I do a variation on this to pay my mortgage and feed my cats...

I run airwindows.com and write audio software for musicians and mix engineers. Some of the earliest stuff, a decade ago, was GPL, and I continue to be willing to talk freely about pretty much anything (talking tech becomes a turn-off for musicians, so I don't often get into it as a rule)

What I did to start making (some) actual money versus 'no money' was this:

Pick out some of the stuff, including everything that was GPL, and make it 'free beer' free. Since it's all mine, anybody wanting stuff added to the GPL pool can have it for the asking- it becomes dual-licensed because I'm not actually drawing from the GPL pool. I ended up including source for the public domain FreeverbCJ, and RMSBuddyCJ is GPL- but when I did closed reverbs I didn't even draw on the PD Freeverb stuff, I wrote up a much less object-oriented framework from scratch based on general reverb concepts. I don't use graphics code so I didn't draw from RMS Buddy for anything closed.

Pick out some of the stuff to be closed, and put it out there in such a way that you basically pay for access to get the widget in the first place. Kagi has a nice little setup where they can sell digital downloads with URLs that are temporary- there's no one fixed URL given out. I also keep prices at maybe a fifth of what the big nasty copy-protect guys are doing, and consider sales to be a lifetime thing- I'll support what I put out so long as I'm alive to do it. I keep it real simple so I can do that- if Logic changes and breaks existing plugins, it's on me to make it right for everybody I've sold to, since I haven't given them the code to fix it themselves :P

Lastly, I passionately believe that selling closed source software has to be a 'pull' rather than 'push' model: some people seem to think because they can have an idea, people are OBLIGATED to pay them. I think that has to be earned. I think it has to be earned by behavior. I wouldn't pay for someone to come and kick me in the teeth, so why would I pay for someone to come and shut off my software or audit my shop to see if I'm taking more than I ought? What makes that THEIR bailiwick? (I'm talking of Waves and their raids on studios.)

My stuff's copy protection is the original source of access- Kagi charges for the initial download, there's no place (or shouldn't be) saying 'download anything, pay if YOU feel like it' because why should it be that easy when I've repeatedly worked with people over the years and given refunds if they made a mistake? The effect is the same (except I pay a fee on refunds and chargebacks), it's just that you don't get to have the full product just on a bored random whim. There are demos for that ;)

Once you do have it, I start looking like the open-source world again: there is no dongle, there is no serial #, the bit of software is just the bit of software. It's not even the unlocked demo- there is no unlock to the demo, the product is the same code with the demo stuff (an output muting at intervals) commented out and a recompile. It's a black box like most commercial closed software, but it's a box without locks or traps or alarms- it just sits there working, you can back it up, and the only thing that prevents people from widely filesharing my work is earned respect. I WILL not add stuff that would get in the way of a real user just to fight 'pirates' when I could give a sh*t and earn some of their respect instead.

I also have the following unusual attitude: digital stuff not being used doesn't exist. If somebody who doesn't mix downloads three of my best, costliest (alright, $60) plugins and puts them in their Components folder and then never mixes a song- as far as I'm concerned, there is no 'theft' because it's meaningless. It's the same with a lot of mp3 filesharing, with obsessive warezing- hell, I have legitimate books, legitimate programs I don't read or use. How much more with the guy who's a big collector and eeevil w@r3z puppy and doesn't actually create anything?

I would hope if I could encourage a guy like that to create, they might be so moved they'd turn around and re-buy the three plugins- now that would be a donation I'd find really touching :D but I'm not going to wig out over some guy hoarding digital bits like Smaug in a cave, knowing he has them and doing nothing. That's more sad than hurtful... if he tries to be important by mirroring my site as warez and promoting it, I'd have plenty of recourse to politely shut him down, which is all I'd want to do anyhow.

I'm not as big a fan of Kickstarter, though I've seen it be appropriate: seems like that's useful for clear projects requiring hired work, but I don't think it's a substitute for just entrepreneurship in general. Sometimes it's not about Tom Sawyering, sometimes you just have to take a risk and do something.

