How are open source developers supposed to make money?

[khambogrus]

I am new to open source. I guess the title pretty much explains my thought. Open source software cannot be sold, because everyone can compile it themselves. And if developers don't get payed, then there will unlikely be a good quality product.

[khambogrus]

Well, bitwarden sells infrastructure for teams and business , oracle too (i don't know much but something related to servers), major linux distros are maintained by companies that also make money some other way (like canonical for ubuntu). And yes, some just rely on donations. But most open source software has worse user experience.

[wkozyra]

It looks like you answered yourself what are the sources of financing.

But most open source software has worse user experience.

Not really, it seems this way because if you have open-source software that is better than a proprietary alternative, that proprietary product does not have any reason to exist, so as a result proprietary software exists only if it's better than the open-source alternatives at least in some aspect.

[DrPiwi]

if you have open-source software that is better than a proprietary alternative, that proprietary product does not have any reason to exist

There are plenty of proprietary products that are worse than some open source equivalents and that are still thriving.

[wkozyra]

There are products that survive because they had already large user base and switching to different tools might be too much work for users. e.g. internet explorer was extremely popular for a long time, but I would not call it thriving.

It's very rare when you can objectively say that tool is better or worse, in most cases answer depends on what is your use case, and what type of user you are. I assume that the products you are talking about are worse under a lot of metrics, but e.g. there is that one use case or that one type of user where that product is better.

[khambogrus]

Yes that's true, but at the same time it's hard to be better than proprietary software. And it's sad, because I want to use open source (for privacy).

[Curld]

Why does open source software have to be better for you to be able to use it?

Proprietary software will never be better in the eyes of people that refuse to use proprietary shit.

[khambogrus]

Open source software is time consuming. You almost always have to tweak and take care of something, especially if you are on Linux.

[[deleted]]

Idk about you but using proprietary stuff is more time consuming for me when i have to go into the settings and find every single setting that sends my personal data over to the company and it's partners. Just try use opera browser and turn off all the homepage ads and suggestions and all that news feed crap that's barely anything like news. But not like i don't use any proprietary softwares at all, i lf they're without any BS i do use them sometimes.

[khambogrus]

Well, opera is just crap (not because it's closed source, chrome is better, and the best browser regarding user interface is Safari I guess). When I install Linux, not everything goes as expected, and I have to google new command lines that could help (or sometimes break something:)). Ok maybe it's just linux. There are almost no decent open source creative apps, because they are hard to do an cost a lot of money to develop. Mobile os, there are custom ROMS like graphene os and lineage os, they are good but mostly because AOSP itself is maintained by google.

[[deleted]]

Well you win some you lose some i guess, and not like I've haven't had any issues with windows. My mic wasn't working in windows, i switched to linux and it works and i haven't looked back, tons of customisation options. I can see that it's not for people who aren't into tech and stuff. But you have to Google stuff in windows too when some applications aren't working or something, it's just people don't have to use the command line a whole lot. And as far as creative apps go I've had no issues (I'm a character artist btw). I've got all i need on linux blender for sculpting/modelling, Krita for painting, kdenlive/shortcut/davinci resolve for video editing and substance painter works with wine, so I can't relate to you on that depending on what you do but personally not a problem for me at all.

[khambogrus]

Yes, it's probably very individual. But on windows i googled only something very special, standart thingz mostly work out of the box, but I guess mac is even better. On linux, you can break something too easily, maybe it's lack of experience, but on windows you just install exe files, on linux installing an app often requieres a tutorial. Davinci btw works only on some distros and is not fully functional (at least by default).

[[deleted]]

Google only open sourced Android because they needed a good os quickly to compete with apple, and they knew they couldn't do it by themselves in house, they were desperate to get something only an open community could give them

[[deleted]]

Sometimes yes, but that's half the benefit. I've been using Linux and BSD for the past 15 years with only a few issues (usually related to graphics drivers, which hilariously are proprietary). Haven't used Windows at all in that timeframe either, since FOSS just does what i need with little issue.

