[HN Gopher] Open Source Maintenance Fee
___________________________________________________________________
Open Source Maintenance Fee
Author : AndrewDucker
Score : 188 points
Date : 2025-07-24 12:29 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| yoavm wrote:
| This has nothing to do with Wix, the platform for building
| websites. It's about "WiX Toolset" - https://wixtoolset.org/
| thinkmassive wrote:
| > The most powerful set of tools available to create your
| Windows installation experience. Open Source since 2004!
| 90s_dev wrote:
| Funny enough, I came across WiX the other day when I was
| looking into windows installers like msix, nsis, etc.
| Eventually settled on self-contained exe (and it's only 1.4
| mb, woo!) but seeing the name wix took me back, I vaguely
| remembered it from around 2005 or so when I was first trying
| to make "real" windows programs (as opposed to visual basic
| ones). Took 20 years, but I finally did it, and written
| entirely in C, too! Anyway yeah, different wix than the
| popular one. Tom, you may want to rename this post.
| digianarchist wrote:
| It's shocking to me that Microsoft aren't heavily involved
| with the project considering it's one of the fundamental
| frameworks for releasing software on Windows.
|
| I've had the displeasure of using Wix and it's an incredibly
| complicated and poorly documented platform that had us
| reaching for paid competitors in order to get our installer
| shipped.
|
| I realized shortly after that it's not really Wix's fault.
| Windows is squarely to blame for the mess that is writing a
| workable Windows installer. The paid competitors had a lot of
| the same issues as the open source frameworks.
| tempodox wrote:
| > Microsoft aren't heavily involved
|
| Be glad of that. Anything where Microsoft aren't involved
| is a plus. Microsoft is one of those things you don't want
| to depend on.
| jhot wrote:
| I've been out of the windows world for about 10 years or
| so, but before that I was the one tasked at my company with
| streamlining our installers from a CI/CD perspective. I do
| agree that WiX is complicated and you really have to dig
| through the docs and do a lot of trial and error, but at
| the time I couldn't find any alternatives that allowed for
| the automation that I could achieve with WiX.
|
| That said it was still somewhat ugly: msbuild the
| application, potentially copy in some dll's that weren't
| included in the output, use WiX's "heat" tool to generate
| installer files from the build output, use a xslt to
| transform that output to match how we installed shared
| libraries and such, build the installer with generated
| files, run automated ui tests and filesystem validations.
|
| At the time installshield, advanced installer, and a few
| other tools I tried did not have the same flexibility to
| generate installers and automatically pick up file changes
| like WiX (without opening up a UI).
|
| I'm so glad I haven't had to think about the nightmare that
| is MSI in over a decade.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > It's shocking to me that Microsoft aren't heavily
| involved with the project considering it's one of the
| fundamental frameworks for releasing software on Windows.
|
| The history of WiX is that it _started_ internally at
| Microsoft. IIRC it was a project under the Office
| organization originally. It 's generally considered the
| first big open source success of Microsoft in spinning a
| project out to open source community ownership and paved
| the way for almost every later open source project at
| Microsoft.
|
| I've got a feeling Microsoft doesn't want to support it
| anymore because they see it as completely legacy today. WiX
| is one of the better/cheaper/harder ways to build an old
| school MSI file. MSI installers are an ancient archive
| format (the old CAB format) wrapping an ancient and dying
| DB format (the old JET database engine) and a lot of the
| complexity of the WiX toolkit is just a reflection of the
| complex legacy of the old terrible MSI output format. Today
| Microsoft suggests using MSIX which looks a lot more
| directly like the better/simpler _input_ to a (well crafted
| greenfield) WiX project, it 's a plain ZIP file with XML
| metadata.
| msgodel wrote:
| Oh I remember these guys! One of my first internship projects
| was modifying a wix installer for some internal corporate
| software.
| servercobra wrote:
| Ahh, thank you! I assumed it was Wix. They produce a ton of
| really high quality React Native libraries.
| amelius wrote:
| Huh, they were talking about https://www.wix.com/
| arthens wrote:
| That's probably what they meant, wix.com does have a bunch
| of react native libraries on github:
| https://github.com/orgs/wix/repositories
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Not a lawyer so confused about how requiring a fee to get the
| binary is in practice compatible with open source licenses, which
| grant the right to redistribute said binary. I.e. even if the
| project itself does not want to give me a copy of the binary,
| anyone who has obtained that binary can lawfully gice it to me.
|
| Basically, my understanding is that as long as the software is
| released under an open source license it is not possible to
| _require_ a payment for its use or to limit distribution. If you
| wish to do that you need to relicence.
| Spivak wrote:
| You can sell open source software and you can charge for
| binaries and add additional terms on the binaries that restrict
| distribution. This is how RHEL works. But what you can't do is
| prevent someone who acquired the source from distributing the
| source and their own binaries. Which is how Rocky Linux works.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Thanks, I think this is my answer re. binaries. I suppose it
| also depends on the original license (I think something like
| the 3-clause BSD license does not allow restricting binaries,
| for instance).
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think the distinction being made here is between the source
| code (which is remaining open source) and the binary (which is
| effectively becoming proprietary). Users would no longer have a
| right to redistribute the binary, since it would no longer be
| open source.
|
| (To my understanding, this is similar to Microsoft's "trick"
| for discouraging VS Code forks: VS Code and many of its core
| extensions are open source, but their builds are not.)
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| > license it is not possible to require a payment for its use
| or to limit distribution
|
| Those two are not the same, see
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
|
| You can also try to charge $10000 for a gold plated CD copy of
| the Linux kernel without having committed a line yourself.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Of course you can sell copies. My point is exactly this part
| of the article you've linked:
|
| " _With free software, users don 't have to pay the
| distribution fee in order to use the software. They can copy
| the program from a friend who has a copy, or with the help of
| a friend who has network access_".
