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How Do You Fund an OpenSource Project? 109

Posted by Cliff from the stuff-to-know dept.
Stuart Herbert asks: "I maintain Generic NQS, a successful, and long-standing, GPL'd project. I'd love to be able to work on this project (or perhaps other GPL'd stuff) as the day job (who wouldn't? ;-) but to do that I need to find funding from somewhere. I'm wondering how many Slashdot readers have been successful in achieving this holy grail without having to setup a company themselves to sell the product, and how they did it. "
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How Do You Fund an OpenSource Project? More

How Do You Fund an OpenSource Project?

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  • Re:Dual License -- is this legal? - YES (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you are the author of the code then you can do what you want with it.

    There is nothing in teh GPL to prevent you from releasing a free-of-charge version of the stuff under GPL, and also releaing a chargeable version under a different license.

    Of course, you have to ask yourself who in thier right mind is going to be so mindnumbingly stupid as to pay for something when you get the same thing for free, but that's open source for you - kills the ability to make money out of your own efforts.

  • The copyright holder is not bound by the GPL. The GPL only binds others. So the copyright holder can release the code under any terms and conditions s/he chooses, including different licenses for different purposes.

    However, there's a catch to all this. If you release code under the GPL, then any modifications to it are also GPL. This means that you cannot take changes that other people make and relicense them under a proprietary license. So you either have to refrain from using changes others make, unless you get their permission (they hold copyright to their code, and it's under the GPL, so you're bound WRT their code), or you use a license like the MPL (which as I understand it is designed for this situation). However, the free software community seems less eager to contribute to MPL projects than GPL (understandable, because they're giving someone else the right to use their code in a proprietary product).

  • One thing you can do is follow the model of RedHat & O'reilly - sell non-source services and products such as priority support and documentation. This is what I've tried to do with News Clipper [newsclipper.com].

    A word of warning, however: your community may take the view that "the company will fix it", resulting in less code contributions. Likewise, your community may not want to contribute if it may result in money going into your pocket. Purists may also stop contributing because the documentation isn't free.

    Nurturing a developer community for an open source project is a delicate matter. :)
    ---------------------------------------------- ---------
  • Given that:
    • Lots of money has and is going to be made in the Linux market
    • That people and corporations are making money on the backs of the good people who have produced code for free under the GPL (in many cases)
    • The capitalization of Linux will be and has been very good for it
    I feel that it is the responsibility of people and corporations who are ALREADY making money in the Linux market to find innovative ways of supporting those who have put them in a position to do so.

    I struggled with this one personally recently, so I've spent some time thinking about it. I wanted to carry a line of digital cameras on my Linux electronic commerce site [canux.com] and realized that the only reason I was able to sell them at all to the Linux market was that some nice people [gphoto.org] had created GPLed software for them.

    So what to do? If I rolled some kind of dontation into the price of the software, and then kicked that back to gPhoto, I'd lose business as my prices would be higher and people would go elsewhere. I could just make a single donation to the group but without knowing how many cameras I would sell as a result of their software, putting a price on that donation was almost impossible. Plus doing that would still up the price of the cameras unless I ate it somewhere else.

    So I started the Canux OSS Support Program. Customers who are in the process of purchasing an Epson digital camera can simply click on a link and add the "donation" item to their shopping basket! This does three important things:

    • The camera owner ends up supporting the group that provided the software in the first place - and feels good about doing so
    • I eat the merchant transaction costs and do the sales part of the job - and feel that I'm contributing
    • The OSS team (gPhoto) gets funding, can buy equipment, and in turn produces even better software.
    So far I've only done this with the gPhoto group (a test case). When I approached them about it they were very appreciative and thought it was a wonderful idea.

    I understand that this kind of thing only works for certain types of OSS, and that many of the larger projects have already found innovative ways of getting funding. Still, I have to wonder if people were given some kind of convenient way of supporting the OSS groups they cared about, would they??

    I think they would, but I'm an optimist. I'll keep you posted...

  • Yeah, but it rather implies that the supposed IT people have little faith in any version after b3 ;)
  • Thanks for your comment.

    You said:

    "As I see it, the real key would be selling the packaged software and and then selling support contracts for your GPL'ed software. Selling the packaged software means that people get the software in a pretty package with an introductory manual."

    If I am not mistaken, once a software is GPLed, _anyone_ can package the software in a CD and sell it, right? Just like cheapbytes.com sells various Linux distros, and sell them at a very cheap price, what advantage there is left for the producer of the GPL software if someone-else can sell your software packages at a better price point than you can?

    Manual for GPLed software is kinda risky, since GPLed software, by its nature, evolves CONSTANTLY, and printed manuals gets outdated _very_ fast, and electronic form of "man" pages for GPLed softwares are, AFAIK, treated as GPLed too.

    That is to say, anyone can download the e-forms of manual, and as far as I see, that only leaves "SUPPORT" as the only option where a company producing GPLed software can hope to make _some_ money to cover the various expenses.

    Has there been any successful GPLed software company - other than those like RedHat and such that goes by IPO, and those supported by venture capitalists - that lasted 3 years without needing IPO and/or the involvement of venture capitalists?

    If so there are such companies, can anyone please point me to the place where I can read about their experience, and perhaps I can learn something from them.

    Thanks again !


  • So, basically, when I submit a patch to a dual-licenced application, and I don't want my patch incorporated in the closed-source fork, I should claim copyright on my patch, and release it under the GPL?

    Such as:

    /* foo.c - (c) 2000 Original Author
    released under the GPL
    Changes (c) 2000 Joe Patcher
    Changes released under the GPL
    */

  • Begging ? heheh... talk about freedom, thank you, I think market economy solves this problem quite nicely and , you know what, not even your beloved RMS can change the basic laws of economy...
  • Yes, I (or someone else) intends to implement on-line ordering for the FSF. If you can convince my employer that it's in their self-interest to let me go to Boston and do this for a few months, we could have it soon :-)
  • As far as I know the original author(s) or copyright holder(s) of some licensed code are always free to change the license. The license itself cannot alter that fact. However, this does not mean that the copyright holder(s) can change the licensing of the code that some person has in its possession already under the original license. So some project can suddenly change licensing if the copyright holders agree to that but then users using the original code under the original license cannot be forced to use the new license. But they'll have to follow the new license if they want to keep in touch with the main distribution which has moved to another license.

    Keep in mind that licensing is designed to allow 'owners' of software or copyright holders (or whatever) to give rights to other people for using their software. It still remains their software and they can choose to relicence the code or even make it propriatary at some point.

    A good example is Mesa which was GPL originally but was changed later on to an XFree license I believe.

    Greetings,
  • You couldn't make it more sound. The reasons Craig lists are more than sufficent for his decision. I'd shred every fortran document in my library and rm -rf ~/devel/g77 :)

    g77 is a big piece of software. It implements a standard, and it tries to be portable, efficient, etc. Let's see, you would be following GNU standards, and Cygnus would probably not pay you for that ;)

    Really, no free F90, or F95 soon. So forget about HPF! Though, a High Performance Fortan would be the killer piece of free software. But I *wonder* if anyone in the free software community would be willing to implement procesor mapping schemes, load balancing via graph partitioning and all those goodies in HPF.

