Hi, I've collected many monetization approaches in the "Awesome OSS Monetization" list on Github - maybe it helps you to find alternatives to donations / sponsorships:
I don't know of an example but you should talk to a license lawyer and create a new license. Basically it's similar to "normal" Dual-licenses that say the code is GPL but you can buy a MIT license from the maintainer. In this new case either the license would state that the rights are the same as GPL until the company goes out of business (and then it would switch to MIT)
Your case sounds like you could apply an Open SaaS with an AGPL License or create an OpenCore and service special functionality in your SaaS.
If the only concern of your customers is that you could have to close the company and they don't have the code/system anymore, you could create a special (Dual-)License that is GPL as long as your company exists but becomes MIT if you close your company.
I think the project has to have the funding already via donations or sponsoring - they state they can employ people "If your project has a sufficient amount of funding".
> As for the other submission, I didn't find the slightest indication that the submitter did anything wrong. If you posted your URL to another site, perhaps they saw it there and thought HN might find it interesting? Alternatively, perhaps they had 'showdead' turned on in their profile, saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33383563 and thought it might do better with a different title? There are lots of ways that post could have been made legitimately.
If it is possible to show "dead" posts by anyone who then get "inspired" and re-post them, this could be an explanation. However, the policy of not notifying accounts that they are "banned" but their posts are still posted is a bit odd. What is the reasoning and "long game"? Can an account be un-banned or are the posts only stored and forgotten?
> It's also not clear what the alternative hypothesis is - what are they supposed to have done that wasn't legitimate? I looked at a bunch of their submissions and none of the links had been previously submitted to HN, so this isn't happening routinely.
Well, I assumed that only internal HN staff could hide and view posts, and that looked a bit suspicious - especially if the "hi-jacking" accounts are posting 24/7.
> All of your posts with that account were about one thing, which happens to be the same thing your company is selling. That's using questions as a promotional device, not asking questions out of intellectual curiosity. This was obvious enough that users emailed to complain about it.
Just because I'm interested in a specific topic does not mean that I'm "not asking questions out of intellectual curiosity". I wanted to start discussions about those topics - and if that's not allowed wouldn't that mean that nobody from Google may ask about search algorithms or nobody from YCombinator mask ask about Startups?
Thanks for the feedback - that explains the first part, although I'm not sure why asking questions every few days on a topic is promotion or spamming (other accounts post several links per hours).
However, just as I mentioned in a deleted thread started by Tomte, that "somebody else got lucky" would be a very very big coincidence - the project is roughly 3 months old and wasn't mentioned recently. That someone decides - exactly at the same time - to share the link is very strange.
Thanks for the tip. But even then "somebody else got lucky" would be a very very big coincidence - the project is roughly 3 months old and wasn't mentioned recently. That someone decides - exactly at the same time - to share the link is very strange.
The problem is not that someone postet the link - the problem is that the original link/post was hidden and exactly 1 hour later someone else postet it.
That might be right for side-project in the beginning but what happens when they grow and thousands or even millions use them? There might come a point when you have too much work and not enough time to fix the bugs or develop new feature requests.
As far as I understood tea.xyz it uses a DAO contract to "bill" every download/install by the user. If you don't pay (in tokens) you won't get the package.
So the blockchain approach has a mechanism already in place that will support the payment.
Slave labor is a little harsh as open source developers act on their own free will but I understand that it is a little loveless that some companies make billions without giving back.
Making issues private (behind a paywall) is probable the new approach of Github with their "sponsors-only repositories". However this will probably cause more closed-source where the community cannot contribute bugs or feature requests.
Do you mean approaches like tea.xyz by Max Howell (https://medium.com/teaxyz/tea-brew-478a9e736638)? It looks interesting but I'm unclear if project maintainers would monetize or only the package manager cli.
Yes the initial drive is probably always to solve a problem or make something cool. However, I often get the feedback that some projects get overwhelmed with feature or bugfix requests and loose the fun of it. Having the opportunity to live from their project - and maybe even goin full-time - would be a great option for some.
You're right that the question alone might be misleading. I mean every company using your open source package in their development not only FANG etc. The local pizza shop might be using OSS but probably does not have a dev team of their own (they either use a SaaS or have freelancers for their website).
You are right but we want to generate traffic first before we can state any numbers on views or change the pricing to impression-based (This is a launch - we are not an older Startup).
However, other channels such as Job Boards are typically also not giving promises on the number of candidates / applicants.