this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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Bitwarden and Cryptpad. Both open source and self hostable, yet I pay for both. paying for open source is possible.
He never said paying for open source projects is impossible, obviously we have the ability pay. It's the expecting EVERYONE to drop money on every FOSS project that's infeasible. That shit ads up.
It's the same issue that PeerTube has, people making free content with no ads, but they aren't guaranteed payment. I'm not about to pay $5 per month on Patreon for every creator that I like, cause that's just not sustainable.
When I make this choice, I also change my expectations. The amount of money that is sloshing around in silicon valley is grotesque, and so of course they can throw whole towns worth of developers at just about any problem. The fit and finish of proprietary software is actually pretty bad considering the resources they have access to.
With FOSS software, a small project might be one or a few developers. But can it be good enough. I generally thing a lot of software has been good enough for a long time. A lot of computer applications are basically solved problems -text editing, search and reading, spreadsheets, forums, live chat, asynchronous mail, etc.
A proportion of FOSS users dropping a little money here and there will never give projects the kind of infinite growth expected in silicon valley, but it absolutely can fund small shops doing good, simple projects. Heck, it might even be more sustainable than the venture-capital-sell cycles that require every company to be perpetually exhibiting exponential growth or die. Yes, I'm aware that the bigger FOSS projects are only solvent because they make money from corporate customers. It is an issue that corporations seem to have nearly all the discretionary spending power, but thats for another discussion.