    I suppose the only way to support a "major" tool would be through some dedicated organization or company. How is Ada Core Technologies progressing? That's one example that RMS gives. Their business model had seemed quite effective to me, perhaps it can be done more often.

    Another solution would be some sort of funding granted to "individuals" as it occurs in the world of science. I would forcefully argue that better quality can be attained by providing equivalent resources to independent groups/researches. Most of the stuff developed at the University is incompetent, badly designed, awkwardly implemented software. Even at CS departments.

    In fact, most universities seem to me as mirror images of big corporations, well they *are* big corporations anyway. So, the claims of free software are valid there. If only there was an eligible way to make sure of one's skills, then he could be contracted for development of certain software which would be released under an open license.

    I suppose it could work out. It's early for that, though. Indeed, an Open Science idea has been going on among both scientists and free software community. Proper advocacy could make that a reality.

  • I've recently left all other tasks, and decided to work almost full time (since I'm lazy) on free software. At the moment I've got 3 personal projects (compilation sys+foundation lib, medical comms lib [DICOM3.0], volume vis. ala volpack) that I want to "free", but I thought that I could take advantage of the Bazaar.

    That's why I went straight to places such as cosource [cosource.com], and source exchange [sourcexchange.com] which seemed to employ the idea of Bazaar as mentioned in ESR's papers. However, the lack of interest turned me down a bit. I found some projects that I could do, but the payback seemed so unpromising contrasted to the amount of work awaiting that I had to hesitate.

    Is the Bazaar really working only for the most famous, like Miguel de Icaza [who came up as the lead coder of the better Windows look-alike, no flames :), ah and a half-functional spreadsheet app ;) ], or ESR because he thought open source was a jolly good idea, and as the maintainer of slightly arrogant "Jargon File"? Just being skeptical here.

    It might just be that it's not OSS and Bazaar which ESR takes it to be, but rather voluntarily and charity work for the benefit of all as RMS puts it. Then, we wouldn't be hoping for wealth or fame some developers and some advocates did get. We would simply not be asking for it.

    Of course, let's be skeptical about this, too. I'm personally unaware of anyone who would like to write an OS as an Anonymous Coward. That's where being impersonal starts to break. People deserve some sort of credit for what they've done.

    To sum up, there's a sort of uncertainty about the success of true "Bazaar" like communitys. We're going to have to see if "sponsors" and "developers" are really going to be matched. If it turns out to be like that, I'm going to be among the happy ones. However, the "free software" approach may be more realistic, and asking for companies and people to join the cause of "free software" may be the right way to earn from software as we like it.

  • So that's not about freedom which you're talking about. Sure, let's rip off some poor hackers and make them work for nothing, convincing that they're really doing free software, and then let's package it and sell it, since they wouldn't have the money to sell it as a commercial product. Wohoo, stupid coders! Great capitalist innovation, right? HOWTO-take-advantage-of-hackers. Great.

    Free workers, ha? Like "3rd world cheap work force?"

    BTW, this is not why Linux or any significant piece of free software really exists.

    Free in the sense of "liber".

    .


  • This is offtopic, but whats the url to your book?
  • Actually, Ghostscript has been under a dual licensing arrangement for some time in a sense. The author actually uses a license whereby it is a non-commercial use with some other restrictions and then it automatically moves to the GPL after some period of time. My suggestion would be to find a customer or company that really wants to have the software out in the market and see if they will fund. Alternatively, a number of organizations including Prime Time Freeware have had long standing arrangements with development projects as well as a "slush fund" whereby customers can add a line item to their bill which is then donated to encourage free software development. -d
  • To extend this question further, what is the most effective approach for convincing one's management that releasing a specific work as OpenSource is a business savy thing to do? I work for a 50 year old organization that tends to be very fixed in its ways, and the old farts at the top are very entrenched in circa 1970/80 business styles. It is an uproad battle, especially since that /really/ don't understand the internet software environment.
  • heh. heh. welcome to the GPL. companies are basically arseholes who are out to make money and wouldnt compensate you the money unless you ordered em to. i recommend you just GPL it rathe4r than try and make money of it..it will get you nowhere. its best to work for a company and release GPLed software on the side. works nicely for everyone and thats what i do.

  • in your spare time, come up with a great web site that generates thousand of hits every day and just wait for Andover.net [andover.net] to buy you out.

  • If you run an Open Source project and you don't get contributed code assigned to you (and then forward it to RMS) then you DO NOT own that code. You do not have rights to distribute that code.

    The first sentence is true (but what's with the RMS reference??? What have you been smoking?). The second one is false. Open Source licenses explictly give you the right to distribute open-sourced code, under certain conditions, without getting any further permission.

    Okay, there might be some risk of contamination, but if we all tried to lead a zero-risk lifestyle we'd never cross the street.

  • What are you saying? You mean people have tech jobs AND can have a life? At the same time? No,stop it! You are killing me! Where do I sign up?

    Well, my break is over - back to the grind.
  • The first thing you do is ask:

    1) Who uses my software, and where does *their* paycheck come from?

    Then you ask:

    2) If I had the contact information for every commercial user of my software, what product/service could I sell them for $3500 that would save them $12,000?

    If you can answer #1, but not #2, then you need to find someone with business savvy, tell them your answer to #1, and see what they think.

    If you can't answer #1 either with a real answer, or with a reasonable assumption, then you're not going to be able to successfully manage a large, long-term project whose goal is to meet everyone's needs, not just yours.
  • I'll second this motion that the Bazaar isn't the be-all, end-all for OSS development. Take, as another example, g77.

    Craig decided it's not worth his while to continue to fix g77 full time because:
    a) He can't make any money at it
    b) It's no fun dealing with a bunch of @ssholes
    c) It's going to take a lot of effort
    [Craig, if this is too short a summary, I apologize]

    While there may be some folks who snicker and say who cares about F77 support, I think it speaks volumes about OSS. Fortran is still an important tool, and the OSS community can't even fund an F77 project, let alone set up an F90 or F95 project.

    For the Anonymous Coward who says "Use C", I'll take that as an offer to port 100k lines of F77 for free :)

  • I'm surprised no one seems to really be talking about university positions. From what I've seen, most universities are rather in favor of open source (to a point - they also recognize the value of patent licensing). You could go for a staff position, or a research position, or (if you are so qualified) some kind of faculty position.

    • Staff: Universities often have need for support for economical solutions (i.e., free) to interesting problems. One staff member I knew at Brown had developing an open source project as a major part of his job description - he developed Xmx - the X multiplexer. It snagged the X traffic from one workstation and rebroadcast it to a gazillon others (used in a classroom setting). I myself worked on educational software and research software, both of which were released open source.
    • Research Staff: Work on research problems is by necessity work on fairly interesting problems :-) Remember what the "B" stands for in BSD? Or the original domain for gnu (prep.ai.mit.edu)? You can find research labs around the world working on pretty much anything you're interested in.
    • Faculty: While it helps to have a Ph. D. to get a position as a professor, a position as a lecturer requires less in the way of teching credentials. You even have a cadre of slaves, er, students, to work on your open source project.

