> I simply didn’t feel right getting that amount of value for free from two projects which are run by very small teams, so I approached both and convinced them to sell me an enterprise license to their project. It is equivalent to the usual OSS license, except it comes with an invoice.
That's really cool of you, patio11! Most open source stuff I've worked on... I'm happy if I get a "thanks!" from time to time. Sure, it has other benefits, and I wouldn't be where I am today without open source, but handing out some actual cash is very classy.
I wonder if more companies would really consider doing this, though - handing over money that you don't have to is not something I've seen a lot of. I've worked for people who don't even want to let the world they're using various bits of open source software, let alone contribute back anything.
Also, there is a concern that money can really change the dynamics of a community, but by and large, I'd rather see a lot more money funneled to open source than there currently is. For instance:
Convincing businesses to pay for OSS is a frustrating problem. I built a gem[1] that has had almost 5000 downloads, 89 since Monday night (rough proxy for production users), related to payments. Exactly zero people have had any interest in paying for the commercial license I offer, even though the gem is directly related to payments.
The pro offering is probably not quite where it needs to be, but to have zero interest at all is pretty discouraging.
Off topic: This is literally the first gem/package/piece of software I've seen distributed in this way that has sales tax attached to it for residents of a certain state. Is there some Michigan law pertaining to sales tax on software?
My business offers in consultancy-based software development so we are not bound by my state's sales taxes, I was just curious if Michigan has a software-specific law.
It's terrible. I'm a resident of Michigan and so I have to remit sales tax on "packaged software". The rules for what constitutes "packaged software" recently got changed to include anything downloadable. SaaS is specifically excluded, of course.
And that just covers the very specific case of giving an existing project money, and does not cover things like Jetbrains' program that gives free licenses for open source work, Google's Summer of Code program, and various organizations contributing code back to an OSS project.
That's really cool of you, patio11! Most open source stuff I've worked on... I'm happy if I get a "thanks!" from time to time. Sure, it has other benefits, and I wouldn't be where I am today without open source, but handing out some actual cash is very classy.
I wonder if more companies would really consider doing this, though - handing over money that you don't have to is not something I've seen a lot of. I've worked for people who don't even want to let the world they're using various bits of open source software, let alone contribute back anything.
Also, there is a concern that money can really change the dynamics of a community, but by and large, I'd rather see a lot more money funneled to open source than there currently is. For instance:
https://twitter.com/antirez/status/557851219088375808