Go ask Wikipedia about their business model. Or the Linux kernel. Or any number of other Free Software projects that neither charge users a fee nor show ads.
Those are not businesses. They are free projects which a dedicated person (or group of people) donate their time and energy to produce.
Wikipedia has their semi-annual donation drives and many (not most, but enough worth mentioning) FOSS devs are salaried by companies like Google and Microsoft and are allowed to work on patches to out-of-scope projects on company time provided they’re still fulfilling their main roles. There are also Liberapay, Open Collective, Ko-fi and such but for the majority of FOSS devs not funded by large corps, just developing a large and widely-used program because they want to, donations rarely ever cover as much as they would make at a 9-5. There are also nonprofits that distribute donations to FOSS devs. For most it is a money pit, but to them the passion is worth more. They do it for the love, not the money.
What are your suggestions besides ads and subscriptions, professor?
Go ask Wikipedia about their business model. Or the Linux kernel. Or any number of other Free Software projects that neither charge users a fee nor show ads.
Those are not businesses. They are free projects which a dedicated person (or group of people) donate their time and energy to produce.
Wikipedia has their semi-annual donation drives and many (not most, but enough worth mentioning) FOSS devs are salaried by companies like Google and Microsoft and are allowed to work on patches to out-of-scope projects on company time provided they’re still fulfilling their main roles. There are also Liberapay, Open Collective, Ko-fi and such but for the majority of FOSS devs not funded by large corps, just developing a large and widely-used program because they want to, donations rarely ever cover as much as they would make at a 9-5. There are also nonprofits that distribute donations to FOSS devs. For most it is a money pit, but to them the passion is worth more. They do it for the love, not the money.
These are not businesses.
…and? That’s what makes them the best part of the Internet!
And it doesn’t stop them from existing, proving that the Internet does not actually have to run on profit.
Yes, we could have an internet without businesses. See here.