Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 253. Misconceptions Around Open Source Licensing and Monetization

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253. Misconceptions Around Open Source Licensing and Monetization · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: In the recent days, Mediator, Auto Mapper, Mass Transit, Fluent Assertions, and more have all announced changes to their licensing.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: They'll be requiring payments from organizations that use their open source libraries.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: This has raised a lot of talk and a lot of concern in the community, and it has also brought up a few things that are misconceptions around this whole situation.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: So in this episode of Dev Questions, I want to talk about these misconceptions and what to do about them.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is actually part one of a mini-series where we're going to talk about this issue because it is a big issue, and it's one we need to understand well, we need to address well, and pretty much everybody needs to make some changes.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about it in today's episode of Dev Questions.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Software development is more than just writing code.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the rest of it.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, let's talk about open source libraries and their licensing and the misconceptions around it.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's start off with what happened.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Recently, Mass Transit, which is a messaging bus abstraction layer for.NET, and it's a pretty popular one, announced that it's going to be changing its license in order to require payments from companies who use their library starting in 2026.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you do have eight months of heads up.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: On that same day, it was announced that AutoMapper and Mediator would also be under a commercial license at some point in the future.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a follows a trend where other open source libraries are doing the same thing.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: So this is going on for a little bit and it's continuing to happen.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, it feels like it's happening faster and faster.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the seven misconceptions that I see around this type of situation.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Number one is that you've lost something, that that this is a this is somebody taking something away from you.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not true.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: You have not lost anything.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, what you have today is the same as what you had yesterday.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: What you have as far as provided to you by, let's just pick mass transit here.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: What mass transit provides to you today is the same as what you had yesterday.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they will not and cannot take that away from you.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not going to lose anything.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now you could argue, well, I'm losing the next version.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, that's true.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: But you haven't lost anything.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: So right now, mass transit is in version eight.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: That version eight is under, I believe, the Apache licensing.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not positive on that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: You have to go look at it.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it's Apache 2.0, though.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that licensing allows you to do a lot of things with that source code, including create a fork of it and building your own mass transit system.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, version eight will always be under that license.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's not going to change.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that license is going to stay there.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, the mass transit organizer, the person behind it, really a person, that's another issue we're going to talk about in a minute, but that person has said, listen, we're going to keep version eight open source and we're going to continue to maintain it.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be in support for almost two years.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a long time and it's still open source.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's still provided for free.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to pay a licensing fee to use version eight in production.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that will continue in perpetuity.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that's number one.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: You haven't lost anything.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, number two, this is going to happen to every project you use.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you may say, wait, Tim, what do you know?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, every project that you use is going to go away at some point.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in this case, you may say, Well, I can't afford to pay for mass transit.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so then you use version eight until you have to replace it at some point with something else.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: But it it's it stops support in two years or less than two years.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So at that point, it goes away.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: They stop working on the free version.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: That happens with other open source projects.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: They just don't charge for the next version.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: It just goes away, it dies.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm a big fan of the um MVVM library called Caliburn Micro.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: There was a very real chance it was going to go away a few years ago because the maintainer said, I'm done.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do this anymore.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, it started to go away, and then some people took over and started maintaining it.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: But if that had gone away, well, it's no different than if it had lost that free version they started charging for a next version, except for the fact that you wouldn't have the option even of getting the next version.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it's going to happen to everything.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you use closed source software, if you use paid software, that software still dies at some point.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of libraries and tools that I've used that are no longer supported, even though they were paid or closed source.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So every library goes away at some point.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, number three, this is a big one.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: People say, well, Microsoft should take over XYZ library, or Microsoft should come out with their own version of XYZ.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Again, Mass Transit being one where there's actually a Microsoft library kind of in development right now, or they have been in development.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: But guess what?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, they're not going to have all the features that Mass Transit did because they don't have the runway or even the time that the people behind Mass Transit did.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Which sounds odd for Microsoft, but Microsoft does not have unlimited resources.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: But Microsoft supplied dependencies aren't better.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So let's name a few dependencies that Microsoft themselves provided.