it went through.
A subset of the wordpress ecosystem does this well imo. A lot of plugins are GPL licensed but ask a fixed price to purchase the plugin and a monthly or yearly fee for continued customer support and updates
It's a good way for plugin developers to profit from successful websites using their plugins while still giving their customers the freedom to modify the plugin when needed
Absolutely. If open source wishes to be competitive or sustainable, it should be paid for. That's not to say it needs to be subscription based with a ton of transactions on top. Simply buying it would be a great start
It’s how the App Store used to be too. All the classic timeless apps like angry birds were paid apps. The only way to get a free app was to get the “lite” version. There was no such thing as a free with ads app. Very sad how that has changed
I agree so long as it doesn’t turn into a slippery slope that turns open source software into the same evil greedy landscape that we’re all trying to avoid to begin with.
This has been happening for awhile in the SAAS world. One day the company is reasonable then the next day you have to pay for enterprise with no tiers in between enterprise and "community"
It will surely find a way, and we will have to improve ourselves in order to circumvent that.
THAT is stupid, the money hungry corpos only get away with BS because they use closed source software. If the source is open non greedy devs will take over the project, plain and simple.
If it does happen, just fork the project.
@MA-748 not possible with how FUTO tries to redefine open source.
I am all for supporting and paying for open source. I have an issue with companies that do not have a realistic Tier model. I recently migrated away from an opensource product that broke community features and only offered an enterprise tier with a "contact us" button. This is horrible for business. It shows they do not care about small/medium businesses or non profits. This gives other companies trying to create products around open source a bad rep.
was it REDIS :) ? Please tell the name even if not but community features suits redis .
I love this comment, because it shows that nobody really gives a shit about being open source.
In the spirit of OSS you should take the old version/current version and implement it/fix it yourself.
But instead you've migrated to another platform (which is understandable, duh). The "openness" really matters only for massive projects when in these kind of cases there are enough people to maintain a fork.
Would luiss idea change anything? Frankly no - if closing stuff and forcing users to higher tiers gives them more money - they will do it anyway.
I understand your frustration, but it shows the dichotomy of people's experiences in regards to what you're actually paying / not paying for. I will say that my mindset when it comes to free open source products OSP is that I take the title of ownership, so then it is my responsibility when things go wrong to which I can fix it. This troubleshooting can be done with small/medium/large enterprises. If it's open source, then there should be documentation and readable code - so I wouldn't say they don't necessarily care about most people/businesses.
Can't expect every OSP startup to simply offer a multi-million dollar call center of people to address the masses of people who aren't paying a dime, or have the means to outsource one from another country. There's limitations and frankly people can't live for free.
This is kind of all over the place in my mind, and it's really software-dependent.
For example, Python (or, the CPython interpreter) is free open-source software, and yet the Python Software Foundation is not stretched financially ($3 million annually). It's also not spying on us.
So, a model built around donations, memberships, and conferences is financially viable.
Python is supported by the biggest tech companies on the plants. However, in comparison to their size, you'd notice that the donations look like pocket money to them. So I don't think that an unknown developer with a not well-known software would survive on only donations.
@@potatochannel1948 I concur. It's not really about the large projects that already have huge corporate pockets behind them. This is more about the independent developer who is solo/microteam. That's where this matters the most.
School districts adopted adobe, and ipads, google classroom, windows computers, and lots of other proprietary software.
Part of the problem is that government invests huge amounts of money in private, proprietary, for-profit software.
It should not be like this, Schools should be forced to use only open source software for the simple fact to save the taxpayer money
@@Vicorcivius I think that's a local decision school boards should be making. So the "force" should come in the form of the local community advocacy, in my opinion.
And hows that going for you?
I'm fine with paying for open source software, but I don't want to pay a monthly or annual fee just to use it. If its good enough, I will pay good money for it. Heck, I will pay $1000 if its invaluable to me, but I damn well better be able to use it wherever, whenever and however I want in perpetuity. Also, if it's $1000, I expect good customer support which involves me speaking to a real person on the phone, and having them help me work out the issue. No more of this BS talking to a chat bot, sign up to our website to file a ticket (also so we can send you promotions), back and forth emails with an outsourced worker from India telling me I need to send them logs before they can help me, only for them to tell me what I bought is no longer supported...
