We decided to try a new approach to see how it works for funding - funding open source projects is _hard_!

We wanted a model where, unlike completely proprietary licenses, the source code could be available - and, worst case, if something happened to the project - users could still have full access to it. And that all the work is eventually available in general.

Our first OSS drops - from 18 months ago - are coming in next month (July 2nd), so that'll be exciting. It will be interesting to see how it works out.

I don't envy you... And as a software dev you don't want to be spending hours on legal stuff either.

I do love the way you have the price so low.

For sure... drafting EULAs, working with lawyers, setting up a sales pipeline is not the fun stuff.

Would much rather work on bug fixes and features! Just a necessary evil to be able to fund development. In an ideal world - could just write open source software and not worry about paying bills.

> worst case, if something happened to the project - users could still have full access to it

Can you put in a formal license statement saying that each change will become mit-licensed 18 months after it's committed? That way, there's no ambiguity if development stops and releases stop getting put in the oni2-mit repository.

It is really intriguing to see how this works for them. Making money from normal open source projects is really hard. I am really hoping to see some innovation in this sector (FOSS+Economical sustainability) sooner rather than later.

I think once a program is established and has all its main features in there and polished, the 18 month old version may not be very different than the current version for practical purposes. I.e. if this model works, it may only work well while they're getting started and adding new useful primary features.

Even in vim new features often have me check which version I'm running. I'd say that when you start using more than the basic features then updates start becoming interesting.

The other post about Github sponsorship works; it means the code remains open source and the application free to use, whilst the developers get paid for contributing to it.

That said, I think it's mainly down to companies that use the open source software to start paying for it. All companies that use open source software - and be fair, this is pretty much all software companies - should reserve some budget to sponsor and donate to open source project and developers.

Second, there's a lot of open source projects whose developers are paid for by a company, e.g. Linux, Chromium, etc. That code is still open source and free, AND the developers get paid.