Monetizing Open Source with Fairware: Interview with Virgil Dupras

There has been a long standing belief (or perhaps more accurately, fear), that developers who chose to release the source code for their software under a free and open license can’t turn their project into a viable source of income.

It’s not hard to see how this negative connotation has developed. Those who may not be well versed in the various free and open licenses may believe that they are literally prohibited from charging for their software. Others may fall victim to the failed logic that, if the source is freely available, people won’t pay for the convenience of a binary build.

For whatever the reason, developers worried about losing revenue have traditionally either kept their source closed or resorted to desperate attempts at forcing their users into donating.

But Virgil Dupras thinks he may have found a way to turn a developers open source labor of love into a way to keep the lights turned on, which he calls Fairware. We recently got the chance to talk with Virgil about how the Fairware concept has worked for him, and how he made the leap from closed to open source without losing any money in the process.

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