As long as you are ok with it being the same software as when you bought it after the money dries up.
@@AndrewMorris-wz1vq Yup. Support has monthly costs. And working on updates sure has costs. So a good middle ground for me would be to pay one-time for a version and receive minor updates. When the next major version is out, I can get it at a discount or simply not upgrade when I don't want to. Then support is offered for 3-5 years from purchase date, and any additional support will come at a fee.
Monthly payments are much better from the business perspective. You can create plans, hire developers and other staff. Random donations can be too random to do this. That's why I am donating to one big open source project monthly.
problem with this thinking is thta it makes conituses development unpredictable / unsustainable from projects point of view
If you want good support that will be a subscription. And not a cheap one. Has been the case even with very expensive proprietary software you've already paid tens of thousands of dollars for at least as far back as the 80s.
I'm very willing to pay for open-source I use and I do pay for many open-source I use. Usually 1-time donations of a price that I se fair and I can pay.
However, to engrain this in ppl's minds, we also need to make people more financially capable. So many people are struggling with their money because they already pay a LOT in taxes and other stuff which goes to the wrong pockets.
I don't think taxes should be diverted to these, I think that, by allowing people to have more money after taxes and with some incentive, people will actually pay for these software because they see value in it.
Thank you for working this hard to break this cycle.
Yeah, pay is needed. When was the last time yall donated for your browser? If the answer is never, theres a 90% chance you paid with your profile in chrome
Good point but until the africa-tier corruption in the Mozilla "foundation" comes to a stop. They don't deserve a dime from any of us.
I searched two weeks ago how to donate to firefox(mozila) but just found their paid services which i dont need at this time. I wanted to make one time donation because im using firefox for so long
*firefox
@battokizu Ok but here's the question, if both options hate me openly then why would I give money to either willingly? Chromium based stuff is just going to steal my data and sell it to get money while Google openly hates me. Mozilla wants me to give them money directly but then also openly hates me.
Didn't even know donating to your browser was a thing. I''m guessing most normie users like myself didnt know either. Thats a big problem because i like how brave protects my privacy compared to chrome.
Love seeing your videos man!! Thank you so much!!
That need for the extra 10% ‘polish’ is literally why corporate open source exists. Community contributions are not going to handle government compliance, role-based access control, and other features that don’t matter to individual users.
The GPL was not intended to prevent people from selling their software. You can sell your software, you can even send the source code to the software AFTER it is paid for (however, when people contribute to the code base you're selling for free, they will often be upset by this)
The issue with GPL is that once you make a first party sale, there is very little you can do to keep payments coming in. There is no revenue protections built into the GPL to allow a dev to continue receiving payment (especially when the end user is a business or corporation). So it leaves the developer will little to nothing in the end. And the GPL allows a user to simply remove any code that would be used to help a developer receive payments, and change it to give themselves payments instead. So this is a real issue for the GPL that needs to be addressed. I have a FSF member forum thread about this topic if your interested. You'll find it in the licensing section of the member forum.
I pay Linux Mint monthly on Patreon, I gave $20 to Libre Office and I purchased both my FUTO Apps.
Honestly I wish i had the money to do more. Open Source has made everything just feel better and i haven't felt ripped off once.
Same with me, user respecting software just feels much better to use.
As Stallman said: as long as it's libre, it don't matter if it ain't gratis.
(paraphrased (heavily))
I really appreciate the concept. Paying for the software is much more reliable than donating. I don’t like the concept of donation, seems you are doing a favor for the developer. It’s more a psychological thing than a practical thing.
This is one of the major reason, FOSS maintainers gets burnt out maintaining solutions. Corps, small businesses hoping the maintainer will do the work for free. It's happening too often nowadays, not every project gets good corporate backing. I do 100% agree you on that it should be called "BUY". I just hate the word "DONATE" like wtf. Also I do believe changing mindset of consumer is the key, it relates more to psychology and tricks imo.
Honestly I never though about it this way. Opensource has always been free, it's Opensource, you pay for support if you want it not the product itself. Just just because that's the way it's always been doesn't mean that that's the way it should be.
You're right about the donate button being the wrong word. I'm one of those who always vets a charity before I'll donate to it, so I haven't really donated to any projects I used except for the FUTO ones because they pitch it as buying a product and not as a donation, when in reality the open source ones are the ones I should be paying.
