Software Sustainability for Small Developers

Alessandro Bolletta — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:20:00 GMT

Let’s face it, open source has largely become a luxury game. It works beautifully for mega-corporations with deep pockets, or the lucky few smaller companies that managed to build massive, hyper-engaged user bases years ago. For the rest of us—the solo creators and small teams actually pushing technology forward—giving away the recipe just isn't a viable business model anymore.

But I also refuse to buy into the cynical narrative that because code is easily replicated, what we produce is "just an asset" and fundamentally worthless. Small-scale innovation is essential, but we need a licensing model that actually lets us survive.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to use a specific model: the customer pays a premium, and in return, they get access to both the executable binaries and the underlying source code.

From a security and long-term maintainability standpoint, it’s the ultimate insurance policy for a buyer. If they are deploying my software onto a critical platform, they need to know they won't be left stranded if my business goes under or if I decide to change careers. They have the code; they can keep the lights on.

But in the past, pitching this always hit a brick wall. Customers would look at the source code and shrug. “That’s great,” they’d say, “but we don't have the engineering skillset to maintain this anyway. If you stop supporting it, the raw code is useless to us.” And they weren't entirely wrong. Digging into someone else’s codebase, auditing it for security, or trying to recompile it against a newer platform used to require a lot of expensive, specialized engineering time.

But modern LLMs completely change this dynamic. The "we don't have the skills" excuse is officially dead.

Today, a company can buy software from a completely unknown indie developer and bridge the technical gap using AI. They don't need a dedicated team on standby to gain peace of mind. With a frontier LLM, they can:

Audit the code: Drop the source into an LLM to scan for security vulnerabilities or backdoors before deploying it.
Maintain it long-term: If the software needs to be recompiled against a newer OS version five years from now, an LLM can guide a junior IT admin through the refactoring and compilation process step-by-step.

AI turns raw source code from a useless, intimidating liability into a genuine insurance policy for the buyer.

Looks like a standardized legal framework already exists that perfectly fits this model: the PolyForm Internal Use License.

PolyForm is a family of source-available licenses written by legal experts, and their "Internal Use" variant aligns exactly with how independent developers need to monetize right now:

What's allowed: The customer pays once and gets full access to the production binaries and un-obfuscated source code. They get an indefinite right to run the software, make internal copies, and modify the code freely for their own internal business operations.
The strict boundary: Zero redistribution rights. The customer cannot distribute the software (modified or not) to third parties, sublicense it, or use it to host a competing SaaS product. The code stays strictly within their own walls.

Using a standardized option like PolyForm would be a great idea because it gives both sides instant clarity. The developer gets a rock-solid copyright defense to protect their revenue stream, while the enterprise buyer gets a recognized legal framework that permits their engineers (and their LLMs) to handle internal maintenance without legal ambiguity.

This model moves us away from the unsustainable expectation of "free" open source, without forcing clients to rely on a fragile proprietary black box. It respects the customer's need for autonomy and the developer's need to get paid. LLMs aren't just changing how we write code; they’re changing the economics of how we sell it. And for independent developers, this feels like the path forward.

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Software Sustainability for Small Developers