R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:
I remember hearing rms say that he paid the rent for several years by selling tapes of EMACS to people by mail.
With all FOSS projects being online, that's no longer a possibility.
I know it wouldn't be truly Free, but I'm wondering if something like CC BY-NC would be beneficial, or if people just need to be better at marketing themselves.
Benjamin Hollon
@RL_Dane @cobra @alcinnz @dheadshot
As the COMM major my tendency is to lean toward being good at marketing yourself. ;)
Here's the thing about licensing: for someone starting out in a field like writing or coding freelance, the concern is less that people will pirate your work or make it proprietary and more that they'll never run into it at all because your license was restrictive and people weren't sharing it.
...
Benjamin Hollon
@RL_Dane @cobra @alcinnz @dheadshot
...
My personal tendency is to lean toward putting things out there for free with permissive licenses to get yourself known, then to try and make some money off of your newfound popularity, prehaps by selling a service like hosting for a FOSS project you made.
Benjamin Hollon
@RL_Dane @cobra @alcinnz @dheadshot
I still wouldn't use it for a business on the off-chance that my business would grow with a central dependency that I now can't use under the license I had.
Honestly I don't know that I'd use anything for a business of mine that had any terms restricting whether you can profit off of it. I respect that license, but if you don't want me making money, I won't use it for endeavours aimed at me making money.
R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:
@benjaminhollon @cobra @alcinnz @dheadshot
That makes sense, I submitted an issue to a project because they were using a fairly not-well-thought-out custom license. They listened and changed it to MIT, iirc.
But that was my reasoning: you're hurting adoption by not using a recognizable license.
What about a non-commercial-above-100-employees license? ;)
Paul SomeoneElse
@RL_Dane @cobra @alcinnz @dheadshot this is just another capitalism problem. universal healthcare for example would do a lot more for promoting people writing free software than, coming up with weird ways to pay people to make something that is free.
jollyrogue
@pkw UBI would help too. Not having to monetize every minute of the day leads to some really cool things.
jollyrogue
@benjaminhollon Ah, “I’m giving you exposure and that’s more valuable then money” line.
Don’t do anything for free, if you want to make a career out of whatever. If your work is valuable to someone, make them pay.
That mindset is a problem with FOSS. It’s disingenuous. “I’m going to get people hooked, and start charging” is a very cynical attitude.
People who want to opt out of capitalism should have the option to opt out.
Benjamin Hollon
@jollyrogue @RL_Dane @cobra @alcinnz @dheadshot
I agree with the sentiment of not doing anything for free that you hope to make a living off of it, but I do think that Writing is a slight exception. I just have to be careful about *what* I make available for free.
jollyrogue
@benjaminhollon There are shades to everything. Writing press releases for your local ASPCA for free is different then a very successful bakery.
Writing about hobbies because you like them is a different category.
People can do things because they like doing them.
jollyrogue
@benjaminhollon License really doesn’t matter. People aside from lawyers don’t look at licenses. They use it, share it, and move on with their day. Restrictive, permissive it doesn’t matter. Which is why a non-commercial license wouldn’t affect anyone.
Unless it’s a unicorn project like curl, which is very rare, people are probably going to get hired to work on something else. Most likely proprietary.
Adrian Cochrane
@jollyrogue @benjaminhollon @RL_Dane @cobra @dheadshot Some people get awefully opinionated about licensing, but while I have a preference for (A)GPL I'd rather not fixate on them.
There's numerous other factors which don't get the attention they deserve!
LisPi
@benjaminhollon @RL_Dane @cobra @alcinnz @dheadshot And here comes the funding option of selling GPL exceptions.
jollyrogue
@lispi314 Which is why people shouldn’t sign CLAs.
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