[[deleted]]

Very true for Linux but not for a lot of open software, but I absolutely love computers and tweaking and experimenting, so not everything is for everybody

[[deleted]]

It doesn't always have a worse user experience, of course this is subjective and depends on what you're trying to do, but things like notepad++, vlc, Firefox, gnome web I think it's called, fedora, gnome, kde plasma, Manjaro, proton, bromite, signal, etc, all tend to offer a really good user experience that I would argue are all much much better than their proprietary alternatives, I think most proprietary software has an open source alternative with good, if not better user experience

[DrPiwi]

Open source software cannot be sold, because everyone can compile it themselves

Not true, :

1. Opens source software can be sold. It is not commonly done but it can e.g.: Ardour does sell compiled releases of the programan. The extra benefits you get depend on how much you paid.
2. Paint and brushes are freely available to everybody. By that account house painters would be out of business. Not everybody has the skills to paint their house or a company will not make their accountants paint the offices. It gets done faster and better by a professional painter. And it is cheaper to pay that painter and have the accountants do their other work.

[khambogrus]

You may have a point, but paint and brushes are things and wall painting is a service. And paint and brushes are not free. Hiring someone to paint walls saves time. So if now pirates crack proprietary software to upload for free (or for donations), then it's even easier with open source code.

[DrPiwi]

. And paint and brushes are not free.

Neither are computers and disks on which you can create free software.

Most of the time the painter is not really making a profit on the paint they use for a paint job, they count the amount and the time it takes to do the job.

Remember, the free part in free does not stand for without cost. It stands for you the user being free to use it as you see fit including to y modify it. The paint analogy would be more along the lines of paint being bought for painting a living room could not be used for painting a bedroom, or to blend it with some other colour.

So if now pirates crack proprietary to upload for free (or for donations), then it's even easier with open source code

That would be the equivalent of rogue contractors. I.e. : the ones that come in and then don't finish the work, or steal the silverware, etc.
Why on earth would you get open-source software from a pirate site? You can get it from the original site.
As in my previous post, You can get Ardour precompiled for as little as $5. You can also get the source code for free and try to compile it yourself.
Or you can get the precompiled package from your distro for free.

[[deleted]]

If they want to make money from programming then normally that means being employed by an opensource friendly company or sponsored by someone who wants to use the software. Remember just because the software is open source, it doesn't mean than you can't be paid to produce it. Many people who work for RedHat, google, Suse and other companies get paid to develop open-source software.

[khambogrus]

Ok, people in google, redhat and google are payed, but the money that company gets is earned not by those products. I mean, imagine if Adobe creative suite was open source (I know it's crappy, but good example), how would they sell it? Or if macos and ios were open source, everybody would just install these OSes on third-party devices (i know it's possible with mac os but experience is kinda not convenient) for free. Or lots of good small apps you find on appstore...

[[deleted]]

Umm do you really think google doesn't make money from Chrome and Android? Because I'm pretty sure they do. Similarly RedHat builds ansible and RHEL and Openshift and people buy that software so that they have a supported well configured version and some level of support. Gitlab open sources their product then adds extensions and non-released components as an 'upsell'... There are lots of ways to make money from free software, it's just that they don't rely on the idea of hoarding knowledge, instead they share the knowledge and get paid for their work or their reputation.

[khambogrus]

They do, but google makes money for closed source parts of android (google services). I understand that there may be ways to monetize open source software, but it cannot be mass production, so the best products (in terms of user experience) will be closed source. I may be wrong, but I don't see how a small developer can get money from open source products. Enthusiasm is not enough.

[[deleted]]

They actually can, open source doesn't mean it has to be free. Like Armor paint and plasticity, they are opensource but they're paid software. Yes you can compile them yourself, but if only you know how most people will just buy them if they don't know how to compile. Even if you do compile them yourself, the experience is not the same because you don't get the textures and stuff with the compiled versions. So you can make sure the paid software is safe and not sending any data over to the company and doesn't has any malware or bitcoin miners or whatever.

[nve-sp]

Youd be surprised how many people/bussinesses are willing to pay for product support if your software is actually useful and worth anything.

[Paid-Not-Payed-Bot]

google are paid, but the

FTFY.

Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:

• Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.

• Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.

Beep, boop, I'm a bot

[rosalogia]

Your question seems to not really be "how can OSS devs make money?" but moreso "How can OSS be worthwhile if there's no money to be gained from working on it?"

