this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
174 points (90.7% liked)

Open Source

31394 readers
206 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

TLDR: Companies should be required to pay developers for any open source software they use.

He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they'd fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that's usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.

It's an interesting concept, but I don't really see any feasible means to get this to kick off.

What are your thoughts on it?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] actual_patience 2 points 11 months ago

they only use Linux because it's free. Companies create hardware on Linux because it's free

Companies use open source software because it's the cheapest option. It's all about margins.

Nearly all of FOSS is funded by corporations whether you like it or not

Yes, and FOSS can get a lot more funding if they charged companies even a little bit.

So as long as it's cheaper to pay a fee to continue to use an open-source software than it is to hire a group of developers to produce and maintain the same thing, the idea is viable.