Ask Slashdot: How To Get Paid For Open-Sourcing Your Work?

kc600 writes "Say you're a freelancer, using mainly open source solutions. You notice that customers, although they don't object to the whole open source idea, don't see the point in paying you for the time it costs you to properly open source your code. As a result, code is not released, because it would take too much time to factor out the customer-specific stuff, to debate architecture with the other developers, look at bug reports, et cetera. You feel there's something to contribute that many might benefit from. The code would also be better maintained if more people would use it, so the customer's project would also benefit. But you're not going to do it in your free time; you have enough on your mind and the bill is paid, right? What useful tricks can you think of to encourage yourself — and your customers — to properly share code, to the benefit of all, and get paid for it?"

Comments

The spirit of Johnny Appleseed

[Taco Cowboy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed

When I open sourced the programs that had made me some money, but I had no time nor the stamina to keep working on them, I didn't expect to get paid for that.

Instead, I thought of Johnny Appleseed.

The programs that I open sourced, to me, are old stuffs. I could have kept them under closed source, store them in CD-Rs or external hd or old computers, or ....

I could have done that, but if I did that, it wouldn't benefit me, nor anybody else.

When I open sourced those programs, I didn't even know if anybody else wanted them in the first place. I just placed them online, did some advertisement on related sites, and then, let go.

If the "appleseed" blooms, good.

If they don't, well, it'd be the same as I locked them up in CD-Rs.

The most important thing is that I've set them free. Their "lives" after being set free depends on their "fates", or in spiritual kinda speak, "karma".

Once they are open-sourced, they do not belong to me anymore. Now, they belonged to the world.

Re:Do and don't

[Half-pint HAL]

But if you were to make it into a one-off Kickstarter project, it wouldn't be pulling a Lunduke. Personally, I'm getting sick of all the Kickstarter campaigns that are "I want to make a profit, but I'm not willing to risk my own time and money -- you guys take the risk, I'll make the profit, m'kay?" and would relish more campaigns that say "I want to make an honest buck -- pay me fair and square for my time, and I'll forego future royalties," because that's really the whole point of risk-reward. People working on royalties take a high risk, gambling on the reward. Eliminating the risk without eliminating the chance of a high payout, it's, well... unfair.

One way

[heikkile]

I work for a company that does a lot of Open Source stuff. Here is how we manage it: We have core toolkits that are open source, and custom applications that are closed source, made for specific customers. When ever a customer needs new functionality, we try to generalize it and put it into the toolkits, which we then release. We tell the customer that we have this open source toolkit which we use for the project, and which we keep improving. But we don't specify how much of the work goes into the toolkit, and how much on the custom side.

Those toolkits have been our main marketing effort, and have certainly paid off. Within our very narrow field we are world famous, and our toolkits almost dominate the market. Nobody can afford to build a competing one, when ours is free. Although anyone may use our tools, we happen to know them best and have most experience with them, so we can often do any given job faster than others. The company has survived over a decade, and has expanded internationally, and is now all of 15 people.