How to solve funding for open source

1 points by OttoZastrow ↗ HN
What if users pay a single subscription for all open source tools they use?

Proposal: Users install a plugin in their repositories from this, every quarter the user is sent a random subset of included packages from their repo. The user is asked to estimate how “useful” each one is. These scores are normalized per dev and averaged across the firm. Their employer receives a bill, containing weighted donations to all the used packages. the sum is constant (e.g. 20$ per month), so the dev doesn’t have to ask for permission to “purchase” or “donate” to new software any more.

why would it be cool: It could help generate income for open source projects. But it could also be an easy way with which for-profits sell software products. Projects could even be published under a license which makes such a subscription mandatory for users from non-profits. This license creates a nice growth model, since any new subscription benefits all packages, that a given user likes.

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