Ack, what a TLDR- well, you mention 'donation business models' around me and you get an earful. I beg tolerance for the fact that I'm an old fart, and it's good to drop by Slashdot again :)

But he's OUR uncultured pathetic little micromanaging dictatorial prick :D

WTF? A bit better? When the average person household makes 55k a year and has negative net worth and saved 19k for retirement being worth more the 1 million+ is not a bit better then average. It puts you in the upper 1% of the poopulation.

Asshole.

Very bad reading comprehension by submitter. So bad it made me log in to down rank this article.

I would point out that at least in recording studios, you'd better be ready to fetch coffee and get it right- because it's a winnowing-out process that is teaching the studio about you as much as you're learning about the studio.

The studio needs you not to come in there thinking your book learning prepares you for the real job. Hypothetical example- let's say you're tracking heavy guitars. You've experimented, and you discovered that if you swap out the SM57 often used for this for an Audix D6 (a kick drum mic!) you get a way bigger, more metal heavy guitar sound, so you're ready to make your contribution and you put up the D6 instead- and get spanked for it and banished, even though in solo it obviously sounds much bigger. You are sad.

And well you should be- because your 'better sound' isn't going to sit in the mix. It's stomping all over the bass, the top end fights with the vocals, it's throwing the whole balance of attention off and worse, the guitar players for this band aren't so hot and it's the bass and drums that are really going to salvage things, especially the bass which is nailing a deceptively simple part that you wrote off as unimaginative- but which the more experienced guys recognize as the song's basic hook, simple as it is. Your guitar sound's screwing that up completely.

Back to the coffee. If you can't come up with the humility to try and do your best on an apparently menial task such as getting the coffee right- even though it offers no opening for you to show off your skills- what chance do you have of getting a mix right, when most of the 'impressive smart-guy engineer' tricks anybody could offer will not actually serve the song other than as distractions- when you're working with bands which very likely have only one chance in their lives to grab at the chimera of recording industry success? Very often showing YOUR quality will detract from the quality of the final result, if nothing else by distracting.

I honestly think the rules are different for glamour professions (like studio internships!) where there's a long line of would-be superstars trying to get a chance to show their awesome to the world. Hell, the musicians have to pay to gig in some locales. I'm not sure it's the same for software employers- but I am sure the motivation's the same. It's either riches or status, and when it's status ('I work for Google, I'm elite' or whatever) there will be people ready to pay to work at the status job.

And when you have jobs like in the recording studio, where the depth of 'black arts' knowledge can be pretty deep and counterintuitive, especially in mix which is a whole can of worms all its own- there's a relevance to the unpaid coffee-fetcher internship, because it's like boot camp- as long as you haven't figured out how little you really know, you are dragging down the whole enterprise with careers at stake. _Everybody_ is running scared and groping in the dark above a certain success level, because there aren't consistent, predictable metrics for what's going to work... it gets pretty voodoo dance-y after a while.

Just some thoughts from an old slashdotter with studio-owning friends...

I cannot mod your funny higher than 5, but I love you, dear Anonymous Coward :)

Too right. It's really weird to return to Slashdot and see the tone of the discussion...

People are so very quick to spot that career politicians have the morals of robber barons, and this shocks and offends everybody to the point where the cry goes up, 'Off with their heads! We will trust entirely in business, which must be honorable or expire in competitive battle!' ...when business IS robber barons, that have the morals of career politicians- and you don't really have any better chance of monitoring them and getting coherent information than you had with the politicians.

And without that coherent information, you are boned and cannot maintain the anti-hierarchical system you seek.

I see naive people.

Some of you guys need to take a sabbatical like I have, get out in the world, or at least get into some political blogs that aren't 'Red State'. The questions are sadly complicated, and none of the answers are really free from consequence- put it this way, when your answer looks really simple, you have an = somewhere that you meant ==, and though you think you understand what's going to happen, the compiler's going to happily follow your instructions and deliver results that will shock you.

...would you LIKE some?
*bing!*