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| You can charge for the source code too, just not separately.
|
| But you can definitely have an opensource project that is not
| available free of charge from any official source. Your
| clients can redistribute for free or not, but you are not
| required to just let the whole world have your code directly
| from you.
| coldpie wrote:
| You're correct, but I guess they're banking on their users
| preferring to get the binaries straight from the source instead
| of through an unaffiliated third party. There are also other
| benefits to paying, such as being able to file issues against
| the official repository. Seems like a pretty reasonable
| compromise to me, to be honest.
|
| The license even says you may redistribute the binary you
| acquire from them:
|
| > _User may redistribute the Binary Release received under this
| Agreement, provided such redistribution complies with the OSI
| License (e.g., including copyright and permission notices)._
|
| https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix/blob/main/OSMFEULA.txt
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| If it is actually under an open source license then you are
| correct. They can charge for the right to download it from
| their servers but they cant stop someone from then
| redistributing it. Anybody redistributing could also charge if
| they wanted to.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| There are many different open source licenses, and what counts
| as "open source" can depend on your definition. In theory, you
| could write a license that makes the source code freely
| available but restricts binary distribution, or excludes
| certain groups or use cases from using the software (like not
| allowing AWS to resell it as a service). Some would argue
| that's no longer truly open source, but legally, you can add
| almost any condition to your license.
|
| In this case, it sounds like they're charging a fee for their
| pre-compiled binaries and possibly using an end user agreement
| to restrict redistribution. But since the source is available,
| anyone could compile it themselves and share the binary, unless
| the license specifically forbids that.
|
| Realistically, though, many people who want the software will
| just pay for the convenience of the official binary rather than
| go through the hassle of compiling it or finding someone else
| who did. So, while the situation is a bit unusual, it doesn't
| seem like a major issue in practice.
| natemcintosh wrote:
| I watched the video on the open source maintenance fee page
| (https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/) and it explains that
| the fee is for 1) people/orgs who make revenue from the open
| source code AND 2) want to interact with the GitHub project
| (e.g. open issues). You can however 1) make revenue from the
| open source code, but not interact with the GitHub project
| without paying the fee.
|
| For instance, if I'm an organization that wants to use this
| open source project for free, I can download and build the
| code, but not download a GitHub generated release binary.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Probably dependent on jurisdiction - whilst practically, having
| the binary means you can share it, that's not legal without
| license to do that (in UK) as even though it's open source the
| copyright still exists on the binary (and because sharing is
| copying).
|
| You might be free to compile your own from shared source code,
| however.
|
| Depends also on the license used ofc.
| qwery wrote:
| For one thing, I don't think they think they have a silver
| bullet here. I think they want _some_ financial support and if
| _some_ users of the project pay the fee that will be _some_
| success.
|
| To the specifics, it's not a software license fee -- they
| aren't selling access to the software. It's a "maintenance
| fee", to fund the _project_. So the license of the code isn 't
| a problem, you can (still) choose to license that under
| whatever terms are available.
|
| From their FAQ[0]:
|
| > Q: What if I don't want to pay the Maintenance Fee?
|
| > That's fine. You can download the project's source code and
| follow the Open Source license for the software.
|
| > Do not download releases. Do not reference packages via a
| package manager. Do not use anything other than the source code
| released under the Open Source license.
|
| > Also, if you choose to not pay the Maintenance Fee, but find
| yourself returning to check on the status of issues or review
| answers to questions others ask, you are still using the
| project and should pay the Maintenance Fee.
|
| [0] https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/consumers/faq/
| svieira wrote:
| > > Also, if you choose to not pay the Maintenance Fee, but
| find yourself returning to check on the status of issues or
| review answers to questions others ask, you are still using
| the project and should pay the Maintenance Fee.
|
| I think this is going to hard against the "economy of gift"
| and isn't going to play well in the end. If they were hosting
| their own forum / mailing list, charging to access the
| community would make sense. But the forum is hosted by a
| company that gives it away for free. The people posting are
| posting freely (and may not be associated with the project).
| Some of the people posting _answers_ are members of the
| project, but some are not. If the maintainers get an answer
| from someone else are they obligated to pay the answerer a
| maintenance fee?
|
| I would limit this to "if you find yourself asking about an
| issue or posting an issue", since those are points where you
| are looking for help not just from the community at large,
| but from the maintainers in particular.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| I really don't think they can limit who can download their
| releases with their license.
|
| >If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or
| object code form, you may only do so under a license that
| complies with this license.
|
| >each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide,
| royalty-free copyright license to reproduce its contribution,
| prepare derivative works of its contribution, and distribute
| its contribution or any derivative works that you create.
|
| I'm not sure how their rules comply with their own license,
| and I truly don't think they do. They're granting additional
| restrictions to a binary they're distributing (if you
| download this give us money). They're just hoping to scare
| some contributors into handing over some cash.
|
| Maybe some licenses do allow for this, but the one they chose
| for Wix almost certainly does not.
| scottydelta wrote:
| Looking at the comments, seems it might be a headache to manage
| this at open source level.
|
| The enforcement itself seems to be tough to manage.
| lars_francke wrote:
| Not commenting on the substance but on the
| https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/ homepage itself. It only
| works in dark mode and is unreadable in light mode.
|
| The repo doesn't allow opening issues. Maybe the author reads
| here... (long shot)
| bstsb wrote:
| you have to pay the fee to submit issues, obviously ;)
| cyberes wrote:
| I understand why they do this. It's sometimes hard to find
| motivation for a project when there is no revenue, regardless of
| amount.
| optymizer wrote:
| Honestly, open source software should come with a price. I think
| the "starving artist" approach is detrimental long-term.
|
| Sure, there is great value in having a free (in both senses)
| operating system, but at the same time the year of Linux desktop
| is a running joke.
|
| To be blunt, money motivates people to do the work they otherwise
| would not do. It's soul crushing to run the 400th manual test.
| It's not sexy to work on a lot of the bugs that affect real
| users, so, when there's no money in it, the work tends to focus
| in areas of passion and feature development.
|
| Maybe if we all sent $1 to open source projects we use, there'd
| be enough funding to hire QA people and engineers to fix things
| like Ubuntu's suspend/resume on my Lenovo laptop, you know?
