Do you have any examples of forks being made due to someone asking for donations?
As for the problem of people getting paid to write open source software, I really don't think that the 'hiding the source code and selling binaries' method is the only viable option.
I also don't think people are unwilling to support FOSS developers, I think it's mainly a problem of convenience (as in payment) and exposure.
Things like Kickstarter helps a great deal here and I think this is a much untapped resource for funding FOSS development. One very successful venture was Openshot, an open source video editor (GPL licenced) which had a goal of $20.000 but which reached $45.000.
Granted we aren't in a situation where it's possible to make a full-time career out of developing open source software through Kickstarter style donations, but I think it's not such a big step as one might think.
I would happily pay a small sum each month for someone (or someone's) to work on FOSS software I use a lot, and I think a large number of people out there would do the same, atleast enough for someone to make a decent living out of it.
Again I believe the key aspect is to make the payment convenient/safe and of course have a way for projects to gain exposure.
Paying a small lump sum each month for continued free open source development of software you use/rely on for your work is in my book a much better long term solution than to pay a larger sum for the latest update of 'proprietary software X' where you are solely dependant on that provider and have to accept their conditions in terms of price/licencing not to mention the intrusive DRM mechanism which are a de facto part of proprietary software today.
Compare that to the FOSS situation where, given that the source code is open (and due to copyleft any forks will also remain open), you will never be locked-in to one provider and their whims even if you are totally dependant on that specific piece of software.
Anyway I'm not pretending that this is the 'perfect solution', but I dare say proprietary software certainly isn't (and I make a living off writing proprietary software and have for the past 8 years) and I think that a shift from relying on proprietary to instead relying on open source code is of great importance for many of the reasons RMS outlined. YMMV and all that.
You're in luck. Gittip is exactly the model you are describing, and it's already active and supporting (in part) the works of hundreds of FOSS developers:
I guess it's time to have a look around to see if there are any developers there working on things that I'm interested in/relying on.
I do hope that in the future we'll see more developers who will offer less abstract development plans even though I realise that gittip is not comparable to the project specific type funding as with Kickstarter etc.
CentOS and MariaDB come to mind as two possible examples, that started as a means not to pay for the original projects.
> Compare that to the FOSS situation where, given that the source code is open (and due to copyleft any forks will also remain open), you will never be locked-in to one provider and their whims even if you are totally dependant on that specific piece of software.
This is exactly the problem when trying to make a living out of it.
While it is very convenient for the users, it does not guarantee that you as the author will get paid to work on it.
Tomorrow another guy might come along, fork the project and start getting the money instead.
The Android market is a prime example of this, where lots of apps are just plain forks, with the original authors getting nothing in return.
Well neither CentOS or MariaDB came to be because of 'asking for donations'. CentOS was forked from RHEL to be a subscription-free enterprise alternative and IS actually being funded by donations, which they ask for.
MariaDB is a fork created by the same person who created and then sold MySQL to Sun for $1 billion (which he was able to do due to MySQL having copyright attribution from all contributors).
I think these were at best very poor examples to support your statement.
>While it is very convenient for the users, it does not guarantee that you as the author will get paid to work on it.
True, it will be a competitive situation, however it's not very different from proprietary commercial development as you will need to continue to add features and improve performance etc, else users will turn to another application which does.
In open source it's extremely easy to fork (ie base upon existing code) however due to copyleft it won't be a fork with exclusive lock-in features as anything can be ported back, so in essence the payment will go to the person/persons who the end users think is providing the best value for their payment, again not unlike proprietary commercial development.
And in the tradition of open source software, I see no direct reason as for why developers can't consider sharing development and thus also the donations.
>The Android market is a prime example of this, where lots of apps are just plain forks, with the original authors getting nothing in return.
Well I think that is primarily a problem of original developers not creating Android versions of their open source applications to begin with, as such we are seeing opportunistic third-party developers creating quick ports of their software.
But is that really a bad thing? If the original programmers aren't interested in supporting the Android platform and someone else provides the service then I fail to see the harm (assuming of course that the licence is abided).
And I do think that when official projects enter the market place they will quickly gain the upper hand over third-party ports as not only are they again the 'official' version, but also I trust that they as core developers can typically adapt the original code better for Android use.
I also think we are slowly seeing more official Android ports of well known open source desktop software, VLC comes to mind.
Looking past whats already been discussed I'm sure there are viable venues which haven't yet been thought of, or at least given a fair chance.
One thing I forgot to highlight was the Valve Steam Workshop donation program which just recently resulted in enough money for two 6 month development contracts for working on Blender.
Again things like this makes me believe that exposure and ease of payment is the big hurdle, not that there's not enough people willing to donate for open software development.
By people that did not want to pay RedHat for support.
> MariaDB is a fork created by the same person who created and then sold MySQL to Sun for $1 billion (which he was able to do due to MySQL having copyright attribution from all contributors).