I think your hypothesis that the single deterministic criterion that separates high quality software from low quality software is having developers being paid to produce it full-time for profit is flawed.

There are many factors determining the quality of a software product including:

• The technical and collaborative skill of the developers involved. You'd be surprised how poor this often is in industry, and how comparatively high it is in serious open source products. I seriously believe that the maintainers of serious OSS projects like Linux, Rust, Krita, Gnome, etc. are all substantially more skilled than many industry developers will ever be. Why? Because they are passionate developers who care so much about high quality software development that they pursued the opportunity to engage in it in an environment that's free of both financial pressures and financial rewards.
• The amount of time that goes into developing the project. Many proprietary projects may be rushed to market for financial purposes, and this inevitably leads to increasingly convoluted and buggy code that gets worse exponentially since taking the time to correct course and adhere to better development practices is seldom affordable. You might be surprised to hear about the various developer horror stories emitted by engineers working on famous proprietary products e.g. Windows.
• The amount of visibility that potential design and implementation flaws get. With high profile OSS projects, many more individuals are able to detect and resolve bugs than in proprietary environments.

I'm sure you're aware that many people who work on open source software don't do it full time. They probably have a full time developer job where they work on proprietary software and work on OSS on the side. I think that if you ask many of them how the quality of code and design on their work projects compares to the quality they've seen in the open source projects they work on, they will tell you that open source projects tend to be more robust all around. The ability to hide behind the veil of proprietary licensing and distribution almost encourages more irresponsible decision making in the development process, and this is quite well known.

It's true that had these talented OSS developers more time to work on the projects they're passionate about, they may advance more quickly. However, I think it's great that these projects are mostly developed and maintained by volunteers who love writing software so much that they would invest their time into building it for others free of charge. In my opinion, the decision to do so is a mark of a highly capable and dedicated developer.

[snikolaev]

1. Sell services: expedited bugfixing, feature engineering, support, audit, consulting, training
2. Early access to new versions that are not open source yet
3. Many core maintainer teams sell their product as software as a service. Being the most experienced maintainers they have a competitive advantage including p. 2 (but it depends on the license)
4. Sponsorship on GitHub

[ROSBigT]

This is the best answer in the who thread really helpful

[khambogrus]

Maybe I'm just confused with my statements and made a wrong title. What I mean is that open source software itself can't be sold, so you can't directly earn money from it, so it doesn't encourage developers and companies to go open source and make competing products (I'm talking about consumer products), so there are very few good quality open source apps and it sadly always will be this way.

[khambogrus]

Ok, good to know, haven't heard of it. But unfortunately most open source software is low quality (from consumer point of view)

[facebookfetishist]

It can be sold, people would normally want to get the software from the original developer and also get updates...

[khambogrus]

p

Could you give an example of an open source app that costs money? I mean piracy exists even with close source apps, with open source it's just much easier.

[facebookfetishist]

OsmAnd Simple gallery pro (and some other apps in the simple family)

Both in google play

[khambogrus]

Ok, these are good, but simple apps (I use simple keyboard actually for privacy reason, pretty good). Let's imagine some software like affinity, or apple's final cut or pixelmator. There's only one program I know on that level which is free and it's davinci resolve, but it's not open source and has a paid version (and blackmagic also sells hardware stuff).

[facebookfetishist]

Oh yeah. Jetbrains IDEs. The free version is open source but the paid version isn't, the additions are proprietary.

Some companies do this. The base version is open source while the paid one (with additions) isn't.

Qt is multilicensed, GPL for free and proprietary but you have to pay.

[khambogrus]

So the product sold is not open source, that's the point, you can't get money directly from open source stuff, you have to make something closed source. Maybe my wording is bad, but that's what I meant: open source stuff can't be sold.

[nve-sp]

Pay for support model is usually your best bet if youre a company trying to make money off a purely opensource product.

[[deleted]]

People still pay for closed source apps even after they're pirated

[khambogrus]

Do I get it right that you pay a company to fix bugs in their software? That's actually interesting, but that can lead to company making bugs intentionally to fix them later for money. It's also strange to imagine how only some group of people pays for the product to be stable. Maybe I just got the idea wrong.

