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Don't Be a Free User (2011)

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Re: Don't Be a Free User (2011)

#101

Post by mrob »

hedora wrote: post #100
mrob wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Business Source License is not Free as in Freedom. The FSF states the first requirement for software to qualify as Free ( https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html ) is: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose." Any limitations on use make the software non-Free.

The FSF doesn't say you can run it when you wish. Seriously though, you download it now, and there is a contractual obligation that the software will be GPL later. Stallman used to charge people for improvements to emacs. This is the same, but with an extended delivery timeline that (hopefully) leads to better Free software. Also, note that once you pay, you get all the benefits / protections of the GPL, including re…

>The FSF doesn't say you can run it when you wish.

Yes it does. "As you wish" means no limitations. It's a superset of "when you wish". By your argument all software is Free software, because eventually the copyright will expire.

Being GPL later is better than being proprietary for as long as possible, but until it happens it's still non-Free.

Re: Don't Be a Free User (2011)

#102

Post by nodamage »

microtonal wrote: post #28

Unfortunately, it often seems that with too little money, a service disappears due to bankruptcy, with too much money a service disappears due to talent acquisition. With software as an application, there was still the possibility to continue using software for years when a company shut down. Windows has terrific backwards compatibility and on UNIX you get far by keeping around old shared libraries and giving a hint…

The problem is these days many desktop applications have mobile counterparts and some kind of service to sync the two. If that service shuts down, the application becomes a whole lot less useful. That, and iOS/Android have terrible backwards compatibility, so mobile apps that are not continuously updated often don't work correctly on new OS versions.

Re: Don't Be a Free User (2011)

#103

Post by camkego »

devoply wrote: post #16
nerdponx wrote: post #14

This is why web services should be open source and available for self hosting: - The geeks with the know-how to run a Web server benefit from your product for free, but in exchange you get bug reports, patches, etc. - Everyone else pays, because you also offer a paid hosting option. But because the product is fundamentally open source and federated, it can and hopefully will outlive its original developer.

Going open source does not save any project. It's just a different way of doing things. If the project is not profitable, it will still go under while being open source with a hosted business model. The question is does this sort of model work with _your_ project. There have been open source projects that used it just as marketing tool and then shut down the open source version when they grew popular enough. There ha…

The comparison to locusts is quite beautiful.

Re: Don't Be a Free User (2011)

#104

Post by candiodari »

avian wrote: post #83
saycheese wrote: post #81

Average user can't afford pay for all the free service they receive. If each user had to pay $20 a month for even only the top twenty websites they use and this would be beyond the reach of the average user; Google, Facebook, Free Apps, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Twitter, etc.

Is there a way to actually estimate how much money I would have to give per month to compensate for the ads I see on the web? Perhaps some browser plugin that counts ad impressions? I doubt that any one web site makes $20 per month from my visits.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlouis/2013/08/31/how-much...

Relevant data repeated here. Per-user revenue for some sites:

Google: $10.09

Facebook: $1.63 (although has since doubled)

LinkedIn: $1.53

Yahoo: $1.81

Re: Don't Be a Free User (2011)

#105

Post by avian »

candiodari wrote: post #104
avian wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to actually estimate how much money I would have to give per month to compensate for the ads I see on the web? Perhaps some browser plugin that counts ad impressions? I doubt that any one web site makes $20 per month from my visits.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlouis/2013/08/31/how-much... Relevant data repeated here. Per-user revenue for some sites: Google: $10.09 Facebook: $1.63 (although has since doubled) LinkedIn: $1.53 Yahoo: $1.81

Interesting. Note that these numbers are per quarter, so according to this, average revenue even for Google is only around $3 per user per month.

Re: Don't Be a Free User (2011)

#107

Post by sreenadh »

microtonal wrote: post #28

Unfortunately, it often seems that with too little money, a service disappears due to bankruptcy, with too much money a service disappears due to talent acquisition. With software as an application, there was still the possibility to continue using software for years when a company shut down. Windows has terrific backwards compatibility and on UNIX you get far by keeping around old shared libraries and giving a hint…

I believe that the future will be for applications as SaaS or selfhosted on your own server and everyone will have an account with aws or any cloud provided or self hosted cloud. So all the data will be on your own cloud and the data will be stored in a standardized way so that we can switch to another service and data will always be with the user.
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