Have you heard of the Open Source Pledge? Not exactly what you're suggesting but in the ballpark: https://opensourcepledge.com/

You sound like a very reasonable person. :)

Many arguments here are extremes with the assumption that everything is a hard lines that cannot be crossed. That's not generally how the real world works (there are some hard lines in the world) and the parties involved can communicate and do communicate.

Overall, the OSMF is working very well right now. There are still a couple of wrinkles to iron out (like invoicing). It's also early. :)

So far the only hard conversations with accounting are how to pay by invoice (since GitHub Sponsors invoice handling is a bit wonky). Those that pay by credit card have pretty universally been, "Oh, this is easy. Done."

> You can "circumvent" this license by building the software yourself, or having someone else build the software.

Correct. By design. The software is Open Source. That's the whole point.

> everyone contributes whatever they can and uses whatever they need

Yeah, Open Source projects don't work like that in reality. It's far more consumers take what they want and demand what is missing.

Well, we've had a few CVEs to work around Windows vulnerabilities, and one of our own making. :( We've also improved the integration with modern Windows build systems. Now adding some features to the language to make it easier to use for simpler installation packages (still more work to do).

In this day and age, it's very hard for software to sit idle.

Thanks. Perhaps I'd better finally update :)

This is something companies track. Honestly, tracking payments is one of the most important tasks for the procurement teams in a company. They have tools and if the OSMF becomes common, it'll be standard practices for them too.

I 100% agree with you, and I applaud your efforts.

However, my experience is that procurement teams will not pay unless they are required to. Once they are required to, that's what they do. Charity, good will, and responsible citizenship are not arguments to move a procurement team.

But legal... the legal team is very effective at moving the procurement team.

> If an author uses a license that makes big tech pay, they will not pay.

That's not my experience.

> But, of course, if the project has started with this license, it never would have gotten to the point where several big companies were using it.

That is very possible. We'll have to wait to see if any projects start with a maintenance fee then become popular.

> "hey do you want to set a norm of commercial users paying to use your software?"

My ideal would for the norm to shift such that companies think, "We're using this Open Source project, are we already paying the maintenance fee?" I don't know if that will actually work out but I know that if we don't try it will not.

The OSMF is my attempt to find out.

Yeah. My experiences with the OSMF is that companies won't pay for charity, but they will comply with licenses.

Hmm, companies often use GPLed software without complying with the license (for eg Vizio is being sued right now), so I wonder why the OSMF situation is different.

Some percentage will not comply. Either in bad faith or just lazyness/incompetence/accident/whatever. But as long as that number is relatively low and a decent chunk pays "their dues", it is not really a problem.

This hasn't been the case as of yet. We've had many large companies just pay the sponsorship. Honestly, the problem is not the EULA, it's the need for more flexibility in invoicing than GitHub Sponsors provides today.

To say it another way, legal is cool with it, the challenge now is making it easy for procurement.

Honest question: how would you know if companies stopped using the product as a result of this change? Presumably the only ones you'd hear from are ones that managed to get through the process far enough to complain about procurement (which is definitely another issue, pretty sure GitHub Sponsors doesn't do net 60...)

Oh, I (would and do) expect we'll see our download numbers (nuget.org and GitHub both track those) decrease. Or maybe consumers will choose to stay on a version before the OSMF was introduced longer. So, we'll kinda' be able to tell.

Simplifying the payment process for procurement is my focus in OSMF (after I get some work done at my day job) to minimize any friction.

right, we wouldn't mention it at all. no way legal would approve it, so we'd just move to something else.

Legal in many companies of different sizes, from Microsoft to tiny ones, have all evaluated and approved of the OSMF EULA. Now, it's fine if someone says I don't want to deal with the EULA. But, in that case, my project didn't mean that much to them in the first place.

I'm listening to concerns and adapting. As noted above, so far, it's gone very well.

I'm not criticizing, mostly complaining about how poorly legal teams still perform in this capacity

I hear you. This feels very similar to the early days of OSS licenses. They were terrible and scary until a few big companies finally came out and said OSS licenses weren't (all) terrible or scary. Then accepting OSS licenses became a norm. I'm hoping the OSMF or something like it can change the norm for Open Source sustainability.

I'm not saying it'll happen, but many people told me Microsoft would never accept Open Source, and I proved them wrong. :)

I hope you continue to prove them wrong. It takes people taking a stand to do that, I admire that.