What's the Long Game here?
Right now, the situation of far too many independent software developers is best summarized by jgilias on HackerNews:
- Release under a permissive license (MIT, BSD) and:
- Have everyone and their grandma use it
- Die poor
- Release under a copyleft license (GPL) and:
- No company is going to use or contribute to it, unless they can unless they can somehow clearly separate it from what they see as their intellectual property. Or just hide it where nobody sees it
- Die poor
- Release it under a commercial license and:
- Nobody uses it
- Probably die poor
- Dual license it as GPL and commercial and:
- Sue everybody as they are just taking the GPL version and never looking back. Especially if they can hide it somewhere
- Die poor
Pick your poison.
This situation is wrong, and it can be fixed.
Both the "Free Software" and "Open Source" movements leave a lot to be desired in how much commercial support we would like to see in exchange for use of otherwise "free software". The core reason is not that large enterprises are unwilling or unable to offer financial support. The core reason is that the wrong kind of financial support is being demanded.
By making the software "free to use" for even the largest enterprises on the planet, the only way for those enterprises to financially give back is to make a "donation", which is organizationally a far more complicated procedure than paying an invoice.
We see a future where the "starving developer with millions of downloads" is a thing of the past. It's fine to give Billion Dollar Businesses generous terms. Let them try for six months or even twelve months before they buy. Offer them great support. Help them to achieve their goals that help us all.
The way we get there is by re-licensing software that large organizations are already dependent on, under reasonable terms. We need to do this carefully, in a trustworthy way. We need these organizations to see that it's a win-win relationship. They get better software, better support, less abandon-ware. We treat them honorably, charging reasonable fees, offering flexible terms.
Eventually, we can build a future where the norm for releasing a piece of NEW SOFTWARE is to use the OS.Cash License or another fair-code license, without this causing any resistance to the adopting of that software, simultaneously materially rewarding successful developers.