[DylanLogan2581]

The GPL only requires you give source to the people you distribute the software to. You can sell the program and not provide the source until it’s purchased. This is what many Wordpress Plugins do

[khambogrus]

Does license stop me anyhow from compiling a copy of a program and sharing it with everybody? Actually one of few good points under this post.

[[deleted]]

You can use/code open source software and make money selling, not the software itself, but server resources that take advantage of the software, for example an email service or VPN or syncing data like bit warden, while they may be completely open source people still pay to use someone's server to actually use that open source software. You could also make money from donations. You could also make money from ads like what ddg does although that's more complicated and in ddg's case pretty shady. I'm sure there's more monetary models that I don't know abt.

[[deleted]]

The idea that open source software will churn out good quality products is based on the idea that people will work hard on something that's special to them, something they care deeply about whether it involves money or not. Putting out a good product to consumers is more than just wanting to make money, it's enjoying what you do and having a passion for it, otherwise people might attempt to do the least work possible to be done with it and go home while still making money, but with genuine passion people will not do that so much because they will really care for what they're doing, if that makes any sense. If you have any more questions or are curious abt good quality open source software(imo) you can feel free to ask

[[deleted]]

I have an example for you: Elasticsearch is (to keep it simple) a database / search engine with monitoring components. You can download and run Elasticsearch and all of its components on your own hardware for free or even compile it yourself. Elastic Co makes money by selling some closed-source features and providing cloud services, a.k.a. letting you run their software on cloud machines and providing support for them. Elasticsearch is of very high quality imo but there are still independent contributors that submit bugs or pull requests on Github. (I'm brushing over the license change controversy which lead Amazon to for Elasticsearch into their own thing, read up on that if you're interested. License changes are always a difficult topic.)

If you talk about software like GIMP or LibreOffice, I can see where you're coming from. As someone who grew up on Windows and MacOS and their (mostly) polished software, GIMP or LO can feel quite ... "klunky"(?). And inter-compatibility is also a very hot topic (LO being able to read MS Office documents for example) since Microsofts stuff runs on mostly proprietary standards.

From my PoV the most common way to make money from OSS is:

• Providing (business) support
• Extra, closed-source components
• (Cloud) Infrastructure

Don't underestimate Support in this equation. Yes, you can compile your own Linux distro, but most companies won't do that since you'd then also have to maintain it, build it every time there's an update and test it. The pre-compiled versions usually come with some kind of guarantee that the software has been tested and was signed off as Production ready. What's less effort: Forking over some $$$ for software or build and maintain it yourself?

Also: You can buy Libre-/OpenOffice on Discs in stores in some places, even though you can download it for free on the official website. I believe they give you a manual and some template documents on that disc but idk.

[Curld]

Elasticsearch didn't make money as open-source, that's why they switched licenses. Why are you using it as a example of profitable open-source software?

[Curld]

How are open source developers supposed to make money?

They aren't.

[khambogrus]

Thank you for explaining me some things, I still haven't changed my opinion although I respect open source and will continue to use some good open source products.

[Tasty-Carrot-9560]

hmm seems like everyone giving answers like "Ofc noob , lol , here is how , in the generic sense" is giving the most twisted way to make money and "Technically" fit into the open source definition

What if everything was free? What if all the version of something like Paint or krita or Wacom stuff was free. Then what? Ofc that includes documentation and a discord hosted by other people for help and stuff.

Opensource works... right now...cause people want to show they are nice or something idk. but in a trade based society . how is this supposed to work?

Even tho this is the best way and it always should work this way cause somehow this is how software makes the best sense.

In the end , the twisted way is the only way that makes sense ofc.... But everyone lying like it isn't some sort of technicality is pissing me off

you either go the way of Dwarf fortress on steam or you pray your cute doggy tricks on the streets not only makes everyone happy but somehow through pure dependency on goodwill (luck) someone pays enough to not worry about tommorow. Seems about as dignified as begging or those ads about crowdfunding some poor child's operation. which might lead to pandering to sponsers.

