This post today is what is wrong with open source software. If someone knows jwe, then they should tell him that lots of corporates and startups WANT to support stuff like this.
But you cannot give a paypal link and expect donations. As a company, I cant do that. I need an invoice. Hell, if you can get a business account, I daresay you will get subscriptions.
I like to call this "gratitude-ware".
Check out Sidekiq Pro and their experience making 80k USD per month. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925449
At first I built Sidekiq as an LGPL project and sold commercial licenses for $50. Revenue was laughably small, but the response I got was encouraging: people told me they were saving $thousands/mo over previous solutions and wanted to buy the license just to give me something as thanks.
Octave currently offers support packages for which you have to write in to the maintainer and have an email discussion. Compare that with Sidekiq : http://sidekiq.org/products/pro
Its one of the best designed gratitude-ware page...even works amazingly well on a mobile phone.
We personally also buy pfsense licenses https://www.pfsense.org/our-services/gold-membership.html
TL;Dr Donations wont work. Engineers cant give an excuse to corporate accounting. Make a pro subscription with ANY "pro level" feature. I can get my accounting to sign off. And no "contact us to find out about support contract".
But you cannot give a paypal link and expect donations. As a company, I cant do that. I need an invoice. Hell, if you can get a business account, I daresay you will get subscriptions.
I like to call this "gratitude-ware".
Check out Sidekiq Pro and their experience making 80k USD per month. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925449
At first I built Sidekiq as an LGPL project and sold commercial licenses for $50. Revenue was laughably small, but the response I got was encouraging: people told me they were saving $thousands/mo over previous solutions and wanted to buy the license just to give me something as thanks.
Octave currently offers support packages for which you have to write in to the maintainer and have an email discussion. Compare that with Sidekiq : http://sidekiq.org/products/pro
Its one of the best designed gratitude-ware page...even works amazingly well on a mobile phone.
We personally also buy pfsense licenses https://www.pfsense.org/our-services/gold-membership.html
TL;Dr Donations wont work. Engineers cant give an excuse to corporate accounting. Make a pro subscription with ANY "pro level" feature. I can get my accounting to sign off. And no "contact us to find out about support contract".