Simple utility stuff I believe should fit in this category. Things like a text editor.
The profit comes from elsewhere, larger more complex systems.
Of course someone can TRY to profit off a text editor, but unless it solves complex enough problems (like a full blown IDE, but even then...).
The issue is there is intense demand for it, and ALSO easy supply. If someone attempts a profit driving rugpull, another will pop up in it's place.
I am still using Dendron because it meets my needs, but I'm always half tempted to replace it, and I'm fairly confident I could come up with something that meets my own needs in a day or two, and it would likely also be valuable to countless others. I just keep assuming that someone else will spend that day or two, and my pain points with Dendron are not that bad for me to spend the time.
Most text-editors by large corporations don't even pass this bar.
I do think there is room for a few good paid text editors in the world, but most people won't pay directly for them, though they might use them if they are bundled ala Google Docs / O365 Word.
I also paid for a few more, e.g. Notion, but I think it's better to focus on: There's definitely value in good text editors.
They can greatly enhance your experience with a system, e.g. if Samsung Notes was amazing I'd be much more likely to stick to using a Samsung phone.
That last category of people are also now likely to go create something themselves with AI, but don't really want to or can't start a business from it, so they may add it to the pile of free software others can use.
Not everyone HAS to profit from their work, though I do think those who make it their passion might benefit from finding a way to do that.
I am not a power user for Dendron, I mostly just use it for journaling, keeping track of who is who and what is what, and organizing architecture / ideas before they find a home somewhere else. Mostly a journal.
I do like that it’s in VS Code and I can leverage those tools and now, AI, to help.
The main functionality I use is the new daily journal from template feature. Do you use more surface area from it? What is the most useful features for you?
The subscription based platform with automatic cloud hosting and other quality of life features, whatever those are depending on the app.
Although there's a bunch of 100% open source projects and developers that get enough donations to make it their full time job just off of that. Not that it's the way to go if you want to get rich, but it's still very much a real thing.
I'm not saying you have to, but you asked how they get compensated and there's nothing stopping you from giving them money.
It's easy to forget that you get a lot of value out of something and not give back. If you end up getting a good paying job with your programming experience just buy your favorite projects "a beer" one a month, or once a year. God knows it's better spent there all the subscriptions we have like Netflix or Spotify. Cheaper too.
Also, if the projects are big enough you can usually get tax credit. If you work at a decently sized company they also usually do some charity matching.
Most people won't pay for something if they don't have to.
> Most people won't pay for something if they don't have to.
It doesn't work because people that make $100k+ salaries wont buy their "friend" a beer. It's not failing because a bunch of poor people don't donate.
And it is viable because many things already operate this way. The most profitable ones have just convinced companies to donate. That shouldn't be required, but I'm not ignoring the reality.
Besides, this is a reality that is solvable simply by a small percentage of people going "you know what? I will donate". Not "everybody", just a very very small proportion. Let's take ripgrep as an example. Who knows how many people use this, but there's over 64k stars. Let's say 1% donate $5/mo. That's $3.2k/mo for burntsushi, I'm pretty sure he'd be happy with that. He's also a prolific HN user so maybe he'll even respond.
My point is that all it takes is a mental shift from a small number of people. This isn't some "we need huge collaboration therefore it'll never happen" type of thing, this is "I can take action and have meaningful impact today" type of thing.
Always good to promote these apparent small wins in case the catch on. Do suspect the shift to make, instead of hoping our psychology changes en masse:
Change the model to one of the freebie models that works for high-income earners. High-income earners are OK to make purchases of tangible things where they're promised good is done for the world. Then they enjoy their music and wine (at the gala), or tote bag or whatnot.
We gonna be invited to the first Text Editor Gala?! Maybe not. 50/50 raffle supporting a text editor dev, though, maybe... (ugh a little gambley)
tl;dr give the self-wealth-protecting psychology of the wealthy an out to help them justify their good deed, like NPR sponsor gifts
(to execute - cut some deals with concert venues, restaurants, handmade good purveyors... obtain discounts... then work with developers to set up bespoke relevant rewards for given donation tiers. first part of this plan could be a decent task for the non-developers who wanna contribute to OSS)
Btw, my comment was intended to append yours, not counter or argue. Sorry if it came off that way
For the first time, I put a sponsorship button. Will see if it works.
I have a problem, I spend a few days building a tool that solves the problem, it works pretty well for me, and I release it to let others get value from it. They make tweaks to it, perhaps improve it, and I get value from those enhancements and bugfixes.
They have lots of sponsors [1]; you can pay $4/month for sync service or $50 a year, per person for a commercial license.
Free as in beer and free as in speech means those ‘contributors’ are also free as in Linus to go fork themselves.
Don’t like it? Go fork, yourself. Want it different? Pay, money, make, it, happen. Don’t like paying? Go fork, yourself, harder.
In my experience, if the dev wishes to be compensated in dollars, they also sell a commercial license, cloud services, etc.
Now you have the answer.
no because the people who maintain the nuts and bolts of the open source world, like the often individual or handful contributors to projects like ffmpeg or xz-utils have been passionately doing that and at times burning out (which in case of the latter caused pretty prominent problems).
Does the world look to you like it's in a state where important questions and problems don't go unanswered? The reason this stuff works is because there's random guys in a basement in Kentucky somewhere who thanklessly work their asses off and nobody cares. They simply keep doing it because half of the internet would fall apart otherwise.