Free at the Point of Download
Yesterday I posted an entry about how I felt that commercial economics should be more widely employed in the FOSS world and that it’s our failure as a community to engaged appropriately with non-material-contributing users in such a way as to make our material contributions more economically sustainable.
Some took this to mean that I was a dangerous capitalist (ironic for those who know my as the dangerous socialist).
OK let’s make one thing clear, I do _not_ advocate for the sale of something that is already paid for. And by that I mean that someone else already put the money or time into making something FOSS and has graciously licensed it for download.
If you need to spend full time on a project to make it a success then you have no choice but to find a way to make money. My proposals so far have been more about promoting the idea of paying for the _creation_ of software than about the rather more impossible _distribution_ of software. To do that would be to make something artificially scarce.
There must be a way to see users in different lights, they are: users, potential contributors, potential inverters and a source of problems. If you can turn every Ubuntu user into a contributor then that’s great, it’s healthy for the ecosystem and it’s growth and I know it’s great for the education of the contributors. On the other hand if you don’t have time to contribute then the next best thing to invest is damned money. Paying for someone else’s time can get you that contribution and it can even be more meaningful since the people who your paying can be highly skilled and your simply saving them from a life of non-foss development.
I’ve not yet given up the hope that we _can_ find a way to have fair Free Software development that pays the bills and delivers freedom.
Tags: capitalism, commercial, companies, Economics, free software, linux, open source, socialism, Ubuntu
People that say no one will pay for something they don’t physically have to must really have forgotten how easy piracy is. It’s true, most users of Photoshop don’t pay for it. But there’s enough that choose to that selling it remains a feasible business model. I believe pure gratitude for software can pull in an amount of money comparable to proprietary license guilt-tripping given a similarly sized userbase.
There’s nothing dirty about money. The Bible says it can get people to do all kinds of evil, the ‘root of all (instances of) evil thing is a pathetic mistranslation and is false by simple observation.
ethana2: When I use the word ‘dirty’ I mean to say that others seem to consider it so, but I certainly don’t.
After all, what is so evil about an imaginary substance.
Hello Doctor
I see you want to solve the problem with the community and i have a vision 
that i believe could work:
I commented on your last post and i was talking about an infrastructure :
Think of a combination of http://ubuntu.allmyapps.com/install-pc , elgg , and ebay , an application website were users and businesses can (i don`t know the term .. it could be pledge ) bid for features they want in ubuntu or for plug-ins for their apps . If the feature is interesting for other users then they will also bid/ pledge for it and if the amount will ever be satisfying then someone will develop it . If the ideas isn`t interesting then no one will add anymore money to it and the money should be redirected . All this should be socially linked .
this is the basic it can be refined with all sort of rules: like how much time befor the funds will be redirected to other projects , or you can add stuff to a project only if you double the previous amount , etc.
What do you think ?
I have to agree with you money desn`t exist just like god(s)
) , or property , or human rights , or countries , or boundaries, they are just conventions
“if the only way to make a living in software is to be paid by proprietary vendors then we’ve lost and we should give up this farce and go home.”
I do think that the only way to make a living in software is to go proprietary; however, I do not share your sense of loss. Money is not a real motivator to build software. I really do not want to build a social context in which programmers are no longer free to do what they want because we already have that now with proprietary software companies. Why take away what truly makes FOSS special which is the FREEDOM? When you put money into the equation, you take away the developers freedom to pursue their own ideas.
I develop FOSS not because I want to make a living off of it, but because I love to share my work. If I start to get paid for this and others start to decide what I should do, then the motivation will dwindle to the way I am at my current proprietary job. Its a path that only leads to mental suffering.
Why? Most people work their day jobs in a corporate environment. This is known as a “wage slave” where there is a forced hierarchy in the form of a dictatorship. So some people break out and become self-employed but the realization must come that if you earn money from different sources, you are still a slave to the sources of income. Meaning, we all have to compromise our real desires with those of the corporation or sources of income (for independents).
Instead of trying to figure out a new business model for FOSS developers, why not pursue finding out a new way for society to interact such as what is proposed by the Venus Project called a Resource Based Economy? Their proposed solution not only fixes the problem of software developers not having resources but fixes war, hunger, and poverty.
Michael, you misunderstand. I don’t seek to find a motivator (money is no motivator anyway), I seek to find an enabler. Enough money to make FOSS programming survivable.
Besides you don’t need to spend 40 hours a week doing what other people want to do, nor do you need to really listen to their exact specifications. It’s important that in any job you have the guys to tell your boss he’s wrong and ugly. (thanks torvalds) Most people who work on Debian and the Linux Kernel are employed, either corperate or self. Money isn’t their motivator, writing good code is. The people who hire them trust them to get one with a good job.
It’s lack of trust to produces dictatorship, not money.
Perhaps we should step back and examine why we’re doing what we’re doing.
To give some background on my POV, I’m a student. My dream situation is to run a small game dev studio (I am an idealist). In my head I want the software that I make to be FOSS, that sounds good.
But what do I mean by FOSS. We can say what we don’t mean all day long (free labor), but what do we actually mean by FOSS?