| qwery wrote:
| While I love the idea of a better deal for free and open source
| software developers, I don't think a sales/transactional model
| will actually solve the problem at scale.
|
| For one thing, it will eat away at the reasons you like open
| solutions in the first place. If it became normal/expected to
| pay for open source software, businesses would control a lot
| more open source software.
|
| > when there's no money in it, the work tends to focus in areas
| of passion and feature development.
|
| But when there is money in it, the work tends to focus on
| quarterly revenue.
|
| > funding to hire QA people and engineers to fix things like
| Ubuntu's suspend/resume on my Lenovo laptop, you know?
|
| Surely the money you gave to Lenovo would cover that? Like
| there must be $1 in each laptop they sell that could have gone
| towards even documenting the hardware so some nice developer
| can implement a working driver/whatever. Really, it's not the
| Ubuntu or Linux people that need to be paid to solve that
| problem, Lenovo is free to submit a patch whenever the hell
| they want to, they just don't want to.
| gnramires wrote:
| Personally, I give to projects I use (and ones that need most
| help), and I'm happy that say my younger self or people with no
| conditions can still use it without paying. I think there
| should probably be better coordinated efforts in this
| direction, from say companies to governments. But meanwhile
| individual donations are already pretty powerful if even a
| small % of people that can donate do.
|
| In particular, governments traditionally already allocate
| resources for the common benefit (their main function really),
| in public research and public science, public infrastructure,
| etc.. I think this is just another very significant extension
| of that.
|
| Also companies benefit greatly from OS/(and OSHW in the
| future?), and frequently maintain private tools at significant
| costs. Open source can be seen as a coordination mechanism
| where everybody can (or rather, should) cooperate to lower
| costs and benefit everyone (basically, their whole industry or
| rather society gets more efficient) :)
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Canonical and Lenovo both make lots of money already. Sucks
| that Lenovo doesn't think supporting Linux on your laptop is
| important.
| nikanj wrote:
| That ticket was opened in March 2025 with enforcement starting in
| April 2025. Pretty short notice.
| nicman23 wrote:
| you could stay in the last version from what i can tell
| rock_artist wrote:
| I've used WiX for a specific project in my work when I've needed
| MSI.
|
| TBH, enforcing maintenance fee for anyone who makes revenue feels
| unfair.
|
| There are other open-source libraries that has dual-license with
| some kind of GPL variant and a commercial license. but there's at
| least some threshold.
|
| Imagine indie developer or someone who wants to try and create
| something but without much revenue (eg 1k / year). so 10% of your
| revenue goes to the installer of your product...
|
| I'm all in sponsoring open-source and investing in software but
| part of being sustainable is making it accessible. so maybe that
| indie developer who used WiX for their indie project ended up
| going to 100k/year and now can contribute. But if originally it
| was capped, they might choose other solution that fits the
| "indie" tight budget better.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Imagine indie developer or someone who wants to try and
| create something but without much revenue (eg 1k / year). so
| 10% of your revenue goes to the installer of your product...
|
| You can always download the source and build the software
| yourself, or acquire the binary from another person
| willing/able to build it. The fee only applies to binary
| distribution from the project itself, and support from the
| project.
| nathas wrote:
| > Small organization (< 20 people): $10/mo
|
| If you went to 100k/year and still a solo dev, that's just
| 0.12% of your ARR. The percentages here are meaningless;
| $10/month should be doable for anyone that wants to run a
| business, even someone solo.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| >TBH, enforcing maintenance fee for anyone who makes revenue
| feels unfair.
|
| I have terrific news! You can start your own open source
| project that people use to make money and don't contribute back
| to.
|
| >Imagine indie developer or someone who wants to try and create
| something but without much revenue (eg 1k / year). so 10% of
| your revenue goes to the installer of your product...
|
| I have terrific news! That indie developer can create their own
| installer or start their own open source project that others
| can make money off of and not contribute back to.
|
| >I'm all in sponsoring open-source and investing in software
| but part of being sustainable is making it accessible.
|
| I have some bad news here. 99% of people aren't all in on this.
| We see time and time again that even mission critical open
| source projects struggle to get people to fund it. The projects
| that do tend to survive are the ones that build businesses
| around the project. It's very rare to have an open source
| project be well funded solely for existing with no business
| around it. Of course there are exceptions, but that model has
| failed near completely. That's the reality.
| rock_artist wrote:
| > We see time and time again that even mission critical open
| source projects struggle to get people to fund it.
|
| I think you've missed my point.
|
| The problem (imho) is when actors that can easily pay, are
| avoiding it. And that's where a threshold of revenue (and
| also different tiers), feels more fair (again, from my
| perspective).
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| That is my point! We have to live in reality and in reality
| that does not happen. This dev is trying to get some sort
| of compensation for their efforts because the reality is
| the status quo is not working for them. We can "in a
| perfect world" all we want but we don't live in a perfect
| world.
| jerleth wrote:
| Not sure why you were downvoted, but I agree with you.
|
| Anyway, you may want to take a look at nsis, at least when I
| needed an installer for a windows application many years ago,
| it worked fine for me. It doesn't produce an .msi but on the
| other hands it's fast.
|
| Another meanwhile somewhat out-of-date option is squirrel, but
| it offers a auto-updater, which is very useful.
| opticfluorine wrote:
| I came across this a few months ago when I was evaluating open
| source installer options for my own open source project. I have
| no issue with charging for binaries while the source is available
| under an OSI license, but this from the README rubbed me the
| wrong way:
|
| "To ensure the long-term sustainability of this project, use of
| the WiX Toolset requires an Open Source Maintenance Fee. While
| the source code is freely available under the terms of the
| LICENSE, all other aspects of the project--including opening or
| commenting on issues, participating in discussions and
| downloading releases--require adherence to the Maintenance Fee.
|
| In short, if you use this project to generate revenue, the Open
| Source Maintenance Fee is required."