You make good points. I'll have to think on this. We also use some open source at work. I'll have to think about this there as well.
If the culture behind free/open source software purchases doesn't change, I think free/open source will go away over the next few decades. As more and more developers become independent (we've seen a huge increase in this over the last 20 years) with less and less going to large corpo dev jobs, their revenue will determine what type of software they choose to build, free/open source, or closed source. We have to decide how much we value what we have and decide if having it is worth paying for it. Because if you don't change this culture, we won't have free/open source eventually, and we'll have to pay anyways for abusive close source software. Our future is in our own hands.
This is amazing!!!! Ive been huge advocate for this since you mentioned it, ITS game changer to me the amount of times ive paid for software subscription only to be out cash but disappointed and stuck with half assed software or suddenly updates like on android force you to either buy new hardware eg a phone or use a perfectly servicing one thats been cut from security updates cos they say!!! Leaves you now cash and device down and pissed off at whats told and we took as good faith now sh1tty big tech cash hungry care nothing, UNLIKE this way and appreciate the work ideas and integrity to this movement and costly to yourselves as company I wish this was done by more and this generation of needy ungratefull and spild brats would think. TY and please KEEP UP THE PUSH 🙏🏻🙏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Louis, so glad to see you being one of the faces of the free (as in "freedom") software movement!
I weep for the future of software where the customer isn't the product. I downloaded and installed Immich, and I dig it thus far. If there comes a pay option, I'll use it.
I'm 100% there with you, Louis. While a lot of tech companies are predatory scumbags, ultimately we get what we deserve from the pathological need to get things for "free".
facts
It's not a "pathology", it's just philosophy that it should be available for everyone, and that is alright. And no, we don't get what we deserve because it's "free", open source often doesn't have the means or budget to fight big corporations and their scummy practices that are borderline illegal.
We will pay for open source when we can and whenever we can. Stop shilling for this company just because Rossman is behind it, this is fanboy behaviour.
Did we get here because we deserved it? Or because we asked for it?
But in a way that ending also rings true despite being sort of a sarcasm.
Most people would rather sacrifice their privacy for free convenient things.
No matter how many times you will try to convince them - they will never understand this topic because it doesn't affect them personally.
No amount of explanations or pointing to facts will make them consider getting something else - they are already used to this thing and it's free as far as they are concerned, so why bother? ... I hate it here.
we're really getting a lot more than we deserve with volunteer hosted volunteer developed ecosystems around the linux desktop tbh
I love the idea behind FUTO and totally support the idea that Open Source Software should cost money! What are your opinions on holding 1 year of updates behind paywalls (I am against this idea but want to know your opinions too, for eg. look at new Redis License).
That's a type of channel control; the problem with time delays is that you have to control the distribution channel. There are paid versions of some foss, e.g. in steam (Krita), microsoft store (Blender), android store (OSM&), these apps make a decent chunk of money from these paid options. But also provide you with a free version via their website.
very good points. Developer and users needs to understend this. Sustanablity of the software development is not for free.
I agree with this viewpoint. Paying developers that make software that respects the users privacy and software that the user owns gives them an incentive to make more of that kind of software. Grayjay is free for example but I would happily donate (or buy it) once I have money to since it is a great piece of software and even without donation it works the same. The value Grayjay gives me (no ads, sponsorblock etc..) is worth the amount that I am being asked to give.
I also would pay for the ability to self host.
When the FOSS community said "Free as in freedom, not free beer", did they expect for-profit businesses WON'T take the latter half of that message dead-ass seriously?
We, as FOSS product, are still free (as in "free beer"), but are considering adding monetization, and "FUTO Voice Input" serves as a great reference in this regard!
I totally agree ! Been on the Blender developpment fund since 2021.
The problem with paying for open source software is the nested libraries used, for an example to get a working Linux desktop, you could need 1000 packages.
Now if all of those open source packages each wanted a dollar each, even some of those are just a simple library like expat and groff to pick 2 obscure examples, you will quickly pass over 1000 dollars in lots of tiny payments.
I am not in a financial position to be able to afford that if it was a one time purchase, hell currently I would be struggling to justify paying for a Windows license legally from Microsoft.