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not going to go a cheap route and say Silverlight, because Silverlight is actually external factors that killed Silverlight more than anything Microsoft did.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: I got a whole video on that, but let's talk about the Microsoft dependencies that kind of went away too.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: WCF, Windows Communication Foundation, did not get moved over to.NET Core, and then later.NET.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: There is an open source version they kind of gave the community.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's coming along, but they abandoned it.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: The Workflow Foundation, gone.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: App Fabric, gone.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: UWP deprecated, close to gone.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: XNA Game Studio, gone.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Visual Studio for Mac, gone.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: These are all services that were some even paid from supported by a big company that are gone.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like you can say, well, if it goes to Microsoft, it'll be better.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, in a lot of ways, it will be worse because Microsoft has budgets and they have to think about the bottom line, and not everything is going to survive budget cuts.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's number three.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Number four is that, you know, well, you know, the the positive way of saying this is dependencies are always a risk.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the misconception is that somehow dependencies are safe, or some dependencies are safe.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: No dependency that you take with your application, no dependency is totally safe.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: It does not matter what you choose.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there is very small bits of risk, and there's massive risk.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, you need to be wise enough to see the difference.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: But just because you take a dependency on something Microsoft provides, doesn't mean there's not risk.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Again, UWP, that's pretty much dead.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: X and A Game Studio, gone.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: VS for Mac.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you were a Mac shop that used Visual Studio, gone.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: So just because there is something backing it or money backing it or a big company or both doesn't mean it's not a risk.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Every dependency you take is a risk.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: You need to think that way.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: That way, when you start taking on dependencies, you don't just grab tons of dependencies.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: You think through is this work worth it?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Balance the positives and the negatives.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Everything you do is a risk.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Does the reward outweigh the risk?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it does outweigh the risk, but then that little percentage of risk happens.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Something goes wrong.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: What are you going to do?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: You have to realize that things were outside your control.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, number five, um writing code for myself is free.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen this especially when it came to things like mass transit, where they said, I'm going to rip it out and I'm going to build it myself.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Mass transit is looking at, that's not final yet, but looking at a$400 per month, which sounds like a lot, or$4,000 per year licensing fee where that would apply to the entire business.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not per user.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: So$4,000 per year.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: How much is your salary?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just take a small number.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe your salary is$50,000, right?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's a small salary, really, at least in the US, when it comes to software development.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's still a salary some people get, but that's on the lower end.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: So$50,000 divided by$25 an hour, roughly, something like that.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: How many hours do you have to work before you've paid off that$4,000?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a ton.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you'd be looking at top of my head, I think 160 hours, okay, with a four weeks.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: So one month, one month at time you have paid for all of mass transit.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, could you replace mass transit with something else in that four weeks?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Probably.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: But now you're just, you know, apples for apples the same.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, next year it'll be quote unquote free, unless you brought a different third-party dependency in that you might depend on.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: So your time isn't free.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to think that through.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's part of taking on dependencies because there's a risk for you taking on as well.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: The risk is maybe you don't get it right.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you don't have all the complexity and all the value that comes from a library that's been built over five, 10, 15 years and refined and honed, and features add to it that make it a revaluable tool.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the things that people don't get about Microsoft creating a replacement for some of these things.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Microsoft might create that, but it will probably be feature limited.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: It won't be fully featured because the fact that they are starting from scratch or close to starting from scratch, they don't have the history of years of work to build into it.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like you come into this with the same.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not equal, it's not comparable necessarily.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So writing code yourself isn't free.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: You have to think through those and weigh those costs.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to pause here for a minute.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: As a developer, if you're just a peon developer, the lowest level of the department, or you're an upper level senior developer, or you're a head of development department, it does not matter.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have to think about weighing every decision you make.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's not enough to just write code.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: You have to think about what code you write, what dependencies you bring in, what the cost is going to be.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't limit yourself to thinking about who has to write a check.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's not the only cost that goes into it.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Maintenance takes time, which is a cost.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Upkeep takes time.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Security implications are a big deal and could cost you dollars, not just time.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine if you have a data breach because of something you wrote, as opposed to using a safe third-party library, safe er, third-party library.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: These are all things you have to weigh.