Because they didn't want to pay Oracle for support.
> In open source it's extremely easy to fork (ie base upon existing code) however due to copyleft ...
Not all licenses require copyleft. With BSD, for example, I can take your work, modify it and sell it without giving you anything back.
> But is that really a bad thing? If the original programmers aren't interested in supporting the Android platform and someone else provides the service then I fail to see the harm (assuming of course that the licence is abided).
The forked applications were already in the Android market, they were mostly repacked and resold.
> One thing I forgot to highlight was the Valve Steam Workshop donation program which just recently resulted in enough money for two 6 month development contracts for working on Blender.
How many developers and what will they do after 6 months?
> Again things like this makes me believe that exposure and ease of payment is the big hurdle, not that there's not enough people willing to donate for open software development.
For example, to make a comfortable living in Germany, those donations need to be at least 40K € per year.
The reason MariaDB was started (according to the author, 'Monty') was because he didn't trust Oracle's intentions regarding the open source nature of MySQL once they bought it through their Sun acquisition.
This fear has been validated as Oracle is focusing on providing MySQL functionality through proprietary modules, with slow development of the open source part of Oracle's MySQL offering as a result.
Your original statement was about numerous forks made due to developers 'asking for donations'. Neither of these examples applies.
Not only that, but both your examples are actually funded through DONATIONS.
>Not all licenses require copyleft. With BSD, for example, I can take your work, modify it and sell it without giving you anything back.
Yes, the development model I described certainly lends itself best to copyleft style licencing.
>The forked applications were already in the Android market, they were mostly repacked and resold
Do you have any examples of Android ports done by the original developers which has then been repacked and resold, I'd like to compare the popularity between the official versions and the third-party versions.
>How many developers and what will they do after 6 months?
This is 2 developers, however their 6 month employment was entirely covered by the very first Valve donation payment so it's a good sign. Hopefully the donations will coninue which will allow for extension of the contracts and hopefully even more developers being contracted.
>For example, to make a comfortable living in Germany, those donations need to be at least 40K € per year
Again I'm not trying to portray this as a viable replacement for your typical commercial developer employment today, but as something which can hopefully be a viable way to fund full-time open source developers in a not too far off future.
I'm not blaming you for being negative, up until the rather recent explosion of crowd-funding through ventures like Kickstarter I was not particularly hopeful myself even though I've donated to successful projects like Blender which is entirely running on donations.
But now, slowly seeing more and more open source projects find funding on overall project or specific feature basis aswell as new venues of funding showing up like that of Valve's donation program and even smaller scope funding like gittip, the concept seems very promising to me.
Again, YMMV
It is a stretch to even call CentOS a fork, and it is even more of a stretch to claim that Red Hat asks for donations. Red Hat charges for services, which include things like:
1. Maintaining binary packages so you do not have to try to track down dependencies by hand or subscribe to ten thousand mailing lists just to make sure your software is up to date.
2. Taking action when you file bug reports (how much you pay determines how fast that action is taken).
3. Sending people to your data center to help you get everything configured.
4. Get official ratings e.g. EAL4+, for those people who need their software to have such ratings.
Ubuntu
IIRC XChat / YChat is one off the top of my head
Not this ridiculous, childish argument again. Your personal issues have nothing to do with FOSS advocacy.
There are many people who are paid exclusively (and well) to write FOSS. There are many more who contribute back to the products they use. The FOSS economy is vast, but difficult to see, largely because so few people pay directly for it, but it makes possible things like Google, Facebook, most of the Top 500 supercomputers, Android phones, most network appliances and so on. The list is much larger than would fit here.
An Indie dev Bryan Lunduke, actually tried opensourcing his software and it didn't work.
If opensource is going to succeed, it can't just be driven by large corporations with tons of money.
So what is a viable model then? I build a kick-ass TODO list app or a casual game. I open source it. How do I make money from my efforts if I want to try and make this full time? This is not a service. I can't charge for support. Donations don't work. What else???
In terms of monetization, I believe hosted SaaS AGPL3 solutions where companies offer support and maintenance is a reasonably viable business model. I am reasonably sure that B2B "enterprise" sales could be AGPL3 without significantly impinging upon cash flow. Generally it seems that enterprises are buying business solutions, not software; they are paying for the assurance that stuff works.
This is the main reason why after a period on my life, where I was a strong FOSS advocate, nowadays I don't care that much what license a software has. I was anyway already living from coding, before discovering the FSF back in 1994.
It is easy to be a FOSS advocate when still living at the parent's home or as an university student. The problem starts when you want to make a living out of it.
That is why in the end, most desktop software is closed source and the majority of FOSS friendly companies that sell software, have moved it behind a SaaS paywall.
Still one can see how few people are willing to support FOSS developers, when looking at how much money they donate, or how quick someone comes up with a fork when money is asked for.