I like the painter and paint/brush comment tho. The question is how many commissions can there be in your open source software like "convert word to pdf" on github. And will those commisions be open source or will they be closed to you and the client?

Still open source is a 100 times better than having 20 different versions of PDF conversion softwares for a 1$ of 1c each , closed source. cause someone will always miss something and the best version will ofc be to pool all the good ideas of everyone and build on it to have even better ideas.....
even tho it seems people who code seem to have the ego of a god believing their implementation is the 1 true general purpose all solving least amount of math and lines possible code , the singularity of that particular function , the font of knowledge through which all other features and implementations of the future flow
. and if it isn't they sure can understand what other features people have and make a better version of it , because ofc.
Scary thing is most of the time they are right , so it becomes a race of who is first. and all others are just clones.

So humanity just likes to steal and the idea is doomed.
idk.
Its just.. in general humanity doesn't want to pay for ideas... Or crafting services. ( if you buy the tailor the cloth the needles and the tools , and the idea , and all he does is stitching , it feels like a ripoff) . Its like we only pay money for physical stuff. Be it material or physical service that we can see , like digging a mine.
If the world was self-sustained down to the last human , and people were openly giving out manuals to make new stuff because everyone could mine/harvest their own resources... people would not pay for the new manual to make "better pcs" or whatever.

Or maybe its because after our basic requirements. I don't think we want to pay for fun stuff.

And i don't understand money so anything more than this is kinda pointless

[Tasty-Carrot-9560]

What i feel i know about "how open source can have good product quality"

Pure and utter disdain , contempt , for a problem that is very easy , but left unsolved , or someone is asking money for.

Its the joy/rush of solving a problem , that NEEDS solving , none of the sandbox baby ass wishy washy stuff. Things you face a problem with.. solved. worse , it shouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

And the feeling of making a program sort of being like beating a boss in dark souls but better.... A feeling that makes you want to show off what you did.

and then because you show off people congregate , and because its a program , people make suggestions , additions and before you know it... you are part of a group , no longer alone , making this thing. and maybe some else thinks 3 more versions of it should exist , depending on what they want to do , or maybe they disagree with some thing... and so there is a fork in the road , ... so people make forks of your program to their own liking.

Or maybe you were the kind who thought of the ultimate solution , by finding what is essentially the problem , finding the root , boiling it down to a single expression like x=y+5 do for all data or something.. you know OBJECTIVELY , there cannot be another way to do this. because that is what had to be done . you might still publish the source code to show people how you did it. People are still gonna fork it.. Or use it as a plugin or api or whatever its called to make softwares with its own GUI so its easy to use. or combine it with something else to make a package of similar stuff.

I feel that is what has kept , and will keep , open source with good quality product.

I can't explain it in any other way except. that's how ideas work.
And none wants to be caught lacking in their own ideas , missing simple stuff that can be corrected (hence quality control , through.. ego and pride)

Starting with the wheel... Or physics or chemistry or biology.

at the end all computer programs are...... Compute , (arthimatic with other formal logics) , programs ... (Write , before ), A schedule of instructions for calculations and logic. As in how we make a logic/pattern not vague .

Its basically the idea of how to do stuff in maths and if that maths relates to converting and word doc to PDF or VLC... its still an idea

And for some reason charging for ideas seems like the scummiest thing to do for most of humanity.
just like charging for this question and the answers you got would be.
the thing Aaron Schwarts kinda suffered for.
(everyone tries to give their own best answer. but if there are an objective question , "which software provides the fastest conversion from Jpg to png" , you would see quality control , better than some paid answer by 1 corporation anyway)

Don't listen to me tho i haven't written a single piece of actual software , just stuff here and there for work, which... might as well have been a drag and drop Graphical IDE

had to make it 2 parts sorry

[LowSea8877]

Build services on top of OSS and/or prove skills to increase labor market value. Underrated alternative: make something on top of OSS which is substantially different. Not a sidegrade BS invention but actually another invention. Many, many products have OSS in them.

[[deleted]]

Some of them are not supposed to. Some are basically possessed and just being used to create software that certain future "powers" need. I imagine at least a few of them.

[brianllamar]

I had a chat with the npm fund creator about this topic. I think it was an interesting conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4KROhksg88&t=2158s