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Thoughts on Funding Free Software Development
This post has been a distillation of my thinking about free software and how it can be sustainably funded. From this exercise are some of my personal observations:
If you have a software idea that you want to distribute for free, determine as soon as possible if you want to get paid to make it.
If you don’t care about getting paid, ever, for that work, then GO MAKE IT! Be thankful for whatever gratuity you get from it.
If you do care about getting paid to make the idea, then explore what funding model fits best for the idea. At this point, DO NOT MAKE THE IDEA AND PUBLISH IT.
If you get funding, GO MAKE THE THING. MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY.
If you don’t get funding, let it rest. Move on to the next idea.
If you already produced free software that was built without funding, accept that you will never recover your development cost.