AKA: Pay with user data
Contributions in form of user data which is send to a server of the maintainers, who then sell this data. Should be clearly communicated to the users to clarify that this is not malicious code from a contributor. Might have legal implications (GDPR) if the value generation is problematic/illegal in a country. Often leads to recurring payments.
Requires:
- Setup of an account at a data buying platform
- Integration of data collection mechanism that sends data to specific servers
- Setup of a legal entity to accept the payments or crypto
Variants & Options:
- Anonymized Data: Collecting only anonymous data has less legal problems
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Weeks | Integration of a data collection system |
| Effort to maintain | Low | Probably only updating subsystem |
| Cost to set-up | None | |
| Cost to maintain | Low | Platform used to collect telemetry data might cost a little (or take a share of the income) |
| One-time Income | N/A | Value-generating subsystem probably causes recurring revenue |
| Recurring Income | Medium | Depends on the data value and number of end-users |
| Income Predictability | Medium | Easier if the clients have no alternative systems |
| Full income Threshold | ?1000+ | Depends heavily on the user data value |
| Recipient | C | |
| Additional Work | Low | Extra work to initially integrate telemetry system |
| Visibility | Low | Easy to overlook by users |
| Necessity to pay | High | Payment is enforced by running the OSS |
| Entry Threshold | Low | Client only pays indirectly via his hoster/cloud for the resources. Client might need to disclose data usage to his users |
| Countervalue | OSS | User pays for using the OSS |
| Scalability | High | Scales with the number of end-users |
| Effort for marketing | None | Will make waves but no "sale" is necessary |
| Competitors | None | |
| Software types | Special | Best for stand-alone systems with third-party users (e.g., blogs, LMS, etc.) |