The free and open source software world need much discussions on this “open vs free (as in bier)” dichotomy...
I dream of a world where lot of indie open source developers are actually paid for their work by something else than Google or Facebook!
I dream of a world where lot of indie open source developers are actually paid for their work by something else than Google or Facebook!
In my vision people pay for packaged software, such as a packaged deb or rpm or whatever format consumers want to buy. They get access to the sources too, and can build themselves if that’s what they want.
I would really like to be able to buy services for my raspberry pi for example, knowing that I will get a packaged software that is maintained and tested. I have no issues to setup stuff myself, but if I can have for example a media player that I can buy and install via an APT equivalent, I would be quite happy. I find it really weird that I never had to pay for VLC given the amount of time I spent using it (I list it in my top 3 softwares of all time).
Also I want to be able to spend my time creating and selling tools and services that people can easily shop for and install.
Basically steam, but not for command line and services.
I find it really strange that we expect open source software to be free and have developers asking for donations instead of having more standard market dynamics. We don’t have this for games, or arts, or anything else that I’m aware of.
I know I can donate, I’ve done it multiple time. But I don’t think that make sense.