But that difference does not change the market dynamics in any way. In both cases, the effects of a near unlimited supply of creators is having the same effect, regardless of how their creations get used.

Perhaps the difference changes the ethics of the situation, I don't know, but I remain equally skeptical of "business innovations" being able to help the OSS creators as I am "business innovations" being able to help aspiring rock stars and shortstops.

That's almost exactly the opposite of very popular OSS software, which generates an endless wave of free users. And generally no whales. And high demands for bug fixes. And serious temper tantrums (this has happened to me too) when you explain to users of your free software that you owe them exactly fuck. and. all. and won't be hopping-to in order to fix something for them.

Sure there are some runaway indie hits that make money to cover the development. And Linus Torvalds gets paid $10 million per year to work on open source. But nearly all indie game developers never make anything from their games, same as OSS authors. (Indie games are an the appropriate comparison since we are talking about independent OSS authors, not Facebook developers working on React).

In any case, I am not arguing that all of these endeavors are equivalent in all ways. My only point is that all of the fields have an oversupply of creators. The result is that creators don't have leverage over consumers. To really spell it out: if OSS library creators try sticking the commons clause or other "innovations" on their projects, most businesses are just going to go find another library that does the same thing, without the restriction.

I have an OSS project used by 1000s of people and many huge companies. I don't get compensated for that directly and I don't expect to. I'm just happy to be able to use it on my own projects no matter what company I am working with.

If you think your code is worth money, sell it.

LGPL/GPL/AGPL exist for a reason. Not my fault you used BSD/MIT and didn't consider what you were explicitly allowing and encouraging people to do.

There btw.

Also, it would be common decency but we live in an era where if something cannot be enforced in court then you should not be surprised somebody is [not] doing it. Oh well.

These are people who are providing a service, potentially because it’s a passion, but other entities soak up the profit.

You seem to be arguing that these people (in the grandparent comment and my own) do get paid, but my understanding is that they don’t, or barely do.

(And I know I would have a "donation budget" if I was a businessman because I am not stupid and I know the work of which people outside my company facilitates my business further.)

But appreciation is not what businessmen do. 99% are cut-throats in all areas of their lives.

There is an unlimited supply of people who say they would like to write novels, make programming languages, play soccer [professionally], or make video games. The supply of people who have the drive and patience to complete a novel or programming language or video game for free or on spec is arguably much smaller. The same is also true of open source libraries. There may be an effectively unlimited supply of GitHub repositories containing new JavaScript frameworks and template languages, but the majority of them haven't gotten very far past the README file. And, we haven't even addressed the question of whether they have the skill and talent to make a good novel or programming language or video game or open source library.

Having said all that, I think the original article is on point in at least one crucial respect: all of these cited kinds of work require a huge investment of time, and it's very hard to sustain that investment without money. This is why I always get very frustrated with the particular kind of pseudo-libertarian who blithely asserts that artists and writers don't need to be fairly compensated for their work, because clearly they'd keep doing it solely out of the love of creation. In reality, artists and writers--and open source programmers--aren't likely to put in "second job" level hours without compensation indefinitely. They're going to have a family, or develop more relaxing hobbies, or possibly just get frustrated by the ongoing effort.

I don't know if "business innovations" can solve this problem, but I think it's worth looking for more ways for developers (and writers and artists and...) to bring in some kind of stable recurring revenue.

...but practically how do you do it?

The parent comment is quite right, going from 'pay x' to 'pay y' is one thing... but from 'pay nothing' to 'pay anything' is a massive and difficult step.

You can't make it mandatory; theres a glut of stuff out there, and people will just move on to the next free (perhaps crappier, but free!) version.

'business innovations may help' is just a nice way of saying 'well darn, nothing we've tried in the last 10 years to fix this has worked... hm. Don't really have a solution for this, but it'd be great if someone figured one out!'

...which I totally agree with, sure, but its not really helpful or practical.

Seriously, nothing people have tried (tips, patreon, foundations) has worked very well.

No one is going to solve this problem any time soon.

Of you're an open source library author/maintainer, you've got to acknowledge you're not just magically get rewarded for your efforts; you have to work for it, and (probably, for most people) your attempts to monetize it will fail.

The same is true for all creatives.

If I had an answer to that, I'd be a full-time fiction writer. :)

Seriously, I suspect most people aren't going to ever make a lot from creative efforts, which we'll lump open source libraries into; the vast majority of us are going to be much farther out along the low long tail of the compensation curve.

I suspect the only thing that will help -- not to the degree that everyone will be able to make a living wage doing whatever they want, but to the degree that more people will feel like they're getting something back for the time they're putting in beyond the Warm Fuzzy Feeling of Sharing -- is a cultural shift of sorts. We need to uncouple the concept of "zero marginal cost" from the concept of "should be free." (I'm aware that leads down a whole rabbit hole about IP and "piracy," but I'm leaving it aside.) In the open source world, we may all say we're here for the free-as-in-freedom part rather than the free-as-in-beer part...but we're sure disinclined to pay for those beers.

Who gets to determine what is “fair compensation” and to whom?

So based on supply and demand, i.e. prices?

In a pure supply/demand market races to the bottom can and do happen.

When the concept of open source software was first introduced, it was seen as a desperate way to get users but it was an effective strategy at the time.

Today, giving software for free is not enough - I think that the next trend will be to pay people to use your OSS software. Probably with cryptocurrency.

This was not the motive for free software's beginning, nor does it describe the beginning of the term "open source." The concept rose out of early computing allowing and sometimes encouraging users to share and improve software, and the true start of the movement envisioned a model similar to Red Hat, where the software is sold though sharing is not restricted.

Forcing user payment is effectively impossible for open source software, someone can just buy a copy and redistribute it without the required payment, so your prediction is a movement away from open source software.

Not particularly. It's depressing to see businesses profitably exploit that work, and irritating to see people develop a sense of entitlement without ever contributing back.

Though I wish more general users donated to projects, people using the software without paying seems better than people not using or paying for the software, and far better than paying and being unable to use the software.

In the end it's about what choice you make. If you choose to help the community then you must be prepared that it will be a thankless and hard job. If you cannot bear it, don't help the community.

Trouble with open source is, many people don't realize this phenomena until they are burned out.