Indirect funding and the limits of free software patronage | Teleogistic

The Money In Open-Source Software | TechCrunch

It’s no secret that open-source technology -- once the province of radicals, hippies and granola eaters -- has gone mainstream. According to industry estimates, more than 180 young companies that give away their software raised roughly $3.2 billion in financing from 2011 to 2014. Despite the growing popularity of open-source software, though, many open-source companies are not financially healthy.

Freemium the Registry

Laurie Voss on an open source funding model

When Free Software Depends on Nonfree - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

When a program is free software (free as in freedom), that means it gives users the four freedoms, so that they control what the program does. In most cases, that is sufficient for the program's distribution to be ethical; but not always. There are additional problems that can arise in specific circumstances. This article describes a subtle problem, where upgrading the free program requires using a nonfree program.

FOSS funding, co-operation, and the Digital Life Collective

Free open-source software (FOSS) is the bedrock of our digital world. This is a story about getting funding for FOSS engineering…

It’s time to rethink Open Source

Why developers give away valuable work for free — and what can be done to take that money back.

In Thrall to Scarcity

As I’ve talked about in this space in the past, I’ve been coming to some conclusions about free software (open source, or whatever you want to call it): the economics of it, like anythi…

What kind of Software should we fund?

Laurie Voss, who was one of the founder of NPM, the Javascript package repository that is now run by Microsoft, has written a longer post about an idea about how to fund Free Software that I found interesting. It’s worth reading if you have some time and makes good points even though I will critique […]

Supporting open source with 3% of our revenue | Hacker News

> SPI acts as a fiscal sponsor to many free and open source projects ... we encourage programmers to use the GNU General Public License or other licenses that allow free redistribution and use of software and hardware developers to distribute documentation that will allow device drivers to be written for their product ... all donations made to SPI and its supported projects are tax deductible for donors in the United States.

Open Source Endowment — World's First Endowment Fund for OSS

The Open Source Endowment provides truly sustainable funding for critical open source software through a community-driven endowment model.

Front Page — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software

The technology overrunning our communities isn't built for the benefit of humanity: it's built so that billionaires can control us. Our lives don't have to be this way. The FSF empowers users with free software, technology built through global collaboration, mutual respect, and above all, freedom. The FSF will always continue to resist the encroachment of nonfree software. We're fighting to protect all computer users and build a better future.

History of free and open-source software

The history of free and open-source software begins at the advent of computer software in the early half of the 20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s, computer operating software and compilers were delivered as a part of hardware purchases without separate fees. At the time, source code—the human-readable form of software—was generally distributed with the software, providing the ability to fix bugs or add new functions. Universities were early adopters of computing technology. Many of the modifications developed by universities were openly shared, in keeping with the academic principles of sharing knowledge, and organizations sprung up to facilitate sharing.

Nobody pays for open source. We can force them to. | Seldo.com

Thirty years of voluntary funding schemes haven't paid open source maintainers because asking doesn't scale. The real money already flows — to JFrog, Docker, Sonatype — at the registry layer. The fix: registries charge companies for supply (they already do), then route a slice automatically to the maintainers who make that supply worth having.

Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing | TechCrunch

New alternative category to 'closed source' could help companies monetize software in the open -- without going all-in on open source.

Introducing Sponsorware: How A Small Open Source Package Increased My Salary By $11k in Two Days

<p>After digging deep on SQLite during a pair programming session with a client/friend, I had an idea…</p> <p>About 45 minutes later, a proo...