Hmm, I agree with you, but this is a bit different. It’s not like someone took faker.js and started charging for it. It’s a tool that the author chose to give away, and other companies used. There’s literally nothing even asking people to pay, other than sponsorships at the bottom of the README.
You can’t expect companies to pay if you never ask!
I’d love to see GitHub create more avenues for paying for software. Shareware-esque licenses with an easy way to pay, bounties attached to Issues, etc. I think companies _would_ pay (if given a reason); right now it’s framed as a sponsorship (not even a donation!) so the thought process for a company (assuming they even notice it and consider it) is “well, I don’t think it’s a good marketing expense for us” and that’s it.
I’d say most people using faker.js aren’t big companies trying to fuck over a random dev. It’s an employee typing “npm install faker.js”, and genuinely never thinking about it.
> You can’t expect companies to pay if you never ask!
You're right. Sadly, those making use of the software are often not the ones holding the purse. The request gets only to the Devs looking at the software pages and nobody generally writes to management saying "we want to use this open source software in our product and this guy/girl asks to be monetarily supported to maintain the software".
Just straight off making a commercial use license is better and clearer. However, often devs can't take on potential liabilities in such cases, which further complicates matters.
You can’t expect companies to pay if you never ask!
I’d love to see GitHub create more avenues for paying for software. Shareware-esque licenses with an easy way to pay, bounties attached to Issues, etc. I think companies _would_ pay (if given a reason); right now it’s framed as a sponsorship (not even a donation!) so the thought process for a company (assuming they even notice it and consider it) is “well, I don’t think it’s a good marketing expense for us” and that’s it.
I’d say most people using faker.js aren’t big companies trying to fuck over a random dev. It’s an employee typing “npm install faker.js”, and genuinely never thinking about it.