An interesting experiment about changing open source license in order to monetize the software so that developers can live on it: Ungit went from MIT to LYC that acts like GPL for ONLY businesses, which somebody pointed out that it discriminates groups of people hence violating a condition of open source software. Later Ungit was reverted to MIT license, noting that the experiment was not successful as the project leader had hoped (see Issue #997 at the end).<\/p>\n
During the debate, there was another interesting perspective:<\/p>\n
It’s worth noting that this might actually not be desirable from the point of view of long-term sustainability and stability of projects supported in this manner. As Scott Santens (who has a successfully built a Patreon campaign)\u00a0points out<\/a>, community-supported projects actually benefit from having their income spread out over many people contributing small sums:<\/p>\n
[My Patreon income] relies on about 150 people as I write this. […] For anyone with a normal job, they can be fired by one person. As a result, their income can fall from $1,000\/mo to $0\/mo. For me, I would have to be “fired” by 150 people to fall from $1,000\/mo to $0\/mo. If “fired” by one person, I can fall from $1,000\/mo to $990\/mo.\u00a0It is this decentralization of income that creates for me a greater sense of security<\/strong>\u00a0that is far greater than a standard full-time job situation.<\/p>\n
[This observation] prompted me to create a new milestone on Patreon, where my new goal is not to gain a larger income […], but to instead create a more widely distributed income floor.<\/p>\n
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