I would say that this is different from "hard to explain". What is being proposed is essentially "OSS with a paid model for premium support / feature development." It shifts the language from "donations", which companies don't understand, to "consulting", which companies do understand.
It's not completely novel, projects such as openssl and sqlite do offer paid consulting, but it's not normalized among companies to pay for doing so. If Filippo can normalize having OSS be treated as paid consulting engagements I think that would be wonderful for the community.
> OSS with a paid model for premium support / feature development.
Adding features do not reduce likelihood of bugs, if anything the opposite.
It's very difficult to come up with a paid model that specifically encourages a preventative strategy towards bugs and security flaws. Currently the best we have is getting people who care about those things to build software.
Yep. Working for a company that makes paid for software and customers always want more features. It's really fun when paying mutually incompatible features added and the sales people and developers go at it for months trying to figure out how to make it work.
Then, maybe a year later, that feature is no longer the hot new thing and it becomes abandonware inside the application. If you're app isn't cloud based you have no idea if you can rip the feature out or not as you have no idea how many people, if anyone still uses it.
It's not completely novel, projects such as openssl and sqlite do offer paid consulting, but it's not normalized among companies to pay for doing so. If Filippo can normalize having OSS be treated as paid consulting engagements I think that would be wonderful for the community.