Re:The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
by dleslie on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @12:57PM
(#20997401)
This is incredibly insightful; particularly the final dig regarding an unwillingness to compensate others for their efforts.
It strikes me that the open source bounty model never really took off, and neither did the open source crowd funding model.
It's hard to convince users to contribute funding when many of them were drawn to your software _because_ it is free as in beer. Free2Play video games have struggled with this for years, and look at the state of monetization in that market: predatory gambling mechanics, digital storefronts tuned to maximize anxiety in purchasers, and so many hats.
Perhaps the future of open source funding is in selling personalization customizations, somehow.
It strikes me that the open source bounty model never really took off, and neither did the open source crowd funding model.
It's hard to convince users to contribute funding when many of them were drawn to your software _because_ it is free as in beer. Free2Play video games have struggled with this for years, and look at the state of monetization in that market: predatory gambling mechanics, digital storefronts tuned to maximize anxiety in purchasers, and so many hats.
Perhaps the future of open source funding is in selling personalization customizations, somehow.