Opensource

Q: What if I don’t want to pay the Maintenance Fee?

That’s fine. You can download the project’s source code and follow the Open Source license for the software.

Do not open issues. Do not ask questions. Do not download releases. Do not reference packages via a package manager. Do not use anything other than the source code released under the Open Source license.

Also, if you choose to not pay the Maintenance Fee, but find yourself returning to check on the status of issues or review answers to questions others ask, you are still using the project and need to pay the Maintenance Fee.

I disagree vehemently! The community adds value and is a form of contribution.

cross-post of my comment elsewhere:

I immediately knew this was going to be from Microsoft users, and yeah... of course, it is.

Binaries distributed under this EULA do not meet the free software definition or open source definition.

However, unlike most attempts to dilute the concept of open source, since the EULA is explicitly scoped to binaries and says it is meant to be applied to projects with source code that is released under an OSI-approved license, I think the source code of projects using this do still meet the open source definition (as long as the code is actually under such a license). Anyone/everyone should still be free to fork any project using this, and to distribute free binaries which are not under this EULA.

This EULA obviously cannot be applied to projects using a copyleft license, unless all contributors to it have dual-licensed their contributions to allow (at least) the entity that is distributing non-free binaries under this EULA to do so.

I think it is extremely short-sighted to tell non-paying "consumers" of an open source project that their bug reports are not welcome. People who pay for support obviously get to heavily influence which bugs get priority, but to tell non-paying users that they shouldn't even report bugs is implicitly communicating that 2nd and 3rd party collaboration on fixing bugs is not expected or desired.

A lot of Microsoft-oriented developers still don't understand the free software movement, and have been trying to twist it into something they can comprehend since it started four decades ago. This is the latest iteration of that; at least this time they aren't suggesting that people license their source code under non-free licenses.

Seems like a Github sponsors promotion website. Why waste money by using a Microsoft owned middle man, when better projects like LiberaPay exist?

Pretty unclear if this has any actual teeth - if you don't pay it says "don't create issues" etc. but is anyone going to stop you?

But let's assume that it did stop you. I'm going to give a dissenting opinion - I don't think it's a necessarily bad idea. Phabricator had that business model for years; without paying you got zero support. No ability to open issues, etc.

My company ended up paying for support... so that we could get support. There's absolutely no way they would have paid if it was a standard license and you could just open a GitHub issue, even if the issues were ignored.

Annoying for non-corporate users though I guess.

This is so stupid. you don't pay so you're not allowed to make the project better by contributing?? I think this person has a very poor understanding of what open source and libre software are. also, open source has not been refered to as a cancer, the GPL has, because of it's copyleft. I have the impression this person does not really know what they are talking about.

How does a project enforce the license? I'm not familiar with a mechanism for public projects to limit who can open issues, etc.