alt Hacker NewsIt would be interesting to see if there could be a sustainable OSS model where customers are required to pay for the product, and that was the only way to get support for it as well.
Even if the source was always provided (and even if it were GPL), any bug reports/support requests etc. would be limited to paying customers.
I realize there is already a similar model where the product/source itself is always free and then they have a company behind it that charges for support... but in those cases they are almost always providing support/accepting bug reports for free as well. And maybe having the customer pay to receive the product itself in the first place, might motivate the developers to help more than if they were just paying for a support plan or something.
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Well, I think this is what SchedMD do with Slurm? GPL code. You can sign up to the bug tracker & open an issue, but if you don't have a support contract they close the issue. And only those customers get advanced notice of CVEs etc. I'd expect nearly everyone who uses it in production has a support contract.
Some software providers sell software including support, no restriction on number of deployments as well as the possibility for private modifications, then publish under a permissive licence two-three years after a release. That seems to me like a good way of doing things.