In my dream situation I mean that when I sell my game, people are able to modify my work directly. People are also able to give their copy (modified or otherwise) to their friends. If the friend likes it enough, maybe he/she will purchase their own copy.
Specifically when I distribute my program, I also make the source code easily accessible. Free(as in freedom) open source software.
How does this differ from the proprietary model? 2 ways:
sharing is legal – does this make me less likely to get money from my software?
Source code is given out – does this make me less likely to get money from my software?
to both of those I say “No…”. To the first I would ask, “has making sharing illegal stopped sharing even a little?”, and to the second I would ask “is the percentage of users who know how to compile my project large enough to make this an issue?”
My next notion is what has been close to FOSS in the market so far (“close” to)? for gaming I can think of many examples. The source engine, Neverwinter ngihts, Dragon Age, and game that allows mods. The source engine specifically though because you do have source code and can compile it. The only difference with these is (aside from amount of source code given) is the freedom to share it (which is laughable, see software piracy).
(IMO)The only thing FOSS changes is the pretense that our users aren’t sharing our software; we know our users will do so, and we want to harness that.
“My dream situation is to run a small game dev studio (I am an idealist).”
My dream situation is a world that is run without money, where resources are equality shared among all people of the world, and where the only incentive for people to do anything is that they WANT to do it.
“is the percentage of users who know how to compile my project large enough to make this an issue?”
All it takes is for 1 “hacker” to compile your game and then distribute it via Bittorrent for your game to become unsellable or even better, someone adds it to PlayDeb or a repo like that which makes it trivial for any user to download it freely.
I fail to understand how FOSS can be applied to making a sustainable game company.
“All it takes is for 1 “hacker” to compile your game and then distribute it via Bittorrent for your game to become unsellable or even better, someone adds it to PlayDeb or a repo like that which makes it trivial for any user to download it freely.”
How is this more risky than a closed source model though?
@Brandon: If it’s legal to get your game for free, people will get it for free. Hey, it would probably be available to download for free in the Software center, someone’s ppa, playdeb, etc.
OTOH, redistributing commercial proprietary software is illegal and one has to put an effort to get the pirated copy – even then it’s still an illegal copy.
There is still no case of an FOSS project that earned money through direct sales. Decision to sell a FOSS product would also probably harm the project’s community and FREE version would be available shortly.
This business model of false scarcity doesn’t work in FOSS, so another method of earning money is needed and that it what our friend doctormo is searching for.
“How is this more risky than a closed source model though?”
Its completely legal to distribute the game for free. Using PlayDeb or other repo’s are out in the open and very easy for anyone to use. Bittorrent requires a bit more technical skill and courage due to the possible lawsuits. But using an OS built-in feature for getting software (Ubuntu Software Center), everyone can do.
Michael: Except if the wishes of the project were to ask kindly under some community wide project to kindly pay if you can. Distributors aren’t that heartless to ignore the wishes of developers and if the software center has the ability to take money then I don’t see a reason why people can’t select the price they want to pay (which they will be informed is actually investing in bug fixes and improvements in the future)
Simon: Although Stallman earned some nice money from selling Emacs… of course that was before the internet took hold. On the other hand it depends on the audience, core members of the FOSS community seem to respect the wishes of developers and copyrights in general more than simple users do.
Also remember that distributing freeware (non-commercial buy proprietary software) is also illegal under the same laws. This foss thing really is more than just a dichotomy of code access and making money.
So an honor system is called for?
“If you enjoy this software, please consider personally purchasing it from the developer. If you already have, thanks for helping us do what we love.”
I think that most sites would honor that sort of system. In fact I would be happy that my software is getting the attention of an external site. The fact of the matter is that today people can choose to pay for software, or get that same software at no cost. There is a minute chance of lawsuit, but the technical know-how to download a torrent is easily equal to adding a 3rd party repository to the system.
I think the results will be similar to standard games, most people don’t pay for them. The only difference is we don’t pretend they are.
I think a lot has been said on this subject already.
What we need is a test.
It would be great if we could get one FOSS project that will require a payment in the Software Centre for Maverick or Maverick+1.
Of course, the dev’s should be willing to provide statistics, so we know how many people bought the product.
I wonder if the free version would be available soon online.
Another question is, why would someone pay blindly without trying the product first? If we allow the user to try the product is it some sort of trial period or a demo version?
Personally, I think that kind of thing would fail, and I think something in the lines of “investment” doctormo spoke about numerous times is more likely to be successful.
Maybe something like Blender projects Elephants dream, Big Buck Bunny, Yo Frankie and Sintel?
That seems to generate a lot of interest, but they still get external funding from sponsors and government.
Or maybe developer could list some features they want to work on for program X and then users bid for the features, when they reach a goal the dev set, let’s say 200$, then after the feature lands the dev collects the money?
That would only work for programs in active development though, not the 100% finished product. There is a problem with this last approach and that is insufficient “job security” and possible problems with pension or health insurance.
I can see how the honour system might work but it looks like regular “please donate…”. Maybe the word “buy” is stronger and sounds less like begging for charity.