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I suggested a simple solution for the problem. Ask users to meet a certain fund raising goal and if they don't come up with it, either stop working on the project, or pull it entirely and let them worry about it. This is a capitalist approach to the problem of capitalists exploiting communists. Better approach is probably not license your stuff under exploitative licenses and put clauses in there for bigger companies using your work.


The problem here is, nothing you can possibly do is worth more than money to a dedicated capitalist who already has tons of money.

You can do stuff they exploit, or not. Doesn't change the relative size of the pool of money from your true userbase (likely much smaller), and nothing you do can force the capitalist to buy into your code at a less-exploitative license.

They can and will just pass. And you can pressure your users in a wide number of ways: they are the same dark patterns used by proprietary, totally-closed software. You can become that to get paid… or, more accurately, you can become that, try to squeeze blood from a stone, and find out whether you can torture your users into providing you with the level of luxury you see fit.

This is not the motivation of Free Software, and is barely the motivation of Open Source. Might as well just be proprietary and be done with it. All this works on many levels and money/compensation is only one of the levels.


What is the problem you are talking about? Who exactly has that problem? What are "exploitative licenses"?

If money paid by licensees is the primary driving motivation for development, then FOSS is completely wrong type of licenses for this. This is called commercial development.




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