Post #4119481

2026-07-26 19:40 UTC

As I look at monetizing some of the little software tools I am making, I have been told by some of the people I show them to, to look into copyrights. I do admire a good idea, and more and more- a good business model that keeps people honest and away from the creepy surveillance capitalist ways. When chatting with some folks and looking into open source licenses, I find myself drawn to closed custom licensing agreements that would lend themselves to one time purchases of self hostable servers, that could run on other hardware, or even be resold, but not duplicated (like selling an instance to a hoster that can serve many people, but the hoster wouldn't be able to create another instance). In this way, my business model would be selling new instances of my webapp tools for artists, and servicing them. Any business model/ monetization advice on keeping things open source vs closed and copyright proprietary? #advice #licensing #copyright #artist #software #business

Replies (1)

@JamesAkers@expressional.social 2026-07-26 19:43

The open source lover in me is most excited about an AGPL project I forked and stripped down to a handful of functions while adding a bunch more. Despite ie being built to be easy to set up, I believe a large percentage of my target demographic may not own a computer (using their phone instead). I think the business model there is selling them a little cluster of mini computers they can self host that back each other up in case one of them is compromised. They could use the same cluster to host other phone accessible little webapp tools. #selfhost #opensource #AGPL #copyright #advice

Open ##4119541