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.
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.
Honestly, thus far it's been a relative breeze. I expected the need to work out "bugs" as the idea is new. My hope is that after we address the bulk of the issues that actual consumers have raised about the OSMF, it'll be relatively trivial for other projects to pick up in the future.
Note: A few Open Source projects have already added the OSMF. I've not yet followed up to see how it is going for them.
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)
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?
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) :)
The window was definitely smaller than I would consider ideal. But the OSMF only applied to WiX v6 (released in April) and later. So, all the older versions would not be impacted.
Also, the timing was never raised as an issue by anyone in the community. If there had been significant pushback, I would have definitely re-evaluated the timing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume this is just a difficult concept to succinctly explain in a short paragraph.
It is challenging to describe the concept succinctly, especially as there are lots of varied expectations people have about how Open Source projects work. I'm definitely open to suggestions on how to improve the text.
If you read the comments on the GitHub issue, the guys seems more than reasonable. My understanding is that they want you pay if you are making money. My guess if you are just a one-person show with a just-started product, they probably won't care much.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> The sponsorship seems to introduce a business model around what is FOSS, then it’s not FOSS anymore.
No major F/OSS license (MIT, (A)GPL, Apache) talks about money. You can sell the software, sell the support, and sell the source code (GPL requires bundling code with the software, not putting it everywhere).
When it comes to Free and Open Source Software, everybody talks about sustainability rightfully, and many people say "sell support, or priority support".
I think this is the right way and balance. Code is there, free. If you earn money from this, help us. If you use it personally, please enjoy.
RedHat does in a more heavy handed way, says "Pay to play", which works for them (because of the missing parts are filled with Rocky and Alma). Proxmox and Nextcloud does this, and says, "Pay if you need help from us".
IIRC, libpcsc requires a fee for "testing card readers for compliance". Library is GPLv3, on the other hand.
Many Free Software libraries get sponsorships to be able to survive. Even curl has a "bulletproof" version for enterprises which you can't download without paying.
"Free Software" doesn't mean "no charge", "open source" software doesn't mean you can take it, run with it, and drag the developers behind you as you please.
As a Free Software fan and advocate, I think Wix's balance is perfect. If you earn money, please help us. That's perfectly fine, and makes sense in their case.
Kudos for hitting the right balance. They got a "+1" from me.
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 ...
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.
after further consideration, I actually think I am wrong in this case. It's really just looking for fair payment in exchange for work provided to those that are commercial interests or who can afford to pay it. Which is totally fair and my point doesnt apply here.
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.
This strikes me as a problem with the widespread dogma that it has to be open source (OSI approved license). It doesn't.
If you want commercial users to pay then pick a license that makes it so, it can still be source available and free (as in freedom and/or cost) to non-commercial users.
> The maintainers are now free to respond to complaints with "you need to pay us for us to care."
If you are a maintainer of an open source project you don't have to care about complaint and you can absolutely say that you need to charge for your work in reply to requests. In fact that has always happened.
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.
> 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.
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.
Creating a private distribution point and private issue tracker definitely would be an option, and it would make enforcement much easier. But I believe it would also make us more distant from the community. I really wanted to create a system where the Open Source project can stay the same and be sustainable at the same time.
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??
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.
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.
>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...
The license snippet you quoted means that they have given YOU the right to copy, change (or compile), and redistribute, distribute anything you've created from it. Nothing about that implies contributors are required to give you binaries.
This isn't all that uncommon -- usually open source licenses only apply to the source.
> 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...
Yeah, cloning and building software is something that is straightforward for software developers to do. Traditionally people would clone software to their own machine, but you can use GitHub or whatever tools you want to work with the source. I'm not sure if I would call this a "bypass" -- this is the typical way FOSS software has always worked, and it's part of the reason why FOSS is popular :)
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.
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?
So far the only hard conversations with accounting are how to pay by invoice (since GitHub Sponsors invoice handling is a bit wonky). Those that pay by credit card have pretty universally been, "Oh, this is easy. Done."
> You can "circumvent" this license by building the software yourself, or having someone else build the software.
Correct. By design. The software is Open Source. That's the whole point.
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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[ 12.2 ms ] story [ 92.5 ms ] threadBasically, 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.
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/
The enforcement itself seems to be tough to manage.
Note: A few Open Source projects have already added the OSMF. I've not yet followed up to see how it is going for them.
The repo doesn't allow opening issues. Maybe the author reads here... (long shot)
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?
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) :)
Also, the timing was never raised as an issue by anyone in the community. If there had been significant pushback, I would have definitely re-evaluated the timing.
The launch went really well though.
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.
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.
In this case you can install your product yourself.
"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.
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.
feels like a pay to interect iff one of the parties interacting is a profit making entity
It is challenging to describe the concept succinctly, especially as there are lots of varied expectations people have about how Open Source projects work. I'm definitely open to suggestions on how to improve the text.
Here is their sponsorship page: https://github.com/sponsors/wixtoolset
- 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.
Obviously this needs to be worked up a bit so not to maintain N forks but it can work.
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.
No major F/OSS license (MIT, (A)GPL, Apache) talks about money. You can sell the software, sell the support, and sell the source code (GPL requires bundling code with the software, not putting it everywhere).
When it comes to Free and Open Source Software, everybody talks about sustainability rightfully, and many people say "sell support, or priority support".
I think this is the right way and balance. Code is there, free. If you earn money from this, help us. If you use it personally, please enjoy.
RedHat does in a more heavy handed way, says "Pay to play", which works for them (because of the missing parts are filled with Rocky and Alma). Proxmox and Nextcloud does this, and says, "Pay if you need help from us".
IIRC, libpcsc requires a fee for "testing card readers for compliance". Library is GPLv3, on the other hand.
Many Free Software libraries get sponsorships to be able to survive. Even curl has a "bulletproof" version for enterprises which you can't download without paying.
"Free Software" doesn't mean "no charge", "open source" software doesn't mean you can take it, run with it, and drag the developers behind you as you please.
As a Free Software fan and advocate, I think Wix's balance is perfect. If you earn money, please help us. That's perfectly fine, and makes sense in their case.
Kudos for hitting the right balance. They got a "+1" from me.
In other words, they're operating like a normal business.
* 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 ...
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.
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.
If you want commercial users to pay then pick a license that makes it so, it can still be source available and free (as in freedom and/or cost) to non-commercial users.
> The maintainers are now free to respond to complaints with "you need to pay us for us to care."
If you are a maintainer of an open source project you don't have to care about complaint and you can absolutely say that you need to charge for your work in reply to requests. In fact that has always happened.
Instead, they've generated an enforcement nightmare by solely relying on an EULA.
> 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.
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?
https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/consumers/faq/
I was wrong and Rob was indeed not an MS employee??
At the point you require payments, users can have expectations and requests, which turns your project into a job.
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.
Alternative: https://github.com/oleg-shilo/wixsharp/
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...
This isn't all that uncommon -- usually open source licenses only apply to the source.
> 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...
Yeah, cloning and building software is something that is straightforward for software developers to do. Traditionally people would clone software to their own machine, but you can use GitHub or whatever tools you want to work with the source. I'm not sure if I would call this a "bypass" -- this is the typical way FOSS software has always worked, and it's part of the reason why FOSS is popular :)
Rob Mensching was supposed to monetize WiX by offering $5,000/yr enterprise consulting & support services. I guess that's not enough.
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?
> You can "circumvent" this license by building the software yourself, or having someone else build the software.
Correct. By design. The software is Open Source. That's the whole point.