These are some articles we've written so far about the topics open-source monetization.
The Fascinating Landscape of Open-Source Definitions
April 7, 2023 • Jörg Rech • published on PayDevs.com
An exploration of the diverse definitions of open-source. Discover how different organizations, governments, and tech giants interpret and define open source in their own unique ways. We describe the differences and overlap between these definitions, and extract insights into the consequences and considerations for software developers.
Open-source Monetization Approaches
December 9, 2022 • Jörg Rech • published on PayDevs.com
Open-source software is a type of software that is released under a license that allows users to freely access, modify, and distribute the source code. This approach has many benefits, including increased collaboration, transparency, and innovation. However, it also raises the question of how developers can monetize their OSS projects and sustain their efforts.
Awful OSS Incidents
August 1, 2022 • Jörg Rech • published on GitHub
A curated list of incidents connected to open source software libraries. Currently, probably with a slight bias towards incidents caused by underfunded maintainers of open source libraries on NPM.
Awesome OSS Monetization
May 1, 2022 • Jörg Rech • published on GitHub
A curated list of awesome monetization approaches for open source software. Currently, probably with a slight bias towards open source libraries (like react.js, core-js, etc.) rather than open source programs (like OpenOffice, MariaDB, etc.).
State of OSS Monetization 2022
April 9, 2022 • Jörg Rech • published on dev.to
Conclusion: Many maintainers (40%) want to monetize their projects and could decide it on their own (most projects have very few maintainers). If monetization would work it should yield an income of about 6.6k USD per month or 80k USD per year to enable the maintainers to work part-time (25%) or full-time (33%) on their projects. Furthermore, almost a quarter of the maintainers (23%) would even agree to force/pressure companies to dedicate 3% of their revenue to open source projects.