|
| I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume this is just a
| difficult concept to succinctly explain in a short paragraph. But
| that summary - that revenue-generating use requires payment -
| feels misleading to me. Under their license, nothing stops me
| from creating my own build from source and using it per the terms
| of the MS-RL license, including for commercial purposes. So to me
| it feels like a scare tactic to coerce commercial users into
| becoming sponsors for the project.
|
| I certainly understand the challenges faced by open source
| maintainers today, but the specific approach taken here just
| doesn't feel ethical to me. I ended up passing on WiX for that
| reason even though I'm not a commercial user.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Isn't it just a clear statement that they aren't going to give
| commercial users support for free?
|
| I know you are saying it isn't clear, but your quote literally
| includes the statement "While the source code is freely
| available under the terms of the LICENSE".
| opticfluorine wrote:
| I personally think this last sentence from my quote makes it
| unclear:
|
| "In short, if you use this project to generate revenue, the
| Open Source Maintenance Fee is required."
|
| Perhaps I'm being too semantic, but I don't feel that is an
| accurate representation of the license terms involved here.
| Applejinx wrote:
| It could add 'and expect active support FROM US' and be
| more accurate.
|
| I guess it's treating 'if you are generating revenue and
| need support you're gonna be demanding as hell' as
| implicit?
| TrueDuality wrote:
| Start-ups and smaller companies that are extremely cash
| strapped are willing to take an opensource project, compile it
| themselves, turn it into deployment artifacts and manage that
| whole lifecycle. There is a threshold where paying someone to
| manage and certify the lifecycle of tools is more valuable than
| keeping it in house.
|
| This is pushing those enterprise customers that are just using
| and updating binary releases because they don't want to take on
| the compliance risks of first-party support to pay for official
| versions.
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| Yes, just a couple of minutes setting up a Github action on a
| fork, and you're good to go.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| I agree with your point. In the name of promoting basic
| numeracy:
|
| """
|
| Sign up for GitHub Sponsorship and create the tiers: Small
| organization (< 20 people): $10/mo Medium organization
| (20-100 people): $40/mo Large organization (> 100 people):
| $60/mo
|
| """
|
| You are beyond 'cash strapped' if $10/month for something as
| fundamental as this breaks the bank. The fully loaded cost of
| a single US software developer is already above $100/hour.
| TrueDuality wrote:
| Sure, but that also doesn't scale reasonably and is
| entirely a facile argument. My original comment supports
| organization paying this price instead of dealing with
| internal compliance burdens. Looking at one of the package
| lock files for a previous company I still occasionally
| contract for, there are 9400 dependencies referenced.
|
| So in the name of promoting basic numeracy, and taking into
| account the realities of scale. Matching that cost for
| those dependencies (this is a >100 person company) would be
| $560k per month. That gets you minimal support, just a
| guarantee that you can submit issues. No guaranteed
| security maintenance, compliance, or governance of the
| project.
|
| You can spin up a very strong developer team for forking
| and maintaining an internal copy of opensource projects at
| that cost and a lot of large companies do just that. Should
| they contribute those changes back? Sure if that made
| sense.
|
| A lot of time in my experience that internal copy is
| stripped to the bones of functionality to remove the
| surface area of vulnerabilities if the useful piece isn't
| extracted into the larger body of code directly. It's less
| functional with major changes specific to that environment.
| Would the upstream accept that massive gutting? Probably
| not. Could the company publish their minimal version? Sure
| but there are costs there as well and you DO have to
| justify that time and cost.
|
| Would a company in-house the support and development of a
| tool over $40/month? Absolutely not, for a one-off case
| that's probably fine. If you want to meaningfully address
| the compensation issue from enterprises, opensource single-
| project subscriptions aren't going to be the answer.
|
| I would LOVE to see more developer incentive programs, but
| one-by-one options aren't scalable and most projects don't
| want to provide the table-stakes level of support required
| of any vendor they work with. It's not optional for those
| organizations, its law and private contracts.
| x0x0 wrote:
| The only object is that monthly fees are super annoying.
| I'd much prefer an annual :shrug:
| aetherspawn wrote:
| It's $10/mo and then like 15min/$50/mo in everyone's time
| in admin chasing down and filing receipts, reconciling to
| bank statements, etc.
|
| If you're a founder doing your own finances, well every
| additional little monthly charge even if it's just $1 is
| quite annoying:
|
| Filing and reconciling 12 receipts takes say 1 hour per
| year, what if you're using 20 dependencies? That's an extra
| 3-5 days per annum of admin.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| They actually provide the github action they use to build the
| releases in their repo already, so you could likely get this
| done in under 5 minutes.
| zvr wrote:
| And that's what a number of organizations have set up since
| March.
| ysofunny wrote:
| I think they're trying to say that if you are talking to them
| on behalf or a revenue generating entity, then you better pay
| them to talk to them about the project.
|
| feels like a pay to interect iff one of the parties interacting
| is a profit making entity
| trjordan wrote:
| I love the innovation. The basic idea here appears to be:
|
| - Nobody wants this to be closed source. The code is freely
| available, and you may do with it as you want. The marginal cost
| to distribute the code is 0, after all.
|
| - The maintainers, as people, don't want to do charity work for
| companies. Their time is limited, and if they're going to support
| revenue-generating activities, they want a cut of the revenue.
|
| So even if this doesn't get perfectly enforced (and it won't),
| that's fine! The maintainers are now free to respond to
| complaints with "you need to pay us for us to care." Companies
| that pay get some level of support; hobbyists get the same
| experience. Only the companies that ignore this warning will see
| the consequences, and it's particularly effective for reports
| where the author leans on "but there are a huge number of
| important users [to me] that are affected." Pay up if it matters!
|
| It strikes me as a pretty clean solution to a pretty common
| strain of open-source headache, _especially_ as AI-generated
| code/reports/etc. are on the rise.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Anybody should be able pay up for the feature/support and it
| should be closed source until some threshold. That could take
| years or months depending on the interest/income. Eventually it
| will become open source. Otherwise, everybody will wait for
| someone to pay for the thing they want.