BUT! If I built a business running this software, and it made me lots of money like Google or etc, I would think I would be OBLIGATED to pay for it, or at the very least be prepared to pay developers to take it in house to ensure that I control the foundation that my business rests on.
the problem here i think that with "inventing" (idk what word to use) a way to give compensations to indie open source devs is that would radically change the way the current ecosystem is even in unforseeable ways. I think CZcams pre and after monetization could be an example of what i mean.
All I hear was someone being grumpy. About a Problem the US Made
Strong agree - We've had "free" stuff long enough to see the trap on the other side.
Right, don't expect people who create open-source to be monks. They deserve payment for the value they give.
You are absolutely right.
Beauty of open source is that in 2024 you can play SNES games over some cloud gaming server in a basement on a fridge if you want.
When you pay for the software you are also giving your info most of the time (If I am not wrong) unless you are using something like paysafecard.
And when it comes to free stuff: you forgot about kids: part of the reason why people were choosing free stuff instead of paying for things is because they started using these things as kids when: first - your options to pay online are limitted; and second - even when you make money, you probably are making very little (and don't forget about countries where currency is weak and you need to work more to have the same amount of money when converted to US dollars - which applays not only to kids)
I DID learn something, thanks Louis!
Part of the issue is simply that there's a friction between using many pieces of software, and paying for them. I believe you'd get a lot more people paying if they had one or two places to send their monthly free software subscription fee/donation. How one might effectively set up some organizations to do that, I don't know.
I don't believe the idea of calling it purchasing vs donations is useful, even if some would find it philisophically better. By my uderstanding, most people don't "pay for software" anymore other than professional software and video games. And it looks like even those are trying to move to a subscription model (Adobe, Xbox game pass, etc.). Although, of course people are paying through ads and their data.
Since free/libre software is also inescapably free/gratis, a "they're giving me something, so I should give back if I can" model is likely going to be more effective than a "you have to pay for this" model. I think people will be more likely to go along with "you're a good person if you do this" than "you're a bad person if you don't", in that they're under no actual obligation, just whatever their own conscience dictates.
I am totally on board!
Well said, CEO Rossman!
You end up spending more money in the long term by only paying for closed source software from companies that will abuse you and hike the prices up, than if you just spent money on open source software. It's short term thinking to not pay for open source software, but it's hard for people to think long term when these things seem so intangible. Thus, if you want to convince people to pay for a better, more secure, cheaper, and less abusive future, you need to make all the consequences of not doing so more tangible, and I am not sure how one would do so.
enshittification - degrading the quality of a service from its initial honeymoon phase and then charging more money to access the "premium" tier which is really just what you'd expect at a basic level of service. Point it out to people wherever you see it.
Does open source software solve this? Well, at least so far as the technology stack goes, probably. Once you have a copy, you can always run that version. Anything that involves human labor or physical goods and services will always be somewhat vulnerable to external economic forces though.
How would updates work with the software we buy from FUTO? Would we have to pay a yearly fee or something? Or once we pay for the software we're on our own? Also how long will certain projects be supported before FUTO decides to open source it.
But sadly sometimes you CAN'T even take my money even when I want to give it lmao
GREAT POINTS. I'M donating to immich developer as soon as I get home.
Meanwhile, significant portions of the internet and significant big tech revenue depends on GNU software. And Bitcoin core is free, too.
Agree.
Yes, its tricky of course... its like, you want people to treat their donations like they would their own repositories... like, they are contributing some token of worth, that is like, a message: "I want to see this design progress", like indirect programming. And they can store these "liked" projects on the front page... metaphorically speaking, as the emphasis is more about understanding the story. Everyone has their own story. So its just a matter of that OpenSourceRepo playing into the story they are trying to tell.
This is an interesting video because I just started a conversation on the member forums at FSF regarding this exact same topic and now this video just showed up today on my feed and it's exactly what I'm trying to convince others of within the FSF regarding what I think the GPL needs to have protections for revenue to developers. We have a lot more independent developers today compared to 20 years ago and their numbers are only going to continue growing over the next 10 years. So there needs to be a fix for the financial gap between free/open source and revenue.
In the world of SAAS and subscription plans or you lose access, this is a great way of thinking about the future of open source. I think it will take a long time to change the mindset but it's a worthwhile endeavour 👍
Your point makes a lot of sense, still we need to make FOSS a more convenient choice for non tech savvy people, otherwise we have little hope of changing the status quo
I agree
Open source is charity from the perspective of the developers. If you put your work out there its free for anyone to use. I hope one day we have a technology that allows devs to exchange software only between themselves. Kind of a distributed signature system.
