TLDR: Companies should be required to pay developers for any open source software they use.
He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they'd fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that's usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.
It's an interesting concept, but I don't really see any feasible means to get this to kick off.
What are your thoughts on it?
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If companies are required to pay, then the software is not libre. I understand your intent, but this isn't a solution (even if it was, it would just mean that it would just be a tax for small companies, Meta and Alphabet aren't worrying about a tax), building a stronger community is.
Commercial software is not mutually exclusive with libre software, and things like copyleft exist to prevent companies from using libre software to create proprietary software.
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The ability to modify the code is a central tenet of free software. The GPL takes care of making those modifications available to others. That effectively is the payment the original devs get.
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Again, my freedom to use and modify the code as I see fit - including selling it - is the whole point.
There's no doubt the developers deserve support for their work, but there's no requirement imposed by Free Software for this.
All criminals get away with their crimes for a time. How many companies want to be sitting on a time bomb like that though?