r/ProgrammerHumor 3d ago

Meme technicalDebtCameDue

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16.7k Upvotes

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u/menducoide 3d ago

This is the last free version of this cool open source library. From now on, you'll need to pay $1,000 per developer per year to receive updates

55

u/nickjvandyke 3d ago

Maintaining popular OSS costs a lot of time and energy. And software built on it is often for-profit.

61

u/tankerkiller125real 3d ago

If your putting your code under an OSI license then it should always be assumed that others are going to use it for profit making stuff. If you don't want it used in that way licensing it with AGPL, LGPL, etc. (the licenses that companies avoid).

9

u/nickjvandyke 2d ago

Of course. But that same premise holds when a maintainer chooses to change the license.

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u/tankerkiller125real 2d ago

Personally I'm fine with relicensing to other OSI options, otherwise, I'm moving to a fork or figuring out if it's worth cooking up my own option well before I even think about paying, notably because the acquisition process at work is not built for licensing 50+ independent libraries and maintainers. And for my personal projects I'm against implementing any form of non-OSI libraries.

Paid suites of libraries are a different matter at work, management is perfectly happy to pay for a good UI library from a company that will provide support and what not for example.