I want to write and sell my own software for a living

If it were to be 'free as in libre' and as a result open source... how do I ensure I get paid by every person that uses it? Is there a model that works for both sides that doesn't involve trusting people to do the right thing? Every time it's copied/shared/distributed to someone else I would lose out on a potential sale.

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Give away source for free
Sell SLAs and support
Sell hosting and other services

Open Source while a good and noble idea in theory, in reality is basically consent to slavery. Just like communism, sounds cool for everyone to be equal but is impossible to implement.

You work for free while big corporations will inevitably take your work (if it's actually good, of course) and make use of it however they want. It's completely irrelevant what FOSS license you put it under because they don't care as you can't afford a legal battle with a huge corporation anyway.

It's a beautiful dream, but only a dream.

>hurr durr big corporations bad
You're the commie here.

> Every time it's copied/shared/distributed to someone else I would lose out on a potential sale.

false. since you have already released it, there is only 2 courses of action possible:

a) you release it gpl, and it stays free
b) you dont, and it doesnt

once released, it will be copied to others. it happens for two buck mp3s, for trillion dollar movies, for hundred dollar video games. it will happen for whatever you have in mind too.

>how do I ensure I get paid by every person that uses it?
this is a good question, one that no one has yet to find an answer to!

a chinaman can already clone your entire business, open source or not

making money off foss is easy, all you have to do is, demo it extensively to drum up support, use the support to crowdfund it, and then only actually release it when your labor is appropriately compensated, and then accept the fact that in all likelihood you'll never make a single cent off the software again, which is perfectly appropriate because you're not working on it anymore, and if you feel you should make more money off it because you *are* still working on it, then take the same approach to get your money, just release the updates in crowdfund packages.

You are getting desperate, Microsoft.

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You want it to be free but get paid?

You're thinking of software as a service. You create a license and people pay as they use it.

hosting got deprecated by (((cloud)))

>how do I ensure I get paid by every person that uses it?
You can't ensure that either way.

>It's a beautiful dream
"free shit for everyone" isnt a dream

Somebody has to host the cloud, user.

If it's free they have the source code and can just run their own service and you're out of money yet again. And if you can't then it's not free as in libre.

But I'm not even talking about things that big. Let's say a simple desktop program that most people might charge $10 for. You invest your own time and money into the development in the hopes of making as much money as you can off of the individual sales. If successful you'll make more software and continue to support your family.

I think Stallman has probably never worked a day in his life so the whole idea of making a living off of software doesn't compute. Software is just this other thing out there that shouldn't be treated the way physical goods are.

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You misunderstand what "free" means. Foss is free as in libre, not necessarily free as in gratis. Meaning, it may very well cost money, but there's no restrictive license. You can copy, redistribute, resell, modify, whatever.

Hence my crowdfunding suggestion. The typical risk of charging money for foss is that altruistic people can buy it at retail price and redistribute it for free, and then no one ever buys it from you again because they can just get it from that guy, and you wind up underpaid. If you crowdfund your release and then give out the software for free, that solves the problem because it's not like anyone who buys your software can then redistribute it for free before it's even released.

Nobody pays for shit they can get for free genius

join fsf and gnu

not true. there is people out there who dont pirate their stuff

>Nobody pays for shit they can get for free genius
Bullshit, programs like Ardour and Zyn synthesizer are notable GPL projects that are paid software, and yet they are very successful.

good programmers write software for free.
just like good plumbers plumb for free
and good electricians run wire for free.

This guy gets it. Hop like a motherfucker. Create a software. Cash in cash out from the hype and then let the niggers copy everything, you are already working on something else. Plus you get the rep on github for making the program in the first place. That or do the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and work for a private mega corp by day and with your big bucks make open source software like a haxxxor by night to build your legacy

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exceptions don't disprove a rule
why do freetards always make this non-argument

most software has a free portion plus commercial addins

That's exactly what I just said you fucking brainlet. Can you even read?

>sell support
So basically write crap software and extort people to figure it out.

>extort
It's not extortion, nobody is forcing you to use said software.

