GitRoyalty–The First Open Source Paywall | Hacker News Reader

GitRoyalty–The First Open Source Paywall

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5 pointsdubcanada6 comments

Interesting decision -- make users to pay for the configuration scripts so their language ecosystem installer works. Basically they pay for their laziness of setting up such a file on their own.

I like the honesty that "pirating" projects is really easy and not even tried to deny.

Thank you ktpsns! You're exactly right, anyone can create free forks after accessing the complete repository once, but that becomes a security risk as new versions are released with bug fixes, security updates, etc.

I think paying a small subscription fee as little as $0.50/month for the convenience of not having to make free forks over and over again is worth it, especially for tech businesses that can usually afford it.

Oh, that was not even my point. You are talking about the possibility of passing data after having paid. I think there is no way to prevent people from doing so -- the industry has decades of years experience with pirated licensed software. So you better don't waste your time for implementing "preventing forks" on your platform --- if I pay on your platform for getting access to a repo which I can clone on my computer, I will push my copy to some other remote, of course.

While this is pretty ingenious, and "solving" open source funding is a noble goal, there's a pretty practical impediment to GitRoyalty working in the real world: For new or existing projects, a big draw of open source is the on-boarding process.. You can download, install, and start playing with a library or application to see if it meets your needs with almost zero friction. And that's a big part of the selection process for any new project.

But with GitRoyalty, you can't even install the software to see if you want to use it or take a dependency on it.. without at minimum ponying up a credit card and signing up for a free trial.

My take is that this roadblock will turn away new users in sufficient numbers that it'll hurt projects with this paywall in place. Users will leave in droves for competing projects with less install friction. Not because they don't believe in paying, but because they don't know if they want to pay yet.

The projects that can afford to turn away users like this are the well-known ones with big-name maintainers, corporate sponsors, and thousands of GitHub stars. But these also happen to be the projects least in need of funding.

As difficult as it is to implement, a better place for a paywall would be after the user has installed the software, evaluated it, and decided to roll it out in production. That would bring the payment closer to the point of value, and also keep the on-boarding friction nice and low.

> without at minimum ponying up a credit card and signing up for a free trial

You're right, there's a bit more friction before you can install and use a project, but I think if a user gives enough value to a certain open source project then that friction shouldn't be enough to deter them from using it altogether.

It's also worth mentioning that once you input credit card information and connect your paypal account, you never have to do it again for future subscriptions. You just go to a payment page, hit 'Subscribe' and install the package, all in a matter of seconds.

Here's a bit more information about how subscriptions work: https://gitroyalty.com/docs/faq/how-do-subscriptions-work

Yup, totally understood about the second subscription. The challenge is getting that first subscription though, when a particular user hasn't yet signed up for (or even heard of) the service. At that point, it's a fair amount of friction from where I'm sitting.

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