    I realize these won't be right for everyone, but they are alternatives, especially for people that aren't in Silicon Valley. Check out your nearby colleges and universities and see what's in the offering.

  • Hey.

    I also spent a lot of elementary school time in "studies," and it earned me a lot of picking-on. When I went into the Big Middle School in 5th grade, I rebelled against my former image and started hanging out with people. This was important in my life. I'm glad I took the vacation from worrying about the future - that's what being a kid is all about.

    But, soon I realized that the years are draining away. Now, I've picked my reference manuals back up and I'm programming again. I want to be a very good programmer, w/ all that $$, or mebbe even not. Computer programming is a very good skill to have.

    From what you say, it looks like you've been living your life day-to-day, and now sometimes you feel flashes of regret about this. Wanting to change is the first step. Feeling the want to change at a time that there's a book there, or the preliminary notes for a project, makes actually sitting down easy.

    Give in to your fears. Pick up a good programming book, or start a project, from where you left off. At 14, there's really nothing lost.

    And the child-prodigy-lost thing is nothing. Child prodigies get screwed over in the long-term. No one wants to deal w/ an employee with that screwed up of a view of life.

    P.S. I'm 15 now. Since I got re-interested in programming, a little over a year ago, I've learned just about every detail about how processors work, to program in asm, and much of how OS's operate. And I haven't exactly been dedicating/reserving time. Someone with a will to teach themselves can learn a lot faster than some tutored "prodigy" bastard, IMHO.
  • Re: GnuPG being funded by government - its not completely like this. The German government money came after the long - worked release 1.0, and the project would go without them. The money will pay Windows versions and plugins for various e-mail Win clients, not the core work (as far as I know and Werner states things to developers (anyway it was his reply when I asked If I'll have to localize windows versions also)).
    - alex
  • Not only can you do this, but you can have your own changes to 'GPL' code and NOT have to release your code.

    Example: Motorola has gcc, they have modified it and distribute it with the cell phone switch computers. They have paid FSF for the right to do this.

    The "problem" for your average GPL'ed program is this: No one person owns ALL the rights.
    Example: Linux. Linus, Donald, etc la all own the copywrite on thier code, and GPLed it. How do you get ALL the copywrite holders to *AGREE* to licence thier code for a special version?
    Example: GCC. If you produce a major modification, you have to sign over the rights to FSF. So FSF *owns* gcc.

    Hence they can re-licence gcc under any damn terms they want.

  • Ah, sorry. I guess I should have qualified my claim about when you write the software. I take it for granted that people know they don't hold the copyright when they are writing the software under the employ of somebody else *for* that legal entity. Of course, if these people write software themselves, on their own time, that doesn't relate to their employers' products, then they usually can keep copyright to that (this is always one of those key things to check for in an employment agreement... that your employer doesn't get to steal any ideas/coding you do for yourself on your own time). If that fails, you prolley have to get permission on a case-by-case basis from your employer before writing your own software outside of the realm of the company, if you want to avoid them claiming copyright to it.
  • If you write the software you hold the copyright. Thus you can license it any way you want. If you want two different classes of license, two slightly different code bases, fine. The only problem is if people submit code/patches, then those can only be folded back into the GPL fork, unless those people know and consent to the second license (perhaps you offer them a share of your profits based on the # of lines of their code that you use). The problems only arise when you have multiple copyright holders though.
  • Open some GotoWorld, AllAdvantage accounts and the like for your project.

    The only thing remaining is about trust...just lets everyone take a look at the cheques you receive.

    It always sound possible to me and I've suggested using it to fund the EFF. But now we're talking OSS projects, which we don't have to make a suggestion that adhere to anybody's (e.g. EFF's) policies...

    Why don't we do it? Oops...I forgot those bar stuffs are for Windows only...do it at work maybe...
  • I've met this really lucky guy who did something rather similar to what you are talking about... bare with me...

    He is not a developer (at least not any more) but a lawyer... He wanted to have an effect on society and CYBER law, but didnt want to be forced to pick sides, and or get involved with the BIG money. See the similarity? Well... he used to be a sysop (when he was 16) for compuserve... and im sure that his studies in AI involved some code.

    digression aside: HE STARTED HIS OWN INSTITUTE AT HARVARD.

    there... thats your solution

  • ...that little VB to GTK converter program that you wrote?

    Hey, you write a chat program, what can you expect? Everyone wants their own chat program, and it makes things so much easier if they can find it for free. They ignore the GPL and copy it, making a few stupid changes if any. I got a couple of things that I'm planning to finish and release and I am worried about whether or not they will be stolen by someone else. I suppose that if I get an "official" Freshmeat announcement about it, no one can steal it and get away with it for that long. That's my suggestion: make sure that you announce it on some prominant site.

    Ken

  • I'm 14 years old. I used to think I was going to have it easy. I thought I would easily get a high paying job, and never have to worry about bills. I started with a dream, and a vision. Now it's nothing. I have no creativity anymore, no movitation, except the money. I wake up every morning, I go to school, I come home, do whatever, hang out with friends, do my school work, go to sleep. I do this everyday. Somewhere within that "do whatever" I consider my future. ALL THE TIME. I'm always wondering where all the vision went. I no longer do the same computer work that I use to, now I am into electronics. Now I wonder how my future is going to end up. So much for that prodigy child guarantee to success(I'm 14). I invested $600 in Andover.Net at $71/share. Now it's at $31/share and it's lost hundreds of my money in value. I'm not complaining about my life, but I am expressing concerns that I think a lot of people feel: It isn't what it's cut out to be. I spent my entire elementary school life as a loner, worrying every single day about my own personal studies. I still do, except I hang out with friends, but now it's not about a vision, it's about making someone else happy. My fears grow worse every day, and I have to worry about all this on top of being a kid. Beleive it or not, the people who post here about these kinds of problems have it easy. This is the voice of a generation without the advantage you had. It's all been done on the Internet. My dreams are to shit, about as worthless as this very site to which I lost all my "venture capital". The technical revolution isn't great anymore. It's not what it was at the beginning.

    My apologies for this post, it's reality.
  • Counterpane has a paper out called Electronic Commerce and the Street Performer Protocol. http://www.counterpane.com/street_performer.html In abstract it suggests a protocol where private donors could place contributions in escrow until such a date as the proposed project is completed or dies from missed deadlines. If the project is released into the public domain, the payments go to the author, if not they return to the donors. The ad campaign on gwbush.com is operating on a similar premise. They buy anti-Bush ads as soon as enough money has been raised to pay for them. Very interesting stuff . . .
  • Heh, 'mindnumbingly stupid' applies many times to corporate purchasing decisions--I've seen plenty of instances in my line of work as an integrator.
    However, it is important to remember that when a company purchases a product from a vendor, they can choose to find the lowest price for the product, or they can pay a higher price for the product and get good support with it. We always tell our customers that they aren't just buying the product, but our company along with it. Sometimes, especially with custom software or software still in source form, the support of experienced engineers is a *necessity* to make it work.
    As such, GPL'd software does *not* kill the ability to make money from a product, as there will always be plenty of companies out there that /need/ to pay for it because they need the support they will get along with it.
  • I don't know anything particular about this situation, but since you posted on Slashdot...