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you're thinking about development, you need to think about the cost of everything: cost of time, cost of energy, cost of distracting yourself from the primary mission.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that causes businesses to fail is when they get, they take their eye off of what makes them great, what is the one thing they do better than anybody else, and they start doing other things.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: For example, in my business, it's about training people.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's about helping people become better developers.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I can write lots of software.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I have written some software for my business.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I do that in a very, very limited capacity.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I can't, but because I'm weighing the cost and say, you know what?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not worth the cost of me doing this compared to maybe using spreadsheets or something else and me spending more time at what is what we do best.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to think through those things.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you find yourself maintaining four, you know, for me, find myself maintaining four, five, six, seven in-depth apps that do some really cool things for my business and never creating content to help you.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then guess what?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: My business goes away because I'm not helping you.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm creating cool apps and systems, and they do great things, but they're not helping me do what I do best.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: So think that through when you are building anything, when you're thinking about building anything, when you're creating your application, it's not just the code, it's the cost, risk assessment, weighing the cost in your time, the danger of taking on a dependency, all these things need to be taken into account.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Number six in our misconceptions around this whole uh issue is that licensing, the thought is licensing can't be changed.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's released under a certain license, therefore that can't be changed.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's not true.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, a license does is not a restriction on the owner in most cases.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: There are small exceptions, but for the most part, a license is what the owner says you can do with their thing, but it's their thing.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, they own it.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So a person who creates an open source project, they own it.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: They are the owners.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not up to you to change it.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not all it's not for you to say, well, you can't change it now.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: They can make the change.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the way they do that change is by doing a new version with a new license.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially, in some ways, they're taking a fork of their project and create a new version.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they have the right to do that.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: You don't necessarily have the right to change the license.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, you're not the owner, they're the owner.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: The owner has more rights than the user does.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that's number six is yes, a license can be changed in most cases.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Number seven, this is one that's, I'm sure, frustrating to open source project owners.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the thought that if you have contributed to an open source project, that you should have some type of say over if it goes commercial, over getting some income or residuals if it does go commercial or something of that nature.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, contributors do not have a say in the future of a project.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it comes back to that license.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that license says, here's how to contribute, but it also says, here's what that means.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that contribution, there is nothing in any that I believe, any open source license that says, if you contribute, you now own.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: I have not found that yet.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can point out one license that says that.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be kind of fun to see one.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I wouldn't ever use it.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: But no, just because you contribute to an open source product does not mean you have a say in the future of the project.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: You are not the owner.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Just because someone helps you fix your countertop does not mean that they now have a say in whether or not you can sell your house or that they would get a cut of selling your house.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's not how that works, even if they were a volunteer.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: In the same way, you are a volunteer working on a project.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I do want to point out, as going back to point number one, nothing changes in the version that you contributed to.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you contributed to Mass Transit version eight and you had a big part in making version eight what it is today, you still have that part.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Version eight is still open source and it will be open source.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: You still have access to that.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing has changed.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: What is going to change is any work going forward will be under a different license.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point, everyone knows what that new license is.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, you have the ability to make a choice to say, I'm not going to contribute to version nine because it's a paid version.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to contribute to something that somebody else profits from.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's kind of ironic.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I want to point out the irony here, real clear.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to contribute to something that somebody else will profit from, but not you.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's what all of open source is.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Your company is profiting off of that open source work, but giving them no money.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Very clear.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, you have been doing that in reverse, but you don't like it when somebody else does it to you.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I understand, but you have to understand their point of view as well.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: So be very careful on that.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're not, if you're contributing to open source, you know you're contributing to that project at that time, you don't get a long-term say in the project.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So what conclusions can you reach about the situation?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm not gonna say that any of this is a good thing.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think the fact that we're going through this is a bad thing.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Be careful when you hear me say that.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying any one person did a bad thing.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact that we're going through this right now, I think is a bad thing.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's the fault of the maintainers, at least not exclusively.