|
| Obviously this needs to be worked up a bit so not to maintain N
| forks but it can work.
| samrus wrote:
| I think thays fine. Thats within the spirit of FOSS. The
| issue has always been companies demanding fixes because it
| affects their users, and those companies cant afford to wait.
| So now they can pay to have the devs spend a bit more time to
| get their fix out. This works
| msgodel wrote:
| I was under the impression a number of open source projects
| already worked this way. There seemed to be a small industry of
| essentially consultants maintaining Busybox that way for
| example although maybe I misunderstood the situation.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this. I'm not a Wix user so this is
| a general comment on the substance of this.
|
| As an open source project no one is forcing you to maintain it.
| Every fix you put in is something that you do of your own
| volition. No company can force you to accept a PR or work on
| it. I think FOSS developers often get stressed about this but
| unless you personally have financial motivations around what
| you've written you can tell people to fuck off. Yeah they can
| complain, but you have zero obligation to fix.
|
| The sponsorship seems to introduce a business model around what
| is FOSS, then it's not FOSS anymore. The entire purpose of FOSS
| is anybody can copy and repurpose what you've built. They can
| fork it, take it in a different direction and create a business
| off of it. Depending on the license you've explicitly agreed to
| that.
|
| This sentiment is going to be unpopular but I think the outrage
| is unwarranted.
| nine_k wrote:
| AFAICT, the fee applies if you're using binary releases, or
| if you open issues, and are _also_ generating revenue from
| the project. Apparently you can grab the sources and build
| the binaries yourself (as per the OSS license), never ask for
| support (by reporting issues), and still have to pay nothing,
| even in a commercial setting.
|
| It looks a bit similar to the RedHat model: they release
| open-source software (Linux kernel is GPL2), but you may want
| to buy their binary releases and support.
|
| Not so rarely companies would not mind paying a small amount
| to help support the OSS projects they depend on. This may
| give CTOs an easy way to expense such support, even though
| becoming a GitHub sponsor is more involved than many would
| like; I hope Wix will introduce even easier options (Open
| Collective, its own non-profit, etc).
| mikestorrent wrote:
| > companies would not mind paying a small amount to help
| support the OSS projects they depend on
|
| meanwhile I've been trying to find a way to give Hashicorp
| some money for over a decade of depending on their tools,
| but their products simply are too good to need the
| enterprise versions!
|
| At some point we need something like a "certified B
| corporation" for "certified ethical fair-trade Free
| Software using corporation" where an independant body
| audits and makes sure you're donating to a sufficient % of
| the open source projects used in your production SaaS
| nine_k wrote:
| You can open https://www.hashicorp.com/en/pricing and
| contact their sales department!
|
| Also, wasn't there an uproar when Terraform turned
| slightly less free?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37081306
| acedTrex wrote:
| I mean enterprise vault has some really important
| features that open source doesnt. That could be a good
| direction to throw money at.
| derefr wrote:
| > or if you open issues
|
| I feel like there should be an exception carved out to this
| policy, if the submitter of an issue is offering to create
| (or, as a corporation, dedicate their own engineers' time
| to creating) a PR to resolve the problem the issue
| describes.
|
| As a maintainer of a few OSS projects myself, I see my fair
| share of "choosing beggars" (i.e. people who don't mentally
| model others' motivations, and so use github issues to
| essentially say "I got this for free, but it's not perfect
| _for me_ , so can you please improve it in ways X/Y/Z to
| better suit _my_ needs? " -- without any consideration of
| whether their suggested improvement would ever benefit
| anyone else.)
|
| But if an issue's submitter offers to create a PR, then
| this makes it very clear that they're not operating in this
| mindset; and in fact, they're being quite considerate! By
| _describing a real problem_ , and then _offering to create_
| a solution to that problem, they:
|
| 1. make sure that we actually _want_ to solve this problem
| (i.e. that we don 't think of their problem as a WONTFIX /
| something that doesn't belong upstream)
|
| 2. give us the opportunity to take over solving the problem
| ourselves, _if_ we think it 's some kind of highly-critical
| and finicky work
|
| 3. give us the opportunity to participate in / constrain /
| steer the _design_ of a solution, before it gets developed
| (rather than just having code dropped in our laps and
| having to fight it into an entirely different shape)
|
| And it often doesn't even matter if the developer in
| question really has the skill and experience to develop the
| proposed solution entirely on their own. To me, a dev who
| creates a half-baked PR that we can then help shepherd over
| the line over the course of weeks/months of back-and-forth
| with them in the PR thread, is someone clearly in the
| process of _developing_ that skill and experience, and
| potentially becoming an active contributor to the project
| -- or maybe even a future maintainer. This sort of
| willingness to engage in a non-drive-by way is _incredibly_
| valuable.
| thayne wrote:
| It's complicated. Reviewing a PR takes time and effort,
| and the maintainer may not want to do that for a feature
| that mainly benefits a company that isn't paying the
| maintenance fee.
|
| OTOH, as a maintainer, if a company finds a bug that
| would impact a lot of users, I would want them to report
| it, regardless of their payment status.
|
| But saying something like "Issues from paying
| customers/donors have higher priority" is kind of vague,
| and doesn't provide any concrete value to the payer. So
| I'm not really sure what a good balance would be.
| monocularvision wrote:
| I guess the point is if someone discovers a bug and opens
| a PR to fix it, then that person is, in a way, also a
| maintainer. They are "paying" for the maintanence of the
| project in time and effort.
| robmensching wrote:
| We're still working through the best way to talk about
| issues and PRs. This is an area where I expect
| maintainers to differ in how they apply the OSMF (every
| maintainer I've spoken to is 100% behind requiring
| payment for binaries).
|
| I wholly agree with the sentiment of your comment and
| we're still learning.
|
| Note: At this time, my project (WiX Toolset) does not
| require the OSMF for PRs. If there is a README that says
| we do, then I probably need to fix it.