    It sounds like YOUR company could benefit from at least subsidizing GNQS, thus directing Stuart's future development towards feature enhancements/bug fixes that matter to you.

    I think it's more likely that a company that uses the software will be helpful than one that hopes to sell it.

    Stuart, maybe you should look over your mailing lists and download logs for potential benefactors.
  • Then get paid for documentation. We all hate writing docs.. but there is money in it. Here is a easy way.. put toghter a small company that takes on serveral projects.. then as development procedes write docs/books hook up with a good publisher IE o'rielly and your done. You have a small software publishing house that has good steady income.
  • Re: what you were saying about the notion of releasing something under GPL and then under another commercial license for a fee... Is this actually allowed under the terms of the GPL??? I know I haven't read the actual text of the GPL in donkeys-years, but what does it actually say about changing the terms and conditions (i.e. licence) of a piece of software?

    ~me

  • Examples:

    The Quake source code. Recently released under the GPL. The readme specifically says that if you can't live with having to release your changes, a different license can be negotiatied (for $$$).

    Trolltech and QT. While this is not GPLed, it is released under QPL for free software development, and if you want to develop commercially you pay for the professional license.
  • Heh, mine alone should pay for your project, Linus' new ferrari, Bruce Perens new mansion with 14 car garage, ESR's new gun collection, etc ad spendium. :) Not the greatest rate, but not a bad one either. Sure starts up conversations quick when I pay for things with it.
    (Switched all of my accounts to this card...thats what you call putting your wallet where your mouth is when it comes to linux evangelization).
  • Plenty of open source coders are now getting paid.

    Perfect example is Alan Cox, without the likes of Alan a lot of us wouldn't have a solid OS. He is now in the employ of Red Hat UK but still does the same kernal hacking as always. Of course it can be done, we just have to trust the distrubuters of our products (red hat etc) to return to the comunity what they have taken.

    At the end of the day these companies need a saleble product and are willing to pay coders to get it, it dosn't matter that the software will eventully be GPL's etc just the salable product.

    Steve.
    wolves.lug.org.uk

  • Investing is a tough business. Consider Andover.net a lesson. I know it hurts now, but this could inspire you to learn more. At your age, you can redirect yourself towards just about anything. Try reading up on investments (Wall Street Journal, basic economics texts, etc...). You never know--you could end up managing mutual funds someday.

  • And this is the wierdest part of the whole situation. The people who want to pay to support asp2php aren't businesses, but people who want to see me continue with the project.

    I wouldn't feel right taking money unless you directly made money from it. This is why the original license that asked for money asked for money if it was used commercially. I've seen ASP applications that cost in the $50,000 range. I didn't see why a company making lots of money off the program couldn't spare $100 to pay for a license.

  • That could work, but funding without forming a company was part of the original goal. If no one wants to buy your documentation, you're screwed anyhow. I'm beginning to think that you have few options (asking for charity?), if you find yourself in the situation I had just presented. Unfortunately, I have found myself in said situation (and I know no one will pay for the docs), so I'll have to use the spare-time angle.
    ---
  • What nobody asks Slashdot:
    "How to start Open Source project to get money" ?
  • Why nobody asks Slashdot:
    "How to start Open Source project to get money" ?
  • I went to Byte and read this, and on 2 of the 4 pages of the article, there were banner ads for Win2K proclaiming how easy and integrate-able and reliable and stable it is. The ads had small movies on the right-hand side, interviewing supposed IT people. "We've been using Windows 2000 since Beta 3, and we haven't had to reboot our servers yet!" I wonder if this was accidental or if it was done intentionally (targeted advertising on MS's part?).
  • As the lead developer for the EJBoss project and the cofounder of Telkel, a company to offer services around the platform I can share our experience.

    securing seed to do the work on my own was the first step, next the real part is how to pay the contributing developers.

    We do so by giving stock of the company to the best developers in our group. In this fashion if we make money they make money. We also pay in hard cold cash the best.

    Marc Fleury

  • This is exactly the problem we are trying to solve with Cosource.com [cosource.com]. That is, how can you make a living writing free software?

    As we know, in traditional licensed software, you sink a large speculative R&D effort, protect the result with copyright (or patent) and then hope to recoup that investment (and turn a profit) by selling licenses of the software over time for some price. People who don't pay can't legally use the software.

    For software that satisfies the Open Source definition, copies are required to be free. So how can a developer ever hope to recoup the large sunk R&D expense?

    An answer is to gather together AHEAD OF TIME a group of motivated buyers (for whom the software solves an important problem) who commit to pay for a particular software application/feature/bugfix if someone succeeds in developing it. Upon completion, it can be released as open source and freely copied. The buyers must be types who don't worry about free riders -- their only concern must be that they want this software to exist to solve some problem/need they have.

    There needs to be a service to provide a legal framework to take these commitments, manage sucess/failure of the developer's effort, and then collect payments from the multiple buyers and pay the developer. It's a "market maker" role for open source software needs.

    That's what Cosource.com [cosource.com] does. Check it out!

    Bernie Thompson
    Founder, Cosource.com

  • You need to support oss (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you want to make money off of OSS the first thing that you need to do is support the projects that pay the developers. Do you use Debian? Unless you support the projects that channel their funds directly back to the develpment community, you are the reason good projects are going unfunded. You post questions to Slashdot a million dollar website. Where is the open source alternative? A news website with a paid staff whose advertising revenue goes directly back to the OSS community instead of Andover.net's bank account. If such a website existed - hint - would you use it? Or would you continue to whine about working for nothing on a commercial website? If you disagree with me take a look at the Red Hat worth monitor [prosthetic-monkey.com] and ask yourself if that cash would be better utilized by Red Hat or the FSF to finance independent developers. I don't mean to pick on Slashdot or Red Hat. They are just obvious examples. What is important is that you as the Linux user or developer support the projects that channel the cash directly back to the OSS community.
  • If you spend 4 hours a day writing software and 8 hours selling T shirts to pay for it, your day job is selling T shirts. If you write software and then perform application specific alterations on it, your day job is performing those application specific operations. In no way can you seriously survive off of general purpose applications. The only way is application specific programming.
  • I don't know anything particular about this situation, but since you posted on Slashdot...

    It sounds like YOUR company could benefit from at least subsidizing GNQS, thus directing Stuart's future development towards feature enhancements/bug fixes that matter to you.

    We wrote him asking about the possibility of support contracts. He wasn't interested, I guess (I didn't write him myself, since I don't have any purse-string-control, so I don't have the exact reply, but I guess he was too busy right then?).

    We're a nonprofit organization, not a software company, and I suspect that the people in charge here wouldn't see much point to subsidizing him beyond the support contract we buy for all our other software. Since he turned that down (or put us off, I don't remember which)...

    If I had my own successful software company, I'd subsidize him. But that and $1.09 will get you a cup of coffee, no more.



  • I have a related question.

    How to run a company producing GPL softwares?

