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Question
Is it okay to charge for an open source project that others have contributed to?
Hey y'all 👋 I’m making a browser extension that helps quickly find and switch tab using fuzzy search. After using it for a week myself, i think it adds enough value that people would pay a few bucks for it. I also want to open source it to show that i’m not doing anything shady and to let people that care run it from the sources. So business model would be “paid open source software” where non-technical users pay to use and technical users are left with the choice to pay/donate. Now the question is: would it be acceptable to sell software that strangers have contributed to on github? Would you feel okay knowing that your an open source project you’ve contributed to is being sold a for a few bucks?
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Yes, there’s no problem I think. Recently spectrum.chat does the same. They even have many contributors, yet charging few bucks for premium membership (even though they have free version as well).
That's still paying for hosting the service and not having to set up own servers.