| huslage wrote:
| Red Hat does not charge you to open issues on open source
| projects and never will. Their business model does not
| hinge on deriving value from core open source principles.
| robmensching wrote:
| > It looks a bit similar to the RedHat model
|
| Yes, very good recognition. The Open Source Maintenance Fee
| follows several of the paths RedHat paved long ago.
|
| > This may give CTOs an easy way to expense such support
|
| I'm finding it actually gives the CTOs (or someone a bit
| lower in the chain) the _requirement_ to pay like they
| always wanted to before. Said another way, in the past,
| many devs/leads/managers would say, "Oh, I'd like to
| sponsor this project but I can't get through procurement."
| With the OSMF, now they have the forcing function to help
| them through. This is not hypothetical, I've had companies
| tell me exactly this.
|
| > becoming a GitHub sponsor is more involved than many
| would like;
|
| GitHub Sponsors is great... except for a few very real
| cases where it is not. This is on my radar to improve over
| time.
| liotier wrote:
| Scratch your own itch. Anyone thinks you are making a mighty
| nice itch-scratching machine and wants to make it better ?
| Welcome, let's cooperate !
|
| Others who want you to scratch their personal itch ? Offer
| professional services or maybe ignore them if you have
| anything better to do !
|
| You may like your itch scratching device as it is - that it
| has a pile of CVE to its name doesn't bother you while you
| sip your tea, scratch your back and listen to the wind in the
| leaves...
| bgwalter wrote:
| Users and companies can force you to continue to work on your
| project. Otherwise they'll fork it, make it worse, blame you
| for bugs _they introduced_ in the fork, say that the original
| project wasn 't that good, etc.
|
| Basically, the fork now controls the narrative over your own
| work.
|
| If you are completely immune to public opinion, it might
| work. But the more you invested in the project, the more
| famous it is, the harder it gets.
|
| Open source started in an altruistic environment and has
| become slavery. Perhaps someone who was active in the 1990s
| will point out that it was a narrative even back then, at
| least it didn't feel like it.
| liotier wrote:
| > Users and companies can force you to continue to work on
| your project. Otherwise they'll fork it, make it worse,
| blame you for bugs they introduced in the fork, say that
| the original project wasn't that good, etc.
|
| How is it bad ? How does it force you to do anything ? It
| doesn't even interfere with your thing, which will keep
| scratching the itch your built it to scratch.
|
| That is the whole beauty of free software: no one has any
| leverage on your project - any cooperation is voluntary !
|
| I've heard so much "you should do this", "you should
| conform to this standard", "why don't you help me make this
| thing the way I want it ?", "your thing keeps me from
| making money with it" etc. Well buddy, I'm grateful for
| your opinion, and now I'll go do the thing with the people
| with whom I found shared goals.
| bgwalter wrote:
| It is good for you to feel that way, others increasingly
| view it as a narrative endorsed by big tech to get free
| labor and "AI" training material.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> "AI" training material_
|
| One of the things that I have been encountering, more and
| more, is the "GIGO" principle (Garbage In, Garbage Out).
|
| Some of the code that I get from coding agents and chat
| LLMs, is laughably bad. It works, but only because the
| example has five different approaches to solving the
| issue, and only two of them work, etc.
|
| I just spent the last two days, working around junk that
| I got, for implementing WebAuthn. I have it working now,
| and am grateful for the example, but I'd _never_ ship the
| code I was given as an example.
| liotier wrote:
| If it solves your problem, why would you care about what
| other people do with it ? Free software isn't charity,
| just a way to find allies - usage by other people is a
| side effect which doesn't cost anything to the project
| and is entirely irrelevant apart as some input for the
| user-to-ally pipeline.
| evanelias wrote:
| Have you ever spent a huge amount of unpaid time to
| create an innovative, successful open source project and
| then had it forked in this manner? If not, I don't think
| you can accurately predict how this feels. Especially if
| the forker takes credit for your work, raises large
| amounts of venture capital, and uses their fork in a way
| which directly competes with your original project.
| robmensching wrote:
| > As an open source project no one is forcing you to maintain
| it.
|
| Absolutely true. For maintainers willing to abandon their
| project because they tire of maintaining it, this is a
| totally viable alternative. Just ignore everything you don't
| want to do.
|
| However, the maintainers I know care deeply about their
| project and making it useful. However, when their project
| becomes successful, the scales tip, and maintenance becomes a
| real burden. They could just walk away or ignore things that
| are failing. Or they could set up a Maintenance Fee and those
| making money using the project's binary outputs can help
| offset that burden.
|
| It's one more tool in the Open Source Sustainability toolkit.
|
| > The sponsorship seems to introduce a business model around
| what is FOSS, then it's not FOSS anymore.
|
| That's not true. I worked very hard with our lawyers to make
| everything copasetic with OSS and FOSS.
|
| > I think the outrage is unwarranted.
|
| I've seen no outrage. Actually, I've seen quite a bit of
| support for the idea, I've heard a number of good clarifying
| questions, I've a few complain that this is bad for OSS or
| something. It's been surprisingly great actually. :)
| mendelmaleh wrote:
| The existing software stays absolutely FOSS. The development
| of it is absolutely not free.
| ozim wrote:
| No one is forcing you to maintain it ... but successful
| projects have community and people who rely on the project
| who somehow trust the dev.
|
| Once you say ,,I am not fixing it" there will be lots of
| people who will stop participating in community and project
| might die.
| samrus wrote:
| > As an open source project no one is forcing you to maintain
| it.
|
| Sure but thats not the spirit that built the modern software
| world. Our globabl information infrastructure heavily heavily
| relies on OSS and that has open source devs assuming some
| responsibilities. If not from others then just their own
| sense of self respect and engineering pride.
|
| The only issue was that companies were exploiting that and
| demanding the exact labour that benefits them. Which is
| bullshit. And this might solve that
| prinny_ wrote:
| > Yeah they can complain, but you have zero obligation to
| fix.
