TLDR: Companies should be required to pay developers for any open source software they use.
He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they’d fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that’s usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.
It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t really see any feasible means to get this to kick off.
What are your thoughts on it?
Companies should be required to pay if they take the software, modify or fork it, and then sell it to others. That’s the only case in which I think anyone should be paying for libre software.
For example, the linux kernel is used by android. Google modifies the kernel source and sells it to phone manufacturers. Linus Torvalds (and the rest of all kernel devs) deserve a stipend for the use of their work to generate profit. Also, the modifications should be legally required to be open sourced if they don’t pay.
The ability to modify the code is a central tenet of free software. The GPL takes care of making those modifications available to others. That effectively is the payment the original devs get.