Frequently Asked Questions

Supported Source is a licensing model in which software is publicly viewable but commercial use requires a paid license, while individual hobbyists and short-term evaluators can use it for free.

It's also the platform (that's us!) that issues those licenses, handles billing and wire transfers, manages renewals, and provides the enterprise procurement scaffolding so maintainers can focus on their project. Read the definition.

Open source is free for everyone, including companies that turn it into millions of dollars in revenue. In practice that means maintainers are working, for free, for big companies. What a rip off!

Supported Source keeps the source publicly viewable (important for adoption, auditing, and learning) but asks commercial users to pay (important for sustainability). Hobbyists and individuals continue to use the project for free.

Supported Source works in many ways. The normal way is with the entire codebase as one licensed project, but another way is with open core.

Open core splits a project into a free edition and a paid edition. You can then sell licenses to the paid edition through Supported Source.

Sometimes it's not possible or otherwise too complex to use an open core model. It might also be tricky figuring out how to split in a way that incentivies companies to buy the paid version, without giving it away for free already in the free version. Introducing an artificial split into your codebase is not necessarily the best approach. For those cases, we recommend not using open core at all.

You can dual license your project, then sell the paid licenses through Supported Source.

In this model, the free license would be a viral copyleft license such as the GPLv3. This license is generally unusable by companies because the license requires derivative works to also be open-sourced under GPLv3. Simultaneously, you also sell commercial licenses via Supported Source.

If your only goal is allowing free use for noncommercial or evaluation purposes, you do not need to do it this way. Supported Source has three tiers: commercial licenses, temporary evaluation licenses, and hobbyist licenses. The evaluation and hobbyist tiers are already free.

Not in the OSI sense, but your source is still publicly available on GitHub or GitLab for anyone to read, learn from, audit, and contribute to. It's still open in spirit but now you'll get supported financially from companies using it.

Three steps. First, onboard your project: add it on Supported Source and switch to the Supported Source license. Second, set your pricing. Third, get paid: companies purchase licenses through Supported Source and you earn revenue.

The easiest way to start is to fill out the interest form.

You update your LICENSE file and add a short note in your README pointing commercial users to your Supported Source project page. We recommend bumping the version number at the same time. Your code, branding, and community stay where they are.

Previous releases under the prior license are unaffected. Existing installs continue to work under whatever license they were obtained under. But going forward, new updates are using Supported Source, so commercial users need to pay.

One standard license, three lanes:

• Commercial — paid, for companies and government agencies. Nonprofits get a discount on the same terms.
• Hobbyist — free, for individuals on personal, non-monetized projects.
• Evaluation — a free 30-day trial so developers can try before they buy.

Your project gets a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) through Supported Source. New committers are asked to sign it before merging. Most contributions come from people submitting fixes their company needs, so there's no expectation they're paid for small commits.

We'll have a revenue-sharing feature in the future for projects with multiple core contributors.

Previous contributors do not need to sign the CLA retroactively, since their contributions are still under the old license. As you've self-forked your own project, you are preparing a new derivative work off the old licensed project.

Yes. Your code, your repo, your community, your roadmap. Supported Source is the payment rail and procurement support. We're not an owner, and we don't gate your decisions about the project.

You do, we help. It's actually tricky to get right but typically looks like this: small companies license at a fixed self-serve price, and large companies go through a sales and procurement process where we help scope a custom quote. Nonprofits get a discount on the same terms.

No setup fees and no monthly minimum. We take 15% of license revenue on each subscription, exclusive of payment-processing fees. If you don't get paid, we don't get paid.

That 15% covers a lot: the Bonterms legal scaffolding, CLA management, invoicing and wire transfers, renewals, and sales and procurement support for your enterprise deals. You keep the rest.

When you're ready to get paid out, you'll get a request from our banking partner for information on how to complete the transfer.

Because we have to pay payment-processing fees and run the payouts, there's a minimum payout of $100, at most once per month. There's also a waiting period from when a purchase was made on the site to when it's eligible for payout to account for chargebacks or refunds. See the Terms of Service for details.

In the future we'll have a feature for automatic recurring payouts.

If you use a Supported Source project for, by, or on behalf of a company, government agency, or any organization — yes, you need a commercial license. Individuals using it on personal, non-monetized projects don't.

If you're not sure, you can run a free 30-day evaluation before deciding.

We build on Bonterms, a standardized, lawyer-vetted software license designed to survive Fortune 500 procurement and federal-contractor review without months of redlines. Buyers' legal teams recognize it and many have already cleared it for other vendors.

Yes. Self-serve buyers can purchase by credit card via Stripe. For larger deals we issue real invoices, accept wires, and provide the documentation enterprise accounts-payable departments expect. Multi-year deals are available, usually with a discount.

Stripe subscriptions auto-renew annually unless cancelled. If a customer lapses but keeps using the software, the license terms require them to back-pay the gap plus a small penalty when they reinstate — the same way taxes work if you miss a quarter. Good incentive not to miss a renewal.

Visit our contact page or email us directly at hello@supso.org. If you're a maintainer specifically, tell us about your project here.