Would like to report a bug, but do not pay the fee

[petm2022]

Question

My company's IT/Legal department are struggling to find a way to pay the fee, but I hope it will come soon.
In the meantime I am not able to report some bugs I found, without been dishonest (we earn money).

Would it not be beneficial for WiX that everybody could report bugs, even if they are not paying the fee?

Open Source Maintenance Fee

• I (or an organization I'm a member of) pay the Open Source Maintenance Fee by sponsoring the wixtoolset project because I support the maintainers.

[robmen]

There has been some debate around issues and PR restrictions in the OSMF. I totally agree that there is value in bug reports. At the same time, it is a factor that can help get procurement teams "over the line". I'd say the debate is not yet settled, but from what I've seen over (almost) the last year, I may be leaning back towards removing issue restrictions from the OSMF. I'm watching this one closely as the other, more complicated--and IMHO more important issues--have recently been resolved.

Note: I would be interested in understanding the payment challenges your company is facing. Removing procurement hurdles is high on my list. Feel free to follow up with me directly.

[petm2022]

I think the challenge was that Sponsoring was something new and had to go through several departments, Legal, IT and Finance.
That can take a while for a big company.

[robmen]

Yes, it can. There was a time, maybe 20 years ago, when Open Source projects had to go through a similar process to get approved for use in companies. Eventually, legal processes were standardized, and it became much easier. We're kinda' going back to those times, but for procurement this time, since we left procurement out when we standardized the legal process and created the unsustainability in Open Source.

Given feedback thus far, I think things are going well. You can point to the other ~200 companies that stepped up and supported the WiX Toolset project by paying the Open Source Maintenance Fee, which might help things go more smoothly in your company. I know when Microsoft officially released an Open Source project back in 2004, it helped Open Source adoption at other companies. Microsoft was one of the first to pay the Open Source Maintenance Fee for the WiX Toolset, so maybe that can help your company.