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Open Source Funding Debate

The cluster discusses the sustainability of free and open source software development, debating whether users should pay developers despite software being free, and exploring philosophies like GNU's stance on selling free software.

📉 Falling 0.5x Open Source
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Top Contributors

pjmlp (118) api (34) icebraining (24) davidw (22) phkahler (19)

Keywords

MS e.g IMHO FOSS OSS IMPLIED VLC AI UX HN software free free software open source pay software free source open foss money

Sample Comments

fsflover • Sep 16, 2020 • View on HN

No one suggests to stop paying for software development. A lot of people develop free software for money.See also: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.htmlSee also: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html"I consider selling excepti

dustingetz • Oct 15, 2020 • View on HN

Why bother to build awesome free software that works when you can charge 8, 9, 10 figures and deliver nothing

spullara • Jan 14, 2026 • View on HN

If you don't want to give your software away for free, don't give your software away for free. When they decide it is in their best interest to pay for it they will, i.e. support, bug fixes, changes. If you make open source software that just works they are unlikely to start writing checks nor should there be any expectation that they do that.

snarfy • Dec 9, 2014 • View on HN

It's a free software problem. Software would be funded if it was paid for.

trashburger • Jun 8, 2024 • View on HN

Absolutely not, and there are two reasons:1) Someone paying for my product means that they now expect support and maintenance for me. When I release my software under a Free license, I release it "AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED", which I think is the best part of Free Software. You are responsible for using my software.2) As soon as you start accepting compensation for your project, you now have to deal with a whole bunch of legal overhead, taxes e

rms_returns • Jan 6, 2016 • View on HN

Why should they pay for using something that is free and open source?

josh_fyi • Nov 16, 2015 • View on HN

Do good developers want to work for free in non-free software?

humanistbot • Dec 18, 2021 • View on HN

On behalf of open source software developers, go pay for commercial software yourself.

shmerl • Jun 10, 2018 • View on HN

This logic is flawed. FOSS software doesn't need to equal software that no one pays for. You want to support FOSS development? There are tons of projects which take financial support, feel free to contribute. You can also support companies which directly work on developing FOSS.

jiggy2011 • Jul 21, 2012 • View on HN

Open source is a sustainable way of making software a zero money cost though. The contract is basically that they allow you to use the software on the basis that you might give some value back in the form of patches, bug reports or even just asking intelligent questions on their forum or paying for commercial support. Even if you don't they don't really lose anything.A huge amount of OSS is fairly "developer facing" too, with possible exceptions of stuff like firefox of VLC (few people