This would also encourage non-developers to dip their toes in a development environment which would be an undeniably positive thing for the community.
Anyway was just wondering if at any point someone tried to set something up like this. I've been toying with adopting a model like this for one of my popular open source projects that has a _lot_ of non-programmer users and would benefit from increased participation from users in the open source process.
"pgModeler is open-source software, and you can get its source code anytime if you want to compile it by yourself. As a convenience, we provide compiled binary packages at a really fair price. Also, if you're interested in evaluating a binary package, you can get a demo copy before proceeding with the purchase." (quoted from from [1])
It's open source (GPL 3).
They give build instructions, but it's quite strenuous to build[2].
The software source was available to download and compile under a free software license. Pre-package binaries were available, but not under the same license. (Plus I think it included some non-free extensions). The developer made money selling site licenses for the pre-compiled binaries.
It wasn't much money. He had to deal with a lot of licensing paperwork. This was ~20 years ago, when credit card purchases were often over the telephone.
But this was also 20 years ago, before package managers became popular. I've had source-only free software distributions of mine turned into packaged distributions, without me even knowing about it. (Someone added one package to PyPI, and someone else another two to Debian.)
If your non-programmer users are used to installed from PyPI, or conda, or some other package management server, then they'll want to download your package from there too.
If your free software source is available, and it isn't packaged, then I think someone else is going to do it.
One of the downsides of package managers is how they worsen the connection between developer and user, and make it harder for users to 'dip toes' in the development environment.
The Steam version was priced at $3 and had lots of positive reviews.
Their license https://github.com/armory3d/armorpaint/blob/master/LICENSE.m...
ArmoryPaint is a sort of alternative to substance painter, and you can download it for 16€, but they also give you the choice of compiling it from source for free. It has a nice balance between people who pay for the convenience and frugal developers who understand and can compile it themselves (or don't but are now incentivized to learn, usually kids getting into game development) and can use the program; otherwise, wouldn't have been accessible.
If you compiled it yourself there were no ads or commercial restrictions though.
Wander if it's a good business decision ....