The 'Everyone Gets the Source Code, Donations Get You Binaries' Software Model

TroysBucket writes "One developer who is trying to fund his development work via donations has taken on an 'Everyone gets the source code, donations get you binaries' business model, where he provides installers and binaries directly only to donating users. Quoting: 'A very central goal of everything I am doing, right now, is to show a concrete [and highly documented] way that other developers can fund their own FOSS work. With that in mind One major mistake I made, right off the bat, was that I provided very little direct benefit to people who donate (no “perks”).' Has anyone seen this work well before with other projects?"

Comments

Pay-for-binary install/updates the model for OSS

[synthespian]

You can't do this with the GPL license, if you're not OK with other people putting up binaries, as they have the right to distribute, and even sell binaries.

Which proves, once again, how stupid it is to use the GPL. He could use the BSD license, then provide pay-for-binaries with some sort of proprietary installers and binary updating mechanism. Instead, with the GPL, everyone can steal his binaries. Of course, it wouldn't prevent anyone else from coming up with their installation and updating mechanism, but they would have to put in the work. It would still be advantageous to cooperate with the main project, because you would get more hands and brains working on the same source code. That is the beauty of the BSD license: it's a license for the real world. Not a license backed by corporations and advocated by a screaming army of unemployed students, like the GPL.

In this way, you get the source code, but if you want the convenience, you must pay for his exclusive method of installation and updates. He could push updates and bugfixes constantly. This would go hand in hand with current buzzwords, such as "the lean start up", "A/B testing" and the model of "release early" of free software (you see this constant updating in products such as Evernote, etc.).

I believe this would be a great model for developers who are writing for the desktop, instead of doing software for servers. In this way, we could have a healthy software ecosystem for the desktop, which is still lacking in the Linux landscape, that is just ridden with the problem of having to rely on the small army of "developers" who repackage the source code (they're really repackagers...), who are always behind the curve in comparison with their Mac OS/WIndows counterparts.