Coming from ex-USSR country, I really don't get people who shake their fists saying that somebody is not fairly compensated, and deserves more, and somebody (rich businesses and enemies of nation obviously) should pay for it. Venezuela waits for you, evil capitalists are defeated here, and govt takes care of everyone.
> Every open source contributor of any sort of popular project should be getting at least that much through various deals
If they don't have such deals, who is to blame?
Users who are busy with their life, take a lot of things for granted and don't think much about thousands of FOSS libraries and apps they use every day?
Government which doesn't subsidize FOSS contributors?
Or maybe contributors themselves who are sloppy at selling themselves and getting deals?
> Ridiculous that so many billion dollar companies use these things and feel no obligation
Maybe exactly because FOSS is about terms which allow such use, and enable companies to build business models on that?
Maybe exactly because FOSS is about terms which allow such use, and enable companies to build business models on that?
Sure, but if such a business takes off and is awash in money then the owners should help to water the tree. Maybe that means writing a check once a year (boo hoo, goodbye money uwu) or contributing some business skill/innovation so that developers or artists can concentrate on their professional discipline rather than having to gain a load of business skills that they may not be temperamentally or intellectually suited for. Why isn't it as easy to monetize as to share a repo?
I suggested a simple solution for the problem. Ask users to meet a certain fund raising goal and if they don't come up with it, either stop working on the project, or pull it entirely and let them worry about it. This is a capitalist approach to the problem of capitalists exploiting communists. Better approach is probably not license your stuff under exploitative licenses and put clauses in there for bigger companies using your work.
The problem here is, nothing you can possibly do is worth more than money to a dedicated capitalist who already has tons of money.
You can do stuff they exploit, or not. Doesn't change the relative size of the pool of money from your true userbase (likely much smaller), and nothing you do can force the capitalist to buy into your code at a less-exploitative license.
They can and will just pass. And you can pressure your users in a wide number of ways: they are the same dark patterns used by proprietary, totally-closed software. You can become that to get paid… or, more accurately, you can become that, try to squeeze blood from a stone, and find out whether you can torture your users into providing you with the level of luxury you see fit.
This is not the motivation of Free Software, and is barely the motivation of Open Source. Might as well just be proprietary and be done with it. All this works on many levels and money/compensation is only one of the levels.
What is the problem you are talking about? Who exactly has that problem? What are "exploitative licenses"?
If money paid by licensees is the primary driving motivation for development, then FOSS is completely wrong type of licenses for this. This is called commercial development.
> Every open source contributor of any sort of popular project should be getting at least that much through various deals
If they don't have such deals, who is to blame? Users who are busy with their life, take a lot of things for granted and don't think much about thousands of FOSS libraries and apps they use every day? Government which doesn't subsidize FOSS contributors? Or maybe contributors themselves who are sloppy at selling themselves and getting deals?
> Ridiculous that so many billion dollar companies use these things and feel no obligation
Maybe exactly because FOSS is about terms which allow such use, and enable companies to build business models on that?