    I have some ideas on possible very useful software that I would rather GPL them. My question is, GPL by itself doesn't generate enough funds for such a company - you gotta pay the accountant, lawyer, and all those bills, you know? - and I do not think I want to get the involvement of a venture capital in the company either. After all, not all venture capitalists are as enlightened as the one who funds Zope.

    So back to my question - HOW to run a company that producing GPL software?

    If you have any idea, I want to know.

    Thank you.


  • People often complain about competitions (ala Software Carpentry) that they pit OSS developers against one another, creating incentives not to share tools and techniques. The reason for this is that in a competition, only one person wins.

    Ronnie Horesh, an economist in New Zealand, proposed an idea called social policy bonds [geocities.com] to bring free-market forces to bear on social problems. The idea in a nutshell is this:

    The government selects a social goal with an objective measure (e.g. infant mortality rate going below 50 per 1000). The government issues bonds, redeemable for a fixed large sum of money when the condition is met. People buy and sell the bonds, essentially speculating on the probability and timing of the condition being met. Bond holders are incentivized to take actions that bring about the condition.
    In this scheme, bond holders have no incentive to compete with one another. When one wins, all win.

    To move this to OSS development, it must be privatized. I must be able to issue a bond as an individual. So I place my chunk of money in escrow, possibly with one of the e-cash outfits, and in return I get an unforgeable certificate, which I sell on eBay or elsewhere.

    The escrow agency which holds my money must be trusted by everybody, and it needs to be able to create an unforgeable transferrable certificate. A sufficiently large e-cash outfit should meet both criteria.

  • A number of open source contributers start out
    as university students and sometimes hang on.
    For example Stallman of MIT, Bill Joy at Berekely
    and Linus Tovalds at his college.
    The lure of big industry bucks then draws most
    of these kinds away, especially at Stanford &
    Silicon Valley, my home base.
  • As I see it, the real key would be selling the packaged software and and then selling support contracts for your GPL'ed software. Selling the packaged software means that people get the software in a pretty package with an introductory manual. Selling the support contracts helps to bind you and your customer together (for a year or so). The largest computer division is IBM's software support. They also make the most money as well. People want/need a support system. Selling the software should be secondary to getting(and Keeping) the support contracts.
  • That is a good question. He only gave a page name which is too generic to find in web searches, as there are too many documents with that name to identify his. But maybe his site is actually about something else.
  • Linuxfund is an affinity card program. It's goal is to collect money to distribute to wortwhile Open Source programs. I am not sure they have already distributing funds, but you still can try at http://linuxfund.org/
  • Well, in general, management/companies don't give a rat's ass about "free speech" - they care about $$$ - so you have to present this to them as free as in beer, because it's what they understand. If you presented it as "You can pay me to work on a piece of software, so I can give it away" they'd laugh in your face.

    Secondly, You obviously didn't read the entire post.

    The "poor ripped-off programmers" you're talking about _DO_ get something: they get a working, functioning, piece of software... if they don't want to be "ripped off" then they're perfectly welcome to to ignore it. But the fundamental tenet is this: If they use it, and there is a feature it's lacking, or a bug that annoys them, then they can contribute, IF THEY WANT. This is how all open-source works, whether it's Linux, BSD, Apache, or anything else.

    When I write a Roxen module, and release it under the GPL, do I get pissed off that Idonex will probably be making money off it? (if they decide to package it with Challenger) Not on your life. Did I get "ripped off"? Nope. So what did I get out of it? I got one hell of a terrific web server.

    Please open your mind a little, I do realize that "free speech" and "free beer" are two very different things, but you must realize that while they are different, they are very closely linked together.
  • There are many good replies here, but people are still missing the
    most obvious (at least to me):

    Sell your employer the #1 benefit of GPL'ed code, which is (if it's a
    good project - one that will draw interest) that they will get
    submissions from others, FOR "FREE"...

    OK, say you're writing a new app (something that would inspire
    interest from other people) - once you have a semi-working product,
    approach your boss with the idea to release it under GPL; convince
    him/her that you could have dozens (or maybe even hundreds) of other
    programmers working for the price of your salary... productivity would
    increase, and you'll get a better end product. The "free" workers get
    a good app, your company gets "free" workers, so everybody wins.

    If you think about it, that's the reason Linux exists.. you just have
    to follow the model.
  • Email me your mailing address, and I will write you a check (I'm not rich so don't get your hopes up). Your ASP2PHP program is used by me almost daily.

    my email addy is

    haven@linuxstart.nospam.com
  • ...who in thier right mind is going to be so mindnumbingly stupid as to pay for something when you get the same thing for free...

    This would apply if a company wants to use the gpl'ed software in a commercial, closed-source project. Can't do it under the GPL, but if you can get the same code under a diffrent license...

  • The biggest problem is how to get money when working on a true opensource-project (multiple developers through CVS). What I thought was this:

    1. Make the base work (first version). You have to do this anyway if you want people to join.
    2. The license is GPL but can be released as closed-source for $$$ (like Quake). This requires all other developers to release there changes under the same "dual licence". Why would they? Because all money generated by the project will be split; 50% for you and 50% to share between all other developers. I actually think this would be pretty fair - if you get money early you will loose a bit but the more others do, the more favourable it will be. And if you start the next cool thing and retire, you will really hit it off :)
    3. Any contributions not being released this way (ie pure GPL) is not part of the version that can be sold - on the other hand the contributors will of course not get any money.
    3. The license can be a bit more restrictive; ie the product can not be used commercially without a fee being paid per user/installation etc which would generate more money. Not GPL anymore though - but you still get (almost) all the benefits of opensource.

    I think this might work...
  • Seems like it would behoove the open-source community to put together some funding for itself. There could be some sort of developers forum where the people who contributed money were enabled to determine which projects got funding. Kind of similar to Co-Source, except the idea isn't to match up customers to developers, but rather, get funding, and then decide where to put the money. Funding might be nothing more than donation (investment) from open-source community members.

    Another idea is to form a company that offers end-user support and software development to customers, entirely through the open-source community who essentially become it's "employees". Employees are re-imbursed based on what exactly they do. A simplistic model might be a customer subscribes to the service for $X/month. This gives them X points/month to "spend". They spend the points on questions asked in forums, or toward software projects certain open-source developers are working on. The points get collected by those who answer the questions, or those who develop software to solve the customer's problem, and the company pays the developers $.70 per point, or some such thing.