Reminds me of prepros. A css and js compiler and local server. Works forever. Ask you to purchase it every so often.
Louis do you think FUTO would ever make an open source alternative to Obsidian? Obsidian is by far the best note taking software but its closed source with no plans to open source it.
Thankfully it stores the data in text files so at least I know if they go under I can still access my notes but I would love to pay for an open source alternative.
futa?
@@p1nstarkYeah, the name is quite unfortunate xD FUTOnari
I use a piece of open source software called Org Mode to do this. I use it for note taking and todo lists, scheduling, etc.. It is great. It also stores data in text files. And is really easy to use.
@@nullvoid3545 Not to mention you can use Joplin's API to add features to Joplin that similar if not same as obsidian.
@@yusefaslam9675 Additionally, if you use Emacs you can also use Org Roam for Zettelkasten note-taking and org-roam-ui to generate an interactive graph of your notes similar to what Obsidian offers. Unfortunately I don't know if there's an alternative for either of these outside of Emacs.
💯 percent agreed.
You should DONATE to open source software. people who can't afford or can't pay for pro software for financial or sancional reasons shouldn't feel pressured into essentially pirating an open source program.
many indie devs don't care if you pirate their game either as long as you spread the word.
so if you can't pay with money, at least pay with lip service and/or elbow grease.
I think you kind of missed the point of the video. He addressed that.
Truth is, you can't really make it on your own unless you affiliate yourself with an organization that can afford to keep track of your project.
It's one of the reasons I prefer to use KDE, GNOME, Open Document foundation, and any software that has a partner page with big names.
Really the only Open Source business model doing it right is Blender. They make their software free and actually go out of their way to make films AND teach people how they made those films. That's missing in literally every other foss project.
i recommend watching T2 Code Therapy Rene from his 3 day old video where paid devs wanted him to make some additional not-needed for the reported bug/fix tasks, some devs in open source are payed, port maintainers usually are not but still dont need to work on a project. If youre willing to pay and programmer wishes to accept let yout two collide :) - the title was "How to BURN OUT Open Source devs: After SENDING a patch, IBM asks me to also do a TESTCASE for FREE!" Rene is a kernel hacker with deep understanding of "non popular" architectures :)
Why is "pirating open source software" a bad thing? The license literally allows it.
With this model you know it's an unfair exchange justified by your economic status, while wealthy people won't even think about it twice and buy the better software regardless of license
"indie game devs don't care about pirating" - you are just clown 🤡
Go work for 6-12 month, and then say "I don't care about how much money I will earn from my time"
If some indie game dev said this, that's not because he doesn't want money. He said this because delusional ppl like you will get mad when someone says piracy is bad no matter in what context.
You should have opted for a dual license and I will try to follow-up with you (and the FUTO org) over email with more details. The current license is harsh even for enterprises that want to adopt your software and want to pay you properly for it.
Beautifully said! Time to start putting our wallets to better use!
There should be Open Source software that costs money for access, as well as Open Source software that has the option for payment. Im not saying all software should be paid, but there should be additional ways that developers can finance the development of Open Source software. I like that ElementaryOS for example automatically asks for a small payment to use, you have to consciously decide it isn’t worth the money / you can’t afford it in order to not donate some amount of money.
We need a well financed Adobe suite alternative, that actually pays for UI / UX designers to make it usable for the people that need to use it - that alone would allow so, so many people to suddenly be able to get into creative industries more easily, or use Linux as their main OS.
Same thing for another Linux distribution called Zorin OS, you can use nearly all the features for free, but you have the option to pay for it and get some cool new features. It makes a lot of sense this way and everyone is happy, those that have the money and like the software have the option to buy it. Those that don't have the money or do not like the software can use it for free and not buy it.
I have no problem paying for software (open source included) if the software respects the user. I also wish more people had the mindset that you should pay for the software that is valuable to you.
i so want paid open source to work, but i just don't know if it's possible when everyone already associates open source with completely free code you can leech and compile/edit yourself.
need a really frickin catchy term for FUTO-esque software that really sticks, and that people recognise i think. gotta distance from the term "open source" imo and create a better one.
