Introduction to Open Source Maintainence Fee license

[tonyqus]

To ensure the long-term sustainability of this project, we are introducing an Open Source Maintenance Fee. This fee is required to be paid by all consumers of the NPOI who generate revenue. You can pay via GitHub Sponsors.

We plan to enforce the maintenance fee starting with the release of NPOI 2.8.0 on April 10th, 2026. At that time, a EULA on binary releases (including those published to GitHub and NuGet.org) requires payment of the Maintenance Fee.

Please see the Open Source Maintenance Fee for more information.

Steps to complete:

• Add final EULA to the repo [OSMFEULA.txt]
• Add EULA to .nupkg
• Sign up for GitHub Sponsorship and create the tiers:
  • Small organization (< 20 staff): $15/mo
  • Medium organization (20-49 staff): $30/mo
  • Large organization (50-99 staff): $60/mo
  • Super Large organization (>=100 staff): $99/mo
• Update README

[Bykiev]

Hi, unfortunately, GitHub Sponsorship is not available in some countries, it'll good to include additional payment services.
For additional stimulation, it'll good to allow to use NPOI binaries without fee for companies, who contributing to NPOI.

[tonyqus]

True. That's a bug for telegram region like Russia, Ukraine and other Europe countries. Perhaps TON netowrk payment is an opinion

But Github sponsor has native support for monthly occurance.

Alternative payment channel:

• Donation for NPOI #923

[Bykiev]

In these countries you can't even create an account on GitHub Sponsors (it's not supported by GitHub), and to pay via GitHub Sponsorship you need an international payment card, it's can be impossible