    The company's website might be a combination of sourceforge, co-source, deja-news/newsgroups, and slashdot. Put this all together and form a developer-end-user community.
  • WRONG! If you run an Open Source project and you don't get contributed code assigned to you (and then forward it to RMS) then you DO NOT own that code. You do not have rights to distribute that code. All ownership resides with the contributor. This is why RMS makes a big deal out of getting people to assign their code to the Free Software Foundation. For instance, if you pop on over to http://www.xemacs.org [xemacs.org] and read about the differences between XEmacs and GNUEmacs, you'll see that one of the big reasons the XEmacs code has not been re-integrated into the GNU/Emacs is because some of the contributors have not (or perhaps refuse for philosophical reasons) assigned the rights to the Free Software Foundation. I'm not aware of an court cases involving open source software, so I'm *pretty sure* that the first one that comes about will go ALL ACROSS THE BOARD: The company that sues will stick to a strict interpretation of copyright law (i.e., the GPL is hogwash, and that it's not clear even if it was legal, whether the source code IN QUESTION was clean, and untainted by other licenses -- what if code under one license gets combined with GPL code? What license is it under? Can you prove that all the code in your tree is 100% GPL'd? I strongly doubt that any open source project can say this -- most don't keep any records of anything. LET ME CLARIFY: You probably *do not* have legal rights to distribute GPL'd code, for the same reason you probably *do not* have legal rights to distribute a shrink-wrapped binary version - No one has assigned the code to you. It doesn't matter if you're giving it away or selling it. For all you know half your contributions could be from proprietary code bases that programmers mistakeningly thought their company had no interest in...
  • Work days, code nights

    If you do chose this course, here are some things I've found that improve things:

    Find a local friend to work with on this project. This will get you out of your house at least some of the time, and could help keep you sane.

    If you've got hardware you can cart around (a laptop, or a desktop you don't mind lugging with you (what I do)) I do recommend taking it to a coffee shop and hacking there every so often.

    Everything else I can think of to suggest is obvious, along the lines of "don't run yourself into the ground"

    Good luck and happy hacking.
  • Linux \subset OSS, but not Linux = OSS. (I wish LaTex would have a \subsetnoteq...)

    I know, slashdot doesn't have an OpenSource topic [yet], but "Linux" doesn't match this
    any better than "GNU is Not Unix", "BSD", or even "Apache" do.

    Maybe "The Almighty Buck" (money) since we're talking about getting $$$ here...

  • 2. Then along with working on their solution you can also work on yours along with adding specialized functionality with the product, as long as it maintains its GPL license which it has too:)

    However, if they only use the tool internally, then they do not have to give the modified source to anyone except the people who use it internally, and they can legally require that you do not give out any modifications. Then it may become even harder to work on the project because any additions, on or off the job, might fall under company IP.

    The only way I can see is similar to this, find a company or companies that use your product and get support contracts with them. The important part is making sure the company understands your goals in the contract (I assume the biggies are you want to be just a one man person who adds features/does unit testing, and you don't want to be 1(800)configg for them). If they use you product internally, then they will have people to do set up. You are just doing features support.

    when you do this, you may want to incorporate (it's not as hard as you think. There are big shortcuts to incorporation for individuals/small businesses) to protect yourself liability wise (that way if theres a big problem, you don't go bankrupt, the corporation does).

  • An answer is to gather together AHEAD OF TIME a group of motivated buyers (for whom the software solves an important problem) who commit to pay for a particular software application/feature/bugfix if someone succeeds in developing it. Upon completion, it can be released as open source and freely copied. The buyers must be types who don't worry about free riders -- their only concern must be that they want this software to exist to solve some problem/need they have.

    And, if the price of funding an OSS solution to their problem is less than the fees for custom programming, then it may well be justified for more buyers than you might imagine.

    In the long run, OSS projects are inherently cheaper. All you must do is establish a solid, well-written base of code, and release that. Then, bug fixes, patches, enhancements (and effectively the remaining work on the project) will filter in over time as other developers worldwide use your software for their own needs and add to it. Since this work is free and can represent a sizable portion of the project, the total cost of such a project cannot possibly be more expensive than a closed-source version.

    The "price" of the cheaper OSS solution is that you cannot prevent your competitors from using your developed software, you cannot sell your software in the traditional way (or at least not as effectively as the public become saavy to OSS), and you might not get an OSS solution as fast as a custom programmed solution (debatable). On the other hand, if a buyer wants the satisfaction of barring competitors from the code, complete intellectual property control, or rapid development, then they are free to pay the premium of closed source. There will always be such buyers.

  • The solution I found was that my day job supports the OSS development concept.

    My day job involves working with PLC programming, MMI (ok, now called HMI) design and development. Ever since I've been there (6 years now) we've supported the Open Source theory on things - when we do a project, we give the customer the source code to the project when we are done. Note that we supported Open Source, not GPL

    One development package that we use costs $7800 per development unit, and $3200 per runtime - and it's getting more expensive. So, I wrote up a very long proposal for a project called Jaguar HMI that explains what the GPL is, how it applies to us, and the benefits.

    Less than a week later, development of Jaguar HMI became part of my job, along with setting up all the resources for the project, etc.

    So, my suggestion is - look towards companies who have to rely on that particular type of software to survive. Once they see the benefits, and you sell them on yourself, it's possible to set up an arrangement like I have.

  • Following along nearly the same line of arguement of producing two code bases. Instead of having two forked source code trees completely seperate the source code tree is split at the losest possible level.

    For instance, say you develop a product which can both be compiled for Linux and Windows. The differences between the two come from the places where different objects have to be used to integrate the OS independant code into the OS.

    Now the Linux code is released under the GPL license. Note this both includes the Linux OS dependant code and the OS independant code. The Windows version is released under another license and in this license it staights something to the effect that the Windows dependant code is the property of the author - hence propertory. However the OS independant code is still under the GPL release. But the Windows version has to have a license bought for it.

    This means that the OS independant and the Linux dependant code is open source and thus can go through the same process of modification and alteration as other GPLd code.

    Now I don't know how far you can go down this path or with this approach without volation of the GPL. I think this approach is alright if you are the author of the project and the original source code and any modifications made from the open-source community are of low enough volume that the majority of the work is still created by yourself.

    However I don't think its alright to take a GPL'd product add-on a couple of parts to make it run under another OS and then go selling the product using the same arguement - simply because the majority of the work wouldn't be carried out by the person selling the modified product.
  • I have some misgivings about SourceForge. Their terms of service [sourceforge.net] are too one-sided. For example, they can yank source for any project off SourceForge at any time, while retaining nonexclusive rights to the content. They also want SourceForge users to indemnify SourceForge against third-party claims. Read their TOS. Until there's a mirror site not under VA Linux control, I'd avoid relying on SourceForge for primary source code storage.

    Yeah, VA Linux are good guys and all that, but you have to look ahead to the next change of control, either due to acquisition or other management events. VA Linux is headed for heavy stockholder pressure; look at LNUX [stockmaster.com] stock, down more than 50% from the first day. Scary.

  • A model that failed can be found at: http://vrml3d.com/race/

    Reaction from Open Source advocates in the VRML community was hostile. Reaction from others was non-existant.

    It's looking more and more like there is really no way to make any kind of money at all from software alone. It would appear that software is becoming like the mints that appear on pillows in motel rooms: People don't expect to pay for it directly. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to produce the goods unless you already have a contract to produce them.

    I am considering the possibility of making certain components Open Source, using a license that would allow closed source licensing of aggregations of said components. With N components, you can conceivably create N^N products. That's a lot of custom software.

    For now, I'm rather turned off on the Open Source community. My vision of community has always been someplace where you can borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor. Other people seem to think that community is a place where you are a heel if you don't collectivize your sugar plantation.