I like the option of paying for open source, user respecting software that I like using. But that same software is also able to be used for free, and the source code can be inspected etc.. If I really like this piece of software that I use I want the ability to pay for it.
Are you talking about paying money for the open source license to use the software? Or are you talking about actual ownership in the same sense of a physical product you paid for at the store?
Finding FUTO Keyboard was the greatest thing... I was literally watching your videos and thinking, man if only there was a keyboard that didn't track. That's kind of the first step. Protect the input sources, else everything else is exposed. Boom you have voice AND keyboard input options that do just that. Not only that- they are GOOD pieces of software. Thanks Louis and FUTO for fighting the good fight
At the very least, costing money allows the valuable feedback mechanism of the market to work. It funds things people find useful.
I mostly agree with you. However, the fundamental problem lies in ownership.
Who owns the software?
Open source could be a community effort where every contributor contributes to the software. Not for helping out, but because they get to use that software. It is a collective effort on building and improving things. Everyone is a beneficiary of the collective effort. No one in particular owns the software. Everyone owns it, in a sense. This is the reason why developers frown when their community contributions were used and owned by the maintainer(s).
If a corporate owns the software (of course, open source), community help is to be considered as corporate work. In this sense, open source is not as much about community as much as it is about transparency and freedom.
So yes, if the software is owned by one entity, paying for open source makes perfect sense. But if it is owned collectively, who is actually paid? This is the crux of the matter.
Contribute because it's a collective project with every member as a beneficiary, or contribute because it is open source? If the software is owned by one entity, free (as in gratis) contribution is free labor. If not, it is volunteering for a cause you believe in- a collective project.
Hey Louis, Please post more FUTO videos on your main
i love this idea, i am 100% agree i would rather pay a open source product rather than subscription of a proprieatry trash software
fantastic
I would love if someone would make a service that would allow you to divvie up a set price a month or week where you could choose where your money goes. maybe Open Collective could have a subscription service that lets you subscribe and it'll take one payment a month and split it between multiple programs.
Ever since I started using Linux as my daily driver I opened my eyes to how fantastic open source software can be. I adopted the practice of paying $10 to any open source software I use every month, since it's what I can afford, and I think it would be nice if more people joined the train, regardless of how much per month they can pay up - every bit goes a long way.
It is almost guaranteed to be a losing battle.
There is a veeeery slim chance you might get part of the way there if you build in at least some nag-ware to regularly remind non-payers to pay but even that won't be enough.
Rossmann is the dollar store Stallman 😂and has no idea what he is talking about by reintroducing the old donationware licensing model by spite. What gets open source projects REALLY going is financial backing from (ugh...) corporations. Blender and OBS are very proud of their Nvidia/Intel/AMD money. This type of relationship is what is really advancing FOSS despite its conflicting nature.
Won't corporations back FOSS projects iff it benefits them? We want open source in order to become less dependent on corporations, not FOSS to be dependent on corporations.
@@mikeuk1927yeah, the whole IBM and Novell vs SCO thing wasn't a benevolent thing they did to make Linux free for all. They just wanted to kill SCO. Which was good, because SCO was caught trying to scrub OSS licenses from the code they copied, but I doubt IBM cared about that
@@mikeuk1927yep many corporations product is just to turn an open source project into a paid product then never donate to the original open source project lmao.... its not like they legally have to, its just scummy and common
Yeah but there are thousands upon thousands of projects that do not get that type of attention. This is where the donations or a paid version come in. There are many models out there.
Go donate $2 to each piece of the open source software yearly. It only costs you ~$50 but will change the whole landscape.
You guys should make a streaming stick device like Roku Stick / Fire Stick. I'd Gladly buy that. Most people are dissatisfied with it but there aren't any real competitors.
Once money gets involved, things might get ugly. But I'm just saying what came to mind and definitely haven't thought this through as much as the video
I do pay for it ! I am paying with my time, fixes and testing and taking responsibility :) Microsoft should pay for their datacenters ! :)
I mostly agree with this sentiment. However, the thing with immich leaves me a bit perplexed and perhaps it shouldn't but... Right now, my use of immich is extremely . I have it on a server in my home for internal use only and only for very specific things. So while I dont mind pay $100 for the software, I dont think I use it enough to justify that expense AT THE MOMENT. But I do feel eventually that I there is a descent chance I will make more use of it. So I want to give them something to support continuation of the product. I realize I could just buy a single user license and then later buy a server license. But that just f"eels", wasteful for some reason. And I know I could just pay nothing unless and until I decide to make heavier use of it. But then I feel wrong in that I am not contributing "something" which is why I like the donation options.
