> > What if commercial users neglect to pay? Who will stand up for the project maintainers?
> Software developers who work for commercial entities want to pay for well maintained source available software. They understand that the situation is precarious because open source developers largely go unpaid. They also can't easily justify donations or charitable sponsorship when they work at for-profit companies.
I think this misses the issue. The issue isn't the will to pay/donate to people it's the bureaucracy of the pay companies pay for things.
If I took the output in your example in the repo (even nicely formatted in a csv with `Bob,$20,bob@paypal`) to my finance team they'd laugh me out of the room. They need Invoices/POs, they don't just send money to people's Paypal, and they definitely won't be paying anyone in BTC.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea. It just isn't going to work for 99.99% of companies. Perhaps some combination of OpenFare and something like the article mentions could work but that's a lot of plumbing and kind of kingmakes whoever is in charge of generating those invoices and processes the payments.
Ironically I could see someone like MS/AWS being able to have the resources, if not the will to do this.
Honestly, your comment is the most useful I've had so far.
I agree with what you've said. I don't expect any company to pay anyone with PayPal, BTC (or even lightning, can you imagine!), but I want to leave the door open for that.
Proper invoicing is key. And I think I can avoid the "kingmakes" problem you've mentioned.
The longer term view that I have includes a payment portal service. A company would submit a report (via the openfare tool) of the OpenFare licensed dependencies that they use. The service will then invoice them and facilitate a single lump sum charge via Stripe (credit card) or similar. Then forward to the developers or refund.
I think I can avoid the "kingmakes" problem because of the following: anyone could start a OpenFare payment portal. The OpenFare licensed dependencies report could be sent to anyone.
> > What if commercial users neglect to pay? Who will stand up for the project maintainers?
> Software developers who work for commercial entities want to pay for well maintained source available software. They understand that the situation is precarious because open source developers largely go unpaid. They also can't easily justify donations or charitable sponsorship when they work at for-profit companies.
I think this misses the issue. The issue isn't the will to pay/donate to people it's the bureaucracy of the pay companies pay for things.
If I took the output in your example in the repo (even nicely formatted in a csv with `Bob,$20,bob@paypal`) to my finance team they'd laugh me out of the room. They need Invoices/POs, they don't just send money to people's Paypal, and they definitely won't be paying anyone in BTC.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea. It just isn't going to work for 99.99% of companies. Perhaps some combination of OpenFare and something like the article mentions could work but that's a lot of plumbing and kind of kingmakes whoever is in charge of generating those invoices and processes the payments.
Ironically I could see someone like MS/AWS being able to have the resources, if not the will to do this.