    As an independant developer, not funded by govt, academia, or a corporate parent, it appears to be a lost cause. I still have time to make a choice. I'm leaning towards forming an association like the Independant JPEG Group. Their license allows for an Open Source development model *and* reuse in closed source products. Even MS Internet Explorer uses IJG code! So, if your project is useful and cool enough, being the "alpha geek" in that project could make you a valuable corporate asset (Linus, Transmeta). I have no idea how well the IJG programmers are doing, but I'm sure they don't starve.

  • Leave the sofware just as free as it has always been, but offer support only to those who are willing to pay for that support.

    Many people who would like to use your product probably need help setting it up and integrating it into their systems.

    Set up a very professional looking site, it would be worth paying a specialist to help you create custom graphics and a consistant design.

    Then provide information in the documentation, or if it is a Xwindow based product, provide a help button that is a little sales blurb to your web site. And if they can just click a button on your app and it launches a browser with a window to your support site, so much the better.

    You can offer configuration classes. Charge people around a thousand dollars a head for a weeks worth of class. Offer this class at least once a quarter. Businesses love sending their employees to these things. Employees love going to a nice location and getting a little break from their day to day jobs.

    Keep in mind that you will spend a week getting ready for the class and will need a break afterward. Teaching is very hard work. :)

    You can also offer phone support at a set fee per minute. Get a 900 number for this. Or you can charge a set fee for a set number of incidents, or for a set period of time. I would charge at least $250 per incident, $1,000 for 10 incidents, or a $2,500 a year support contract. This is for off site _only._

    If they want you to come on-site then we are talking time and materials, oh yeah buddy! I wouldn't charge less than $125 an hour for this service and would start charging when I left the house and would stop charging when I got back. And they would pick up the tab on all your food, travel and lodging while you worked for them. You'll need a platinum card or an American Express card for this. Get a Purchase Order from the company _before_ you jump on a jet plane. Or drive across country.

    Don't forget to charge a billing fee if they go over 30 days and 60 days. If they go over 90 days they probably aren't going to pay. Contact a lawyer...

    Once you get all of this running smoothly you can then hire a couple of people to answer the phones and to go running over god's green earth, and to manage your business, while you program and ensure that all the other people keep working.

    You may find that you are spending less time programming than you did before you started all this, but that is the life of the consultant.

  • Indirect funding (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @02:44AM (#1363330)

    You may be able to get government funding for new technology ventures. This varies depending on the local governments: city, province/state, federal..

    It seems that government funding is really interested in job creation vs. technology. The key is to say that your project will create a large number of new jobs and generate $$

    Another option is to generate $$ by advertising on your website. See if you can get corporate sponsors that would use your product or would work in conjunction with your product to pay for advertising.

    For example, here's my game plan. I have a website called Introduction to Data Communications. It is a book about data communications (surprise!). I tried the publishing route but either the contracts were too restrictive, or required me to give away the complete rights to the book or the publishers wanted something very specific (Can you expand the two chapters into 450 pages?). So I'm giving away the book gpl'd. I have received many calls from post-secondary institutes requesting the zipped/tarred html, pdf or ps version which I hope to have ready this week (sigh..)

    I will be contacting every possible company that has anything to do with any one of the over 300 pages of data communication. I figure if I can get one advertiser at $10/month per page than I will be so happy that I will be whistling dixie out my asshole. We'll see. Maybe somebody will rip off my website and do it themselves, now that I've blabbed to the world....

  • SourceForge; also contact Red Hat, VA, etc. (Score:3)

    by rlk ( 1089 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @02:58AM (#1363331)
    SourceForge is a service provided by VA to the open source community. The URL is sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]. They provide a complete hosting solution, including disk space, CVS repository, mailing lists, web space, and many other services that I'm only starting to explore. It appears to be well funded, with three people and quite a stack of hardware. I'm trying it for my own project, enhancing the Print plugin for the Gimp (check it out, although I only got started yesterday with SourceForge).

    Another possibility would be to contact Red Hat and VA to see if they would be interested in funding your project (i. e. hiring you as an employee or a consultant).

  • Dual License (Score:3)

    by bhmit1 ( 2270 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @02:08AM (#1363332) Homepage
    Whenever I think about this, my thought is a dual license. Release a library under GPL (to prevent linking against non-GPL I think, if not, substitue another license there) and offer to release under a different license for a fee. This way, the software is out there, commercial companies can benifit, and the author can benifit. It would require that all submitters of patches/additions do so with a dual license (allowing the maintainer to relicense for a profit) and it would be a good idea to give some profits back to those that made significant contributions to a project. I've often thought about this, but never tried it, which is why I'm posting it here I suppose.

  • Work for a cool company! (Score:3)

    by cjsnell ( 5825 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @01:52AM (#1363333) Journal
    I'm working on a really cool project right now at work. It's a Mason/mod_perl-based front-end to RRDtool [ee-staff.ethz.ch]. Since its development directly benefits my employer, they have no problem letting me work on it. Once I get this thing into a state that is worth distributing, it will most likely be open-sourced.

    The easiest way to get your project funded is to get a job at a place lets you do "project" work and is also open source-friendly like my employer. Chances are, if your project is cool, there is some commercial potential for it.

    Good Luck!

    Chris

  • Funding for Open Source projects (Score:3)

    by rammer ( 9221 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @01:58AM (#1363334) Homepage Journal
    There are quite a few ways that I have seen.
    The most common one being: No funding at all. Do it in your spare time. Work days, code nights. For Example AIDE is not funded by anyone.
    Others that I have seen include your own company: See GNOME, Miguel de Icaza
    Government funding: Gnupg
    As a part of your work: Redhat labs,Xfree86
    Public project house: CoSource, SourceXchange

    AIDE - Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment [cs.tut.fi]

  • Sell data. (Score:3)

    by ddt ( 14627 ) <ddt@davetaylor.name> on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @04:20AM (#1363335) Homepage
    One cool way to do this is to sell your data. You're often writing a new tool because you want to work with data more easily. Well, because you're the author, odds are good you know how to use your software better than the average bloke, so you might be able to turn a dime working on the data your software is designed to handle.

    For instance:

    1. If it's a game, sell the artwork, levels,
    and sound files. These are called "mission
    packs" in the game industry.

    2. If you're writing a GUI like GNOME or KDE,
    then sell the artwork for "themes".

    3. If you're writing a music composition
    proggy, then sell music. Um, nevermind.
    Better keep your day job on this one.

    Guess it goes w/o saying, but some data is easier to sell than others. :)

    Anyway, if working on the data is too much of a load, or you don't want to work at that, then try to partner with someone who is good at it. In exchange for splitting the profits, he gets a piece of software that is custom-designed for and around his artwork/etc, and you get gorgeous data to help demo the killer function of your proggy, and you both get a little scratch, hopefully.

  • Charitable Companies? (Score:3)

    by anthonyclark ( 17109 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @02:59AM (#1363336)
    I think that there is scope for a slightly different kind of relationship between employee and employer.

