Well from what I've seen the Sponsorware concept is the ONLY monetization strategy I like from both a developer and a user. What alternative is better?
- Consulting, usually means the project is too complex and hard to use without help. Changes to make the project easier to configure are often not even considered...
- Donations, not sustainable for the developer (no users need to pay anything).
- Open-core, one of the worst strategies, as the developer's motivations are almost completely opposed to the open-source community. The developer wants people to upgrade to premium, so the premium features are always prioritised over community features, and people can't extend the software themselves...
- Hosting, not a bad strategy, but is slowly becoming less relevant as deployment of services is becoming increasingly easy.
- Consulting, usually means the project is too complex and hard to use without help. Changes to make the project easier to configure are often not even considered...
- Donations, not sustainable for the developer (no users need to pay anything).
- Open-core, one of the worst strategies, as the developer's motivations are almost completely opposed to the open-source community. The developer wants people to upgrade to premium, so the premium features are always prioritised over community features, and people can't extend the software themselves...
- Hosting, not a bad strategy, but is slowly becoming less relevant as deployment of services is becoming increasingly easy.