License as FLOSS - Make Compatible with The Free Software Definition (or TOSD)

[xtbqimuxmvtx]

To the dev, thanks for your positive reply to the mozilla review. I appreciate you taking feedback and sorry if I was curt.

A common licensing model if you own the assets to make the software (code) FOSS licensed, but the assets (UI: icons and css) as Creative Commons ND

There is nothing wrong with selling free software - if success is an incentive the objective is to make it hard for someone to do so without creating something new and better, but to not be restrictive of people playing around and doing their own things with the code-base. You might find donation models (with hidden features to give to donors) a more profitable model than licensing. (Like KeepassDX for Android, for licensing, see Synergy)

Have a look at some other projects.

[RealRaven2000]

I appreciate your suggestions.

. You might find donation models (with hidden features to give to donors) a more profitable model than licensing. (Like KeepassDX for Android, for licensing, see Synergy)

I am highly doubtful - I had run my Add-ons on donations for a number of years and I didn't want to beg my users, but I got a number of people donating large amounts... I thought going "freemium" and offer a little extra functionality for an annual license would be a fairer model. It's now my main source of income. That's why I am a bit reluctant of going full GPL 3.0 with this. The main thing I want to avoid is somebody copying my complete Add-ons and calling it quickFilters "free version" and then slowly taking all my users away. That's the reason for the ND part of the license. I am not opposed to taking portions of the code and writing ones own Add-on that does something else... I guess that's hard to define in a license and not "open source" enough.

In my estimation I would have to 10-100fold my user base to be able to survive on donations, that's a really hard thing to do. I would have to put 90% of my efforts into marketing and then have only 10% left to improve and keep compatible with the annual ESRs.

[RealRaven2000]

Further discussion, on one of my other Add-ons, SmartTemplates, see: https://github.com/RealRaven2000/SmartTemplates/issues/251

I am still searching for the correct sort of license, to move away from CC 4.0 ND. Not sure that going full GPL is the correct fit. I may have to come up with a completely new license model that isn't officially documented anywhere, but there are some alternative models listed there.

if you can avoid it, please do not add more low star reviews to that Add-on it has already been punished for having the "wrong" kind of license. It already has a low user count that makes it hardly commercially viable - SmartTemplates is an extremely complicated, high maintenance Add-on and I have to rewrite huge portions of the code to become API compatible to become a pure mail extension / remove the "experimental" status. It earns a large part of its money with commercial users (domain licenses) but I do not want to close it off from the public because I think it is still valuable to a lot of people.

A general observation: whenever license models are discussed, I usually get suggestions of changing my monetization model - I know that I can rule out donations because they are not sustainable (been there, done that) - but I find it interesting that it is part of the discussion. Could it potentially be handled in a separate discussion? Because monetisation is at least as complex as the licensing discussion, it is highly critical and full of pitfalls.

[Amoeba00]

I do not envy the position you are in having to navigate these licensing and monetization issues all the while making sure your efforts in developing the software can continue to serve the community without being taking advantage of by those of unscrupulous nature. Anyway, I thought it was worth commenting that I appreciate your work will continue to be a paid supporter. Thanks again!

[xtbqimuxmvtx]

My biggest problem is if your business model isn't built around generosity, then the profit motive can lead to it becoming less "free" (as in speech).

i.e Synergy makes FOSS work because their software is complex and needs to be reliable

I continue to pay for Synergy as it becomes relevant because I know the software is free

"Freemium models" if they ever start free, quickly end up "the licensed bit only" is proprietary - but that's the driver of software development and then it just becomes a premium-oriented piece of software with no motivation to improve software for the gratis user (who may actually be passionate about FLOSS)

So yes as far as Freedom goes, CC is a passable grade, freedom for the user, but not for the community

[RealRaven2000]

My biggest problem is if your business model isn't built around generosity, then the profit motive can lead to it becoming less "free" (as in speech).

I understand, the problem is, that it is really constant work and big crunches of months of fulltime work on the ESR releases, so it cannot be funded via donations. I am working on building up my recording studio to make it a more reliable source of income so that I can get rid of my current source of income (add-ons) but this takes time. I am not going back to work for a (closed source) corporation to finance my free work.

• With quickFilters, you can literally use all the filters that you have created using it without needing the Add-on installed, so there is really no need to fund a license every year.
• QuickFolders has a graded model that scales with the presumable number of hours the users will save every year that they use it, and this is successful. ONe of the features that is behing the "Pro" license are keyboard shortcuts for jumping to any folders. You can easily replace this functionality by installing an Add-on like "Quick Folder Move", so you are definitely not forced to buy this license. The core idea of my Add-ons works without the need for a license.
• SmartTemplates generates more work than it pays for in private licenses but I have some commercial users (domain licenses) that keep it worth its while, and I am my own most important user, so I am well invested in keeping it functional
• FiltaQuilla is completely free (as in beer) and it adds a lot of extra functionality to the filtering process. The reason I never wanted to commercialize it is that filtering is a risky process (e.g. removing attachments) and there is a lot of low level stuff that is out of my control - but this also leads to longer waiting times for fixing buds or implementing new features. I will always prioritize the stability and functionality of Software that is funded by the community that depends on them, so keeps me accountable.

As regards No Derivatives, maybe there is a less restrictive way to avoid being explited by somebody ripping off the complete Add-on and creating their own "light+free" version that they host on AMO. I really don't mind people using portions of my code or modifying it for their own use or uploading patches, this is the main reason why I keep 100% of the source code open. Am I allowed to use the word open? It just seems like the words "open source" are strictly off limits if you want to live of writing software that is publicly readable. (so CC is not an open source license)

Also there is free (as in beer) email support for my users that is being paid for by the licenses, here is a typical example for a thread that goes over many days (big email sizes mainly because of screenshots that I use to communicate):

And there is the weekly meeting with the Add-on developers team where important changes and problems of other developers plus new APIs are discussed. And I do voluntary unpaid reviews for Add-ons of other Developers.

"Freemium models" if they ever start free, quickly end up "the licensed bit only" is proprietary - but that's the driver of software development and then it just becomes a premium-oriented piece of software with no motivation to improve software for the gratis user (who may actually be passionate about FLOSS)

yeah not necessarily what I want. Of course you could make your own quickFilters and just reprogram everything, I have no interest in software patents or anything like that. And also you can make a completely different Add-on with some other core functionality and borrow as much of the code of my Add-ons that you need, I would not regard that as a "Derivative". I guess definitions for the terms are important. I am not a copyright lawyer, but I am open to other licensing models if they fit better.

One thing to bear in mind is that whatever is hosted on AMO doesn't necessarily have to be open source / FLOSS, this was never the intention of the Add-ons store. Commercial endeavors have to be allowed in order to push technology forward through community / user-provided funding.