fbszSep 15, 2023

Bad business model behind open source softwares

https://lemmy.ml/post/4961787

Bad business model behind open source softwares - Lemmy

The principles behind free and open source software has all been ‘knowledge and information should be free and accessible to everyone’, ‘the user should’ve the freedom to study, edit, share’, ‘collaboration’. These principles are nice and the people who admire this principles create free(as in freedom) software, but when we look at the finances behind free softwares, things are messed up. Most services rely on donations, which is not good but when the amount of free services increase, the more there has to be donate. It’s actually problem because the bad business model of the open source has made it’s software fall behind their propreitory alternatives? Here are my few questions and would be nice if you all provide a solution to some questions: 1. What is the philosophy of open source and free software? 2. Why open source softwares are bad at making money? 3. Is there a business model, besides subscription as many people can’t pay? Or am I wrong here? 4. Solutions proposed to solve this problem 5. Some examples of bad and good open source business model and whether it’s good or bad than their mainstream propreitory alternatives?

Show threadBeeBitMyBottom

I designed something, it wasn’t software, though there was a very small amount of software in the final product and some iterations. I was advised to patent it, and could have.

The more I dug into it, the more I thought ‘this will stifle innovation’. My design was good, but by going copyleft the design is so much improved over anything I could have done. People with power management skills have increased efficiency, others with coding expertise have reduced the parts count, still more have added redundancies to make it failsafe.

It is a commercial product for a multinational, and a few small scale producers, but many more hobbyists have built it themselves by going to Mouser/Digikey etc. With a BOM.

I published it anonymously and have never made a dollar from it. I couldn’t be happier with that.

Sep 15, 2023 at 3:23pmWeb
Show threadfbszSep 15, 2023
Wow, that’s great! That’s the idea behind libre software/hardware or the copyleft where you are encourage to fix bugs, develop new ideas and share it with the community! It’s great that you’ve you contributed to public domain! Is there copyleft for except softwares?