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0 pointsakdev1l1y ago0 comments

There’s literally nothing in any open source software license that stops the author from getting paid.

It is literally one of the fundamental freedoms mentioned by Richard Stallman. Freedom to sell the software.

AGPL just closes the cloud service loop where someone can take your code, modify it and deploy it and offer it as a cloud service. As they’re not technically “distributing” the modifications they wouldn’t be required to release their changes by regular GPL but they would by AGPL.

IANAL

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lurkshark1y ago

This comes up occasionally and while it’s 100% true FOSS doesn’t mean you can’t get paid, any sufficiently big project is going to get folks repackaging it without the payment component.

A good example is for-sale Wordpress plugins. There are entire sites/communities for using the FOSS license to take those for-sale plugins and redistributing them for free. The RedHat debacle is another example although with some more nuance. Standard Notes had a similar situation.

It looks like the FUTO license is trying to prevent someone from stripping the payment features and redistributing. Personally I prefer when folks use a FOSS license but I think the “you can get paid for FOSS” argument is overly optimistic.

lrvick1y ago

As someone that runs a profitable FOSS business, you can indeed get paid well for FOSS. Just be better than the status quo by a lot. Thankfully it is a low bar.

lurkshark1y ago

I took a look at your bio but after a glance (forgive me if I’m missing something obvious) it looks like you do consulting but I don’t see FOSS for sale. I’m curious what your project is if it’s something else, but if it’s consulting that makes sense. Consulting doesn’t really work for a lot of categories of software though. Like nobody is going to pay FUTO for consulting on following YouTubers.

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apex_sloth1y ago

Would you like to elaborate on how you run your FOSS buissness? What makes your approach different than the numerous company's that struggle with it

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsakdev1l1y ago0 comments

There’s literally nothing in any open source software license that stops the author from getting paid.

It is literally one of the fundamental freedoms mentioned by Richard Stallman. Freedom to sell the software.

IANAL

0 comments

lurkshark1y ago

This comes up occasionally and while it’s 100% true FOSS doesn’t mean you can’t get paid, any sufficiently big project is going to get folks repackaging it without the payment component.

lrvick1y ago

As someone that runs a profitable FOSS business, you can indeed get paid well for FOSS. Just be better than the status quo by a lot. Thankfully it is a low bar.

lurkshark1y ago

1 more reply

apex_sloth1y ago

Would you like to elaborate on how you run your FOSS buissness? What makes your approach different than the numerous company's that struggle with it

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse