I like the idea of software freedom as much as the next guy, but software being free for noncommercial use is significantly more important to me (and I think many people) than being fully free-as-in-freedom. If hybrid licensing makes it possible to make a living developing free-ish software, which is still essentially free for "the commons" but not for corporations (which lest we forget are not actually people), then I think that's better than the alternative of everything being proprietary. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
We will need to see a major culture shift in industry towards paying for support for free software before that can change. It's ridiculous that companies are willing to shell out so much money for proprietary SaaS products (especially in the data engineering space), but are not willing to pay for support/consulting of open-source products, even if the latter is cheaper. It's not entirely rational, but it's the way things are, and we are still a couple of years off from anything being different.
Well-intentioned developers deserve to make a living on free-ish software more than I deserve fully free software.
Paying a solo developer for support of their application is a nice idea in theory, but hard to sell internally when the cap on "how much is this worth to us" is lower than the cost of the lawyers it would take to get terms agreed with that developer. The change we need is not in the open-source ecosystem, but inside companies where so much value and attention is squandered by legal, marketing and other departments which can be grouped under ass-covering.
Are you from nestle?...because they think exactly this about water...even if the earth gives it for free, but hey please earn your right to breathe air...and lets see how far you come.
Aren't earning & deserving two sides of the same coin? You deserve something because you did what was necessary to earn it - you earnt it so you deserve it?
e.g. in GP's comment - the 'well-intentioned developers' 'deserve' to make a living, because they earnt it by making the nice 'free-ish software' and being 'well-intentioned' etc.?
We will need to see a major culture shift in industry towards paying for support for free software before that can change. It's ridiculous that companies are willing to shell out so much money for proprietary SaaS products (especially in the data engineering space), but are not willing to pay for support/consulting of open-source products, even if the latter is cheaper. It's not entirely rational, but it's the way things are, and we are still a couple of years off from anything being different.
Well-intentioned developers deserve to make a living on free-ish software more than I deserve fully free software.