    RedHat, SuSE, VA etc. all make money from things that they do not own fully. Since they rely on having good software to bundle with their distribution, it follows that they should take an active interest in ensuring that software gets written. (OK, nothing mind-blowing in there ;-)

    Instead of the CoSource type model of doing a single task for money, the Free Software companies should fund individuals to write software full time. That is, pay the individual a full salary with the guarantee that said individual will produce an output that an old-style proprietry software house would accept. (that varies wildly, I know)

    I can appreciate that many companies would have a problem paying someone to write code that any other company could use, so maybe some kind of charitable foundation (mmm, tax breaks) is the way forward. (didn't I read somewhere about a foundation for free software advocacy being set up? does it involve bob young?)

    Rather than do a job, then leave as in CoSource, you would be a permanent employee of a charity. (Free Software Foundation?) Companies that use free software would donate to this charity, which would then use the money to pay people.

    Hmm, does this fall under a charity? It could be described as a way for companies to dodge tax. (do employees of charities get tax breaks?)

    I've always thought that the FSF could do more to promote itself - sell stuff through it's website (promoting GPL e-commerce?), advertise, employ. Why not employ a whole bunch of MS marketing gurus to promote the FSF? I'd imagine that a lot more people would buy GPL'd software if they were aware they could.

    I think that having the software available to a company is more desirable than simply relying on the Free Software Community to do what you want. If paying a charity that employs highly-motivated individuals to write lots of code can be shown to be "profitable" then companies may go for it.

    Anyway, I'd contact the FSF. I think they'd have the best idea on how to make writing gpl code pay for the roof over your head.

  • Create Need For Your Project (Score:3)

    by SecretAsianMan ( 45389 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @03:26AM (#1363337) Homepage
    I get paid to write open-source software.

    I'd rather not tell the specifics of my case, but I would love to disclose my method: On your own time, do a substantial amount of development on an open source project of the kind that your company wants, or better yet, needs to survive. Then present it to your boss as "a FREE, nearly-completed solution to our problem!". Make sure your project entails continual development.

    Hooked on OSS worked for me!

  • Just some links mostly (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @02:32AM (#1363338)
    Okay, I can't answer your question. But, I think it is worthwhile as an exercise to go through the funding models that Eric Raymond [tuxedo.org] presents in two chapters of The Magic Cauldron [tuxedo.org]: Use-Value Funding Models [tuxedo.org] and Indirect Sale-Value Models [tuxedo.org]. Asking yourself how each of these models could apply to you, or why it couldn't, might help clarify the question.

    It may be that you don't have a product to sell directly to customers (I'm not familiar with the project). What you might have to do is pitch the idea to somebody for whom the project would have value, still as an open source project.

  • CoSource (Score:3)

    by Savant ( 85811 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @04:24AM (#1363339)
    Try looking at CoSource [cosource.com]. I've been able to develop GPLed code and be paid for it
    (well, actually I think the check is still in the post, as I haven't got it yet, but I digress).
    There's quite a bit of cash floating about and CoSource has a few ideas on how to
    make cash from software you are already developing, so I'd urge you to take a look.

    Another avenue is sourceXchange [sourcexchange.com], who cater for the corporate taste; but you
    will have to convince a reasonably sized company to sponsor you.

    Savant

  • No company will pay if they don't have to (Score:3)

    by naken ( 132677 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @03:30AM (#1363340) Homepage
    I actually put a couple programs out on the net thinking that if a company makes money on the programs I wrote they would be kind enough to send me money for them. Well, actually at first I asked for money if my programs were used commercially and instead all I got was hate mail from people who I guess didn't understand why I wanted to make money on my programs :(

    I've also actually had multiple people tell me that if I add such-and-such feature to my chat server program they would pay for my time. After I add the feature I never hear from them again.

    /me bends over :(

    Well.. at least they were fun programs to write :) (I'm the author of ASP2PHP and Naken Chat) and people sometimes thank me (and of course people still flame me cause I'm not GPL.. :( )..

    Anyway.. :)

  • Generic NQS (Score:4)

    by Pretender ( 3940 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @03:01AM (#1363341)
    I would like to comment briefly on Stuart's project, Generic NQS. I'm sure that there are a million projects out there that "really need" some sort of funding, but I am surprised that nobody's taken on NQS yet.

    For those who don't know, NQS is a load-balancing daemon for just about anything that can be queued, and it can be run on just one machine or a cluster of them. Very flexible, powerful stuff; useful for those of us who need more power than "at/batch" gives us.

    I would think that a large application provider (ala SAP/R3, or Oracle or Informix) who is committed to Linux would be interested in funding your project. Our own in-house database product (Datatel Benefactor running on Ardent's Unidata database) is running on Tru64-Unix, but we have a very complicated hierarchy of users here and we needed the control and capabilities of something like GNQS to maintain order that could not easily be maintained using atq's and the like. This way, too, should we ever move up to another server in addition to the current one, we can balance across two nodes.

    My point is, perhaps in your specific case you need to get noticed by a major applications vendor who has a use for the flexible scheduling and load-balancing capabilities of your product. The average guy doesn't have a need for it; I only found your product by sheer accident one day, and now it's my organization's first foray into GPL'd software. (Since its phenomenal success, we have added a few more.)

  • Re:Work for a cool company! (Score:4)

    by pim ( 111585 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @02:44AM (#1363342)
    I can second that. I do parts of the development on Post Office [tarball.net] and other GPL projects during work hours with the knowledge of my employer [vuurwerk.nl].

    The secret is to look at projects that need to be done inside the company and then define a more generic solution to the problem, that will also fare well outside of the company playground. This is win/win/win for you, your employer and the outside world:

    • You win, because you're now no longer coding on a specific project to satisfy only a stupid customer who, at the end, doesn't even grasp the amount of work you did for him/her.
    • Your employer wins, because they can offer the same solution to multiple customers without extra overhead. They also get more stable code out of you because of the benefits that come from it being an open source solution.
    • The world wins, since it gains another useful program.

    Of course, if you're bringing an existing project to a new job, careful selection of an employer that will not be micromanaging every piece of code your produce becomes essential.

    Good luck,
    Pi
  • While I am not an expert on the matter here is a suggestion:
    1. find a company that uses your product, as a main part of their solution, preferably one you would want to work at :)
    2. Then along with working on their solution you can also work on yours along with adding specialized functionality with the product, as long as it maintains its GPL license which it has too:)
    3. In effect you become a little mini-VAR just for their company. This allows you to get paid for developing you product.
    4. It is just one suggestion, It may not be the best or the most obvious but I beleive it is a valid suggstion.
    ------------------------------------------------
    There is alway RedHat.... :)

  • Re:Dual License -- is this legal? (Score:5)

    by Dicky ( 1327 ) <slash3@vmlinuz.org> on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @02:52AM (#1363344) Homepage
    This is entirely legal. If you write some code, you can release it under whatever license(s) you want. You are free to release it under the GPL and sell it under a more traditional license at the same time, on the basis that people who don't (or can't) accept the terms of the GPL can buy their way out of it. The problem with this comes when there is more than one author for a program - i.e. any program which has user-submitted patches or enhancements. In that case, you would either need permission from every contributor, or you would need to get them to assign their copyright on their code to you when they submit it, so you can later sell it.

    As it happens, there is an article at Byte [byte.com] on exactly this issue at the moment. I don't agree with everything in the article, but it is worth a read [byte.com].

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