|
| True, but if you want people to use your software you can't
| ignore the issues they raised, especially if they are valid
| and not some niche use cases, otherwise the project may come
| off as poorly maintained.
| calibas wrote:
| This doesn't seem terribly innovative to me, they've gone from
| giving away a product to selling a product.
|
| In other words, they're operating like a normal business.
| hbn wrote:
| Well, it's a "free if you're not generating revenue" model
| which is similar to JetBrains' recent "free for non-
| commercial use" releases of their IDEs, and I believe Docker
| does something like that too.
|
| And famously WinRar which will nag you to upgrade every time
| you open it but doesn't actually force you to buy it, but
| expect enterprises will if they don't want to risk lawsuits.
| LtWorf wrote:
| But why call it open source if it's no longer open source?
| nevon wrote:
| It is open source. The code is still available under the
| same license as before. They are just charging for binary
| builds.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Oh ok, I had misunderstood then.
| samrus wrote:
| They dont charge for the source. They charge for paying
| more attention to your issues, and for compiling the code
| for you. If you compile it yourself and do some of the
| work to resolve the issues (planning or an outright PR)
| then you wont pay anything
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It is a tough thing. I want to focus on the negatives from two
| perspectives, as you wrote some positive:
|
| * This can make it harder to recruit further contributors as
| there is a two-clays system of contributors. Paid and unpaid.
| "Why should I fix a bug for free, while others earn the money?"
| * Accepting money make sit a business transaction, if I accept
| somebody's money they have demands towards me. Then I got to
| work on it.
|
| But of course the volunteer free model has sustainability
| issues ...
| robmensching wrote:
| > This can make it harder to recruit further contributors as
| there is a two-clays system of contributors.
|
| We'll see. I haven't seen any reduction in contributions (not
| that the project gets lots of contributions because we're the
| same as every other Open Source project, most consumers just
| consume). Also, note that the fee is just for maintenance.
| I've seen near 0% contribution rate for all Open Source
| projects to "maintenance chores". Those just don't fall into
| the "scratch your own itch" class of problems.
|
| > Accepting money make sit a business transaction, if I
| accept somebody's money they have demands towards me. Then I
| got to work on it.
|
| True, but I've been committed to my project for over 25 years
| and I want to continue to improve the project. The fee has
| really helped keep that motivation up (aka: sustainable). The
| reaction has been mostly positive which is also a plus. :)
|
| > But of course the volunteer free model has sustainability
| issues ...
|
| Agreed. I think the OSMF is a good way to tackle exactly that
| issue.
| robmensching wrote:
| You really nailed the essence of the idea/solution.
| jackdawipper wrote:
| pull back the layers. This is the usual masking of the facts. A
| rose by any other name... is after money.
|
| FOSS is destroyed the moment that is introduced to the mix. Its
| like political sells - begin pushing a small degree, they wont
| notice the temperature as it rises over time until its closed
| source and corporate.
|
| This is how you kill off FOSS, or your project. "corporate
| creep" I call it.
| xoac wrote:
| FOSS is destroyed with overly permissive licenses that allow
| entities with a lot of capital to productize software as
| closed source while giving back the original
| author/maintainer exactly 0.
| constantcrying wrote:
| They totally have the wrong approach. The EULA is completely
| bizarre and the implementation even worse.
|
| What they should have done is saying "If you aren't a sponsor
| we do not care about your issues." Right now clicking the
| download button is a violation of their EULA, which is probably
| something you want to avoid when trying to get companies to
| give you money.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| It seems like it would be much less complicated to write
| this/enforce this if they just made you pay a subscription fee
| for access binaries and the issue tracker.
|
| Instead, they've generated an enforcement nightmare by solely
| relying on an EULA.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah, though it's tricky because they want to retain free
| access & support for users who use the project but do not
| generate revenue.
| jerleth wrote:
| The worst part for me is:
|
| > Q: How long do I have to pay the fee?
|
| > You pay the Maintenance Fee as long as you use the project.
|
| What does that even mean? I built one-off apps for small
| businesses that I never touch again or maybe every 5 years.
|
| Okay, at least paying perpetually for something I don't use
| anymore is out of question but if I open a solution for a fix I
| have to check all 80 packages what their current license is and
| pay them for the month?
|
| No thank you, I'll rather pay for a commercial solution or use
| something free with a sane license. With a commercial offering
| at least it's opt-in when I download a new version.
|
| For me that's basically a subscription fee for one-time
| download.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| > For me that's basically a subscription fee for one-time
| download.
|
| Not a WiX user, but that's my issue with it too. E.g.,
| AutoMapper, a popular mapping library for .Net recently
| changed their license from Free to a Subscription. We use it
| heavily, and may be willing to pay - however: we are still
| using the same version as of 2 years ago, because there are
| no new features we care about and there's no need to put in
| multiple days of work to upgrade "just because".
|
| I miss the one-time-payment option for such things.
| 20k wrote:
| The problem is, if its one time payment, companies will
| just leech off of it indefinitely. It'd be great if
| companies were contributing, but its gotten to the point
| where you have to assume heavy bad faith from everyone
| involved
| mirsadm wrote:
| I am starting to think that the open source licenses need
| to be updated to specifically exclude large tech
| companies and force them to pay.
| zeeg wrote:
| Just want to say, absolutely this. Its an awfully confusing way
| to say: "if you make money, compile your own binaries or pay
| us". Have a feeling the confusion and FUD it causes will create
| more harm than good unfortunately.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Can we adjust the title to say Wix Toolset or remove that part
| altogether?
| calibas wrote:
| I thought the license was still owned by Microsoft?
|
| https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix?tab=License-1-ov-file#read...
|
| Also, the exact wording is:
|
| "a EULA on binary releases (including those published to GitHub
| and NuGet.org) requires payment of the Maintenance Fee"
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but doesn't that mean that I can compile the
| code myself to circumvent the Maintenance Fee, and give the
| binaries away for free?
| jsmith99 wrote:
| Yes, the repo readme says the code is open source but the fee
| is required for using the repo's issues and releases features.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| I'd be surprised if the github EULA allows you to just attach
| rules to who can click the releases button.