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that everyone involved is somehow at fault.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, first up, maintainers should have chosen a monetization plan at the very beginning.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I understand why I didn't.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of maintainers built something and said, this is kind of cool.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing this myself, but hey, I'm gonna share with the world too, and thought that it would benefit a few people.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that blows up and becomes goes viral, and all of a sudden they're now the linchpin that you know thousands of businesses depend on.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, they didn't intend for that to be the case, but I would encourage every maintainer that has an open source project to have a plan in place at the very beginning for what monetization looks like.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we're gonna talk more about that next week.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's on the maintainage.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think they should have a plan up front.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, Microsoft and other package managers should have a system in place that requires an extra step before upgrading over a license change.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, what happens right now is if using Mass Transit or Auto Mapper or Mediator, you know, their NuGet packages you can bring into an application.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if you just say upgrade all to your NuGet packages, well, you could change a license to a different type of license, which is now paid, and not realize it.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you should, and that's somewhat on you.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I understand that it's a pain to go through every dependencies and make sure the licensing hasn't changed.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: But again, whose responsibility is it?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because they communicate their change in their licenses.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: You might say, well, I didn't know.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: You took the dependency for your application.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're responsible for your application.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Part of that upgrade process is looking at those changes.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I know it's super easy to go upgrade all, especially since a lot of your dependencies are from Microsoft, and those dependencies are open source and freely available because of the fact they're from Microsoft and it's just part of what they do.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's easy to say upgrade all.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I've done that on videos where I've said, okay, we start a new project, we say upgrade all dependencies to the latest version.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that's when they're all Microsoft dependencies.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll probably in the future do videos where I say, okay, let's look at every license before we Upgrade.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's part of what you need to do.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: But with that being said, I think that NPM and Microsoft and other package management owners need to have some type of speed bump in place where they say, hey, there's an alert here, you have to go accept the new license agreement.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Or you need to realize there's a new license, the license has changed.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that might be a pain because some of the people tweak the license a little bit.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a big deal, but they tweaked it.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you still should have to accept those new terms and be conscious of that change.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I would like to see, again, NuGet and other package managers to have something in place that stops you from just auto-upgrading to a new version or upgrade all to a new version without consciously saying, yes, I understand the license changed.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's what's on the package managers.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: What's on companies is they rely on software and they should support it.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: So companies that rely on software, they need to pay for it in some way.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you may say, well, Tim, I'm a small business or I'm a startup and I can't afford all of that.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can't afford not to, okay?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because you're building your business on it.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I really appreciate when companies say, hey, if you're under a certain level, you don't have to pay anything.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Microsoft is very generous.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, JetBrains has matched in a lot of that generosity where they say, hey, you know what?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you're under a certain threshold, Microsoft's threshold is under$1 million in gross revenue and five or less employees.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Then you get, for example, Visual Studio Community Edition for free.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or the VS Code uh C sharp dev kit as well for free.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really cool.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I really appreciate when companies do that to allow small businesses to ramp up to getting paid something before they have to start paying.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: But if you rely on something, you should pay for it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: You should support it because you're supporting yourself.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you support that thing, it's more likely, not guaranteed, but more likely that it will stay around.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: So again, next week we're going to talk about the fact that I think everything should have a monetization plan.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: We'll come back to that.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying everything should be paid, but I'm saying everything should have a monetization plan.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: So companies that rely on software should support it.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Next up, developers.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's something on us as well.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Developers should have a better understanding of the trade-offs when using third-party libraries.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Too many developers are, for lack of a better word, ignorant of what's going on with their third-party libraries, what the trade-offs are of using one library versus another, what the dangers are of potentially losing that library, and so on.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: We need to do a better job of maintaining our third-party libraries, understanding our third-party libraries, understanding their situation as an as an organization or company, and understanding what comes next for that company.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to do a better job as well.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, next week we're going to talk about why you should want every library you use to have a monetization plan.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's going to be fun.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: I encourage you not to miss it.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to go into what the different options are and why we ever want to pay for things.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because I totally get it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to have this massive bill or tons of little bills for all your dependencies and what we can do about that.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's different options.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to go through a few of them, but we're also going to talk about why it's safer this way.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Until then, thanks for listening.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I am Tim Corey.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamTimCorey.com and enroll in a course.