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Open source maintenance fee (opensourcemaintenancefee.org)
submitted 1 week ago by qaz@lemmy.world to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

I saw this some time ago and wasn't really sure how to feel about it. On one hand it's good to make corporations compensate maintainers, but I also don't want to be forced to ask for a fee because my project uses another project that uses this.

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[-] bruce965@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Fair enough, but then it's the same thing as open-sourcing the code but not providing support nor binaries.

I mean, personally I also prefer it to FUTO's proprietary license, that's for sure. But I'm one of the few privileged users who can build from source.

If this license doesn't impose any extra restrictions on the code (and as you say, anyone can fork and provide prebuilt binaries), then this would just increase the risk of spreading malware, with no real benefits for the original developers.

In my opinion, if you want to monetize your software without going proprietary, all you have to do is provide the users a convenient way to get it. There are some paid FOSS apps on Google Play, as well as some paid FOSS games on Steam. You don't want to distribute binaries? Fine, okay, that's alright and I respect your choice. You don't want to provide support to non-paying users? Fine, that's very reasonable in my opinion. But...

...do you want to impose extra restrictions on your code? Fine to me, but then you are no longer doing open source, don't try to pretend you are. And if you are not imposing any restrictions on the code then you are imho just going to hurt small users. We shouldn't fight small users imho, we should fight the big corporations exploiting FOSS code for their proprietary businesses. But if there are no extra restrictions on the code, then big corporations wouldn't care.

That's my opinion.

[-] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

But I’m one of the few privileged users who can build from source.

There are avenues available for less-privileged users to obtain builds of free software projects (e.g. GNU/Linux distributions, F-Droid, and so on).

[-] bruce965@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

Then what's even is the point of this license? There will always be a third party distributing unofficial binaries.

And if this license forbade third parties to redistribute binaries, then it would no longer really be FOSS.

this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
105 points (94.1% liked)

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