|
| For issues and discussion, sure that's essentially
| moderation. But surely you can't make a EULA that says you
| can't click on a github provided feature unless you agree to
| some arbitrary third party's rules.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Here's the consumers FAQ of the underlying initiative (the Open
| Source Maintenance fee):
|
| https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/consumers/faq/
| guluarte wrote:
| I haven't fully read it yet, but it would be great if GitHub had
| "bounties" where users could submit an issue/request with a
| bounty attached.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I think the issue with bounties is that to do a proper bounty
| program you want a third-party escrow agent that can decide
| when the issue/request has been addressed sufficiently to
| warrant paying the bounty. I don't think GitHub wants to be
| directly in that business as a third-party escrow agent hiring
| people to review issues/requests versus changelogs, but they
| probably could find ways to help people find such third-parties
| in the Sponsors flows.
| stereolambda wrote:
| Moreso: what if someone fulfils it in a fork.
| pino82 wrote:
| For me, Wix was never truly an OSS project (sure,
| technically/formally, it is). It's for me just an MS developer
| workplace in disguise. As MS, it looks nicer and you don't have
| to support so much.
|
| I was wrong and Rob was indeed not an MS employee??
| contextfree wrote:
| He started the project while he was still at Microsoft, but
| since left and continues to work on it independently.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| This sucks out the joy of Open Source development, which is
| freedom to do anything, change anything and not responsible for
| anyone else.
|
| At the point you require payments, users can have expectations
| and requests, which turns your project into a job.
| wmf wrote:
| In this case the joy was already sucked out a while ago by
| entitled users.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I guess I'm not smart enough to understand [edit: the hype
| around] this.
|
| The license agreement doesn't change? But you don't get support
| unless you pay the maintenance fee? So if a user reports an
| exploit, Wix won't fix it unless the reporter pays the
| maintenance fee first?
|
| Or if some corporate user has a great idea for a new feature, Wix
| will ignore it until a paying user requests it?
|
| It seems obvious that this is nonsensical. OSS authors have
| always been able to pick and choose what PRs they accept or what
| issues get their attention. They have always been able to charge
| for support. How is this maintenance fee any kind of innovation?
|
| I don't mean this as a criticism of Wix. I think it is awesome
| that they develop tools with open source licenses. And I think it
| is perfectly fine for them to charge support fees. Just like it
| always has been for all open source projects.
|
| If a would-be contributor feels locked out, they can fork. This
| is not a new idea. Obviously, forking is a pretty big commitment
| that will require financial backing. So any rational party
| considering forking should also consider paying the author for
| their attention. Even if you have the pockets of an Amazon, it
| would probably be better all around to fund the original author
| than to set up a competing fork. Of course there will be the
| occasional LibreOffice, io.js, OpenTofu, neovim. If you can
| actually pull off a split like LibreCAD, more power to you. io.js
| made its point and made nodejs healthier.
|
| This has always been a huge advantage to open source software.
| You can benefit from the community. You can contribute to the
| community (code, art, docs, money, ideas, whatever). Kudos to Wix
| for participating. Best wishes for their future.
| mopsi wrote:
| As harsh as it may sound, the Wix Toolset is such a steaming pile
| of garbage and waste of everyone's time who have had the
| misfortune to work with it that their best monetization strategy
| would be to charge for proper documentation and working examples,
| instead of playing games like "you can't view issues without
| paying us". Easily on of the worst pieces of software I've come
| across.
|
| Alternative: https://github.com/oleg-shilo/wixsharp/
| thedonkeycometh wrote:
| Open source shouldn't have fees, it's one step away from a
| subscription
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >While the source code is freely available under the terms of the
| LICENSE, all other aspects of the project--including opening or
| commenting on issues, participating in discussions and
| downloading releases--require adherence to the Maintenance Fee.
|
| Surprised downloading releases is in there, I'm not a lawyer but
| I'm pretty sure this goes against it's own license on the source
| code, specifically:
|
| >each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-
| free copyright license to reproduce its contribution, prepare
| derivative works of its contribution, and distribute its
| contribution or any derivative works that you create.
|
| At the very least it's confusing, and if anything, comically easy
| to bypass and literally forces someone to automate a github
| mirror that builds new releases. Your essentially enforcing the
| existence of a fork. They even provide the github actions
| necessary to do so in their repo already...
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| The WiX installer is a byzantine incomprehensible mess. Its only
| appeal was that it was free. If I have to pay, I'd rather have a
| commercial product that is supported and easier to use.
|
| Rob Mensching was supposed to monetize WiX by offering $5,000/yr
| enterprise consulting & support services. I guess that's not
| enough.
| Slartie wrote:
| WiX basically lets you directly write the internal data
| structures used by Windows Installer to run the MSIs. Just in
| XML instead of some ancient binary database that is used in the
| MSI files to store things.
|
| So the actual "byzantine incomprehensible mess" (which is
| indeed the correct description) is the MSI format and Windows
| Installer, not WiX.
| constantcrying wrote:
| This is absurd. Seriously, read the EULA:
| https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix/blob/main/OSMFEULA.txt
|
| This fee only governs the binaries compiled directly by the
| company. You can "circumvent" this license by building the
| software yourself, or having someone else build the software.
|
| _Right now_ I can click the download button on their github
| build, what then? They do not even link to to the EULA there, yet
| the EULA stipulates that this exchange requires me to pay money
| to them. The github statement stipulates that paying money
| requires me to first pay the maintenance fee, which is not part
| of the EULA, why? What is the point.
|
| Here is a tip: If you want to make money, make it easy to give
| you money. Right now any legitimate company has to fear walking
| into legal troubles with this. Can you imagine how the discussion
| with accounting is going to go?
| Splizard wrote:
| If only this was voluntary and automated by an Open Source
| service provider, so that I only have to pay one monthly fee and
| all the FOSS that is detected to be in-use on my machine is
| funded.
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