I like open source software because I can modify and contribute to it. If it’s useful for me and I use it and I need to approve it then I don’t have to pay money, I can just contribute, even if it’s just filing bugs sometimes
I like software that I can use without paying, but if the software is that good that I want to pay for it, I like having that option aswell.
Open Source programmers put time and effort into their projects for free.
There is absolutely no discussion .. send some bucks their way!
(I never want to go back to Windows...)
I think its time to rethink your business model. Something new that can be accessible and sustainable. The truth of the matter is world wide there are so many people that just simply don't have the resources or the means of acquiring them. So its not an easy solution but I believe there could be a way.
You SHOULD pay for updates for open source software. Maintenance ain't free, but the the initial project should be.
3:50 - :( TRUE, that same goes for socialism communism :(
9:09 - OK - show us what you got to sell :) - i would really like some new idea of coins that cant be affected by speculation nor by deflation... the whole idea behind GNU is that it could be sold and the person who compiles it, installs it or just copies the data can charge whatever they want for the service, but the source code needs to be available after the change they applied.
100% agreed!
When Google fires its top talents just to replace them with cheap labours, it's really demotivational for me as a software engineer.
If it's good, sure. I've given money to quite a few projects, I even paid for Winrar back in the day because it was legitmately useful.
How exactly do you plan to pay the thousands of contributors the can participate in a project at any given moment? Who decides how much each person gets paid, and how? I absolutely agree with the donations model, but requiring users to pay for open source is exactly what will lead to open source becoming the very thing that open source was designed to prevent.
One problem is that tax money gets funneled into Microsoft, Facebook etc. They can pay MS 10K USD per user, but they can't even pay a single dollar for software that is actually used. We still use software like Putty, Filezilla etc at my govt. workplace. And would it cost 1 dollar for say a lifetime license, they would say "noooo" and then go and buy MS software. Because? I don't know. Bribes I guess.
EXACTLY. I would pay more for open source software that respects me and my privacy. Yet some people cannot understand that people who make FOSS software need to pay their bills too. Micro$oft software is garbage and I would pay more for FOSS software.
I think the more realistic version of this looks like open-source software with a license check and packaged builds on app stores (mobile) and websites (PC) that include this check
I buy your stuff, but most people in this country aren't financially comfortable. Many struggle. And many who come from struggle still feel the struggle despite having money. These people will probably never buy something they don't have to unless incredibly passionate about it.
Some open source projects are just projects that people do in the spare time, other are collaborative effort to have alternative software, most open source software doesn't have a business plan or pay itself in other ways, a company may decide to open source a software library to get other developers to do the work for them for free while the developers save a lot of time by no having to create a entire library from zero. Other open source projects pay themselves by giving the users valued added features for some fee that people are happy to pay for.
Those are still problematic.
Spare time apps have undefined responsibilities. The hobbiest is either unfairly pushing technical issues onto users who don't have the skills, or are unfairly putting responsibilities onto themselves to care for users who they have no real relationship with. There is no way to make it fair.
there is 1 aspect though. Some projects are published as open source due to contractul obligations of the developers in clauses like non-compete. Some open source software is sponsored by multiple big companies to facilitate a standard, other are sponsored by the same corporations to raise the entry bar for new companies. So the title of the video should better reflect the scope of your movement because it does not target the above.
Yes!! 👍👍
Biggest problem for me is not I don't want send my money, but setup and link my payment information online is kinda too far for me.
I wouldn't mind paying a one time fee for home assistant
But not a subscription. Not that I pay for subscriptions for closed sourced software as well.
Paying is no problem, the problem is the incentive created to add functions and stuff, then it becomes bloat. Or you can donate lots of money and people like the Gnome team ignore bugs for years.
If YOU make and maintain a Gnome fork with dash to dock, dash to panel, system tray, that the gnome extensions menu and gnome tweaks are not separate programs but just options on the general menu i would buy it, and i hate Gnome with a passion btw.
Ok, how do I support Linux?