This

What an infantile way of thought. Try making something of value, something that will help humanity. Don't try to escape criticism like that.

libre is a joke

wow, youre really pissed that you havent the ideas or the skills to make money. This isnt your persobal tech support, but my answer is, if you want to make a shit load of money from programming, get some good ideas about how to make money, oh and track down the directors of apple and microsoft and let them fuck you up your ass, sounds like youre shilling for them so hard you may as well let them bum you too

This must be about the 40th thread on the same subject youve made today

If you are this buttblasted by free software go and have about a 1000 wanks and join microsoft

user, you could write perfect software that does all peoples work for them, and they will still find a way to fuck it up.

>this guy released software I don't like. for free. wahhhhhhhh

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Do you really think most of your customers see the source of your program? Just license it under the GPL and charge whatever you want for the installer, or a key or whatever. In practice, it is indistinguishable from proprietary software for the user, while it benefits you because they have to give any improvements they make back to you, making it impossible to compete. The only way you could lose is by being a complete vegetable.

>Assuming capitalism in communism
Your argument flawed, FLOSS wins by default, it's the niggers like you that push against it

op wants money every time someone copies/downloads/installs his program and no one has solved that yet

Not gonna work make your hobby projects foss but not the ones you want to sell

You only could sell (((free))) service.

Or, people would simply ditch the GPL crap in favor of alternatives like MIT

why would anyone prefer mit to gpl

>exceptions
what goddamn exceptions? They're examples of paid gpl software, and they're successful. Most GPL software was written by communities as 0$ cost software on purpose, not because it can't be profitable per se.

*ahem*

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>altruistic people can buy it at retail price and redistribute it for free
no they can't, or at least they have to make a fork with some minimal modifications to do this.

That's only if you add trademarks to your product, which you should do. GPL allows redistribution without modifications.

>sounds cool for everyone to be equal but is impossible to implement.
>implements one of the biggest OSes ever in practice
heh heh nothin personnel kiddo

Ardour isn't paid software, you can compile the source for free.

>GPL allows redistribution without modifications.
you can charge for newest official binaries.

>you can compile the source for free.
>isn't paid software
you don't understand the difference between paid software and proprietary software. I paid for Ardour, but I also can compile it from source, which I won't do because only fucking nerds do it.

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Stallman worked at a university.
This influenced his viewpoint of software -- he used software strictly as a means to do shit, and thought it was patently ridiculous that if he needed to change something to suit his needs that he couldn't due to licensing or whatever bullshit.

he got mega autistic over Xerox's shitty laser printer driver being closed source (and even if it was "closed source", you could usually get your hands on the source, like with Unix, but not here) and started the FSF

You paid for a binary of the software, not the software itself. It's not paid software.

ok, it's free source software with paid binaries, mr nerd.

That's much better, you pretentious retard.

It's a bit of a shitty model, though, because it creates an incentive to write shitty build procedure.

Ardour is crippled on purposes, they use third-party libraries with their own patches (why not upstream the patches, etc.) because if building their app was as simple as typing 'cmake ..' no one would bother paying for their binaries.

Cuz no obligations nigga

>why not upstream the patches
Why don't YOU upstream them? It can be a lot of work to put patches in a format acceptable to upstream, and even then they may not be accepted for political reasons.

You make botting software for an mmo that has anti hack security patches every 2 weeks or so. That means your software is outdated every time the devs push an update. You sell licenses that guarantee updates for a month+ and make the software require a non expired license to run. Make important things that make your software function require cyclical network checks to keep running. Advertise your software on chink botter forums.

making FOSS is not going to make you money unless you use a patreon based model like CEMU devs do, you drip feed minimal improvements over time and keep people hyped. Dump loads of monies doing blackhat advertising on rebbit and discord servers.

And making closed source software that doesnt require your self hosted server sided code to run properly will end up getting cracked.

You can sell GPL software and no even release the source unless the one that bought the software ask for it.

okay

if it's a video game then just don't allow people to distribute the assets.

>I want to make free software
>but I also want to get paid for it
How are you even going to write the software if you're this retarded.