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On paying for software

seths.blog

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Re: On paying for software

#71
post #60

One of the reasons that I switched from Linx to OSX was so that I could pay for more of my software. Why? Because then I more of the software I used could be maintained by someone who had the time to dig into bugs and UI problems and to fix them. But in Linux, couldn't I just edit the source myself? Realistically, no. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to source-dive in a totally new project in a language I never…

I use Linux and most free software projects allow donations. I even donated to projects I don't actually use, like FreeBSD. I donated money to many free software projects, Ardour, Mozilla, LibreOffice, OpenBSD, etc. This is clearly a false dichotomy.

The problem with open source is, for some reason, the developers feel no sense of obligation to the end users or the people who donate to them. MacOS devs do and will go out of their way to make sure their software is not just usable, but a sheer pleasure to use in every way possible. Yes, there are exceptions (I'm looking at you, Apple, with your Xcode and your Finder) but for the most part that's just the way things are in the MacOS app ecosystem.

Open source, on the other hand, is like trying to shave with a razor blade with no handle. It's a hard sell to get people to donate to projects that they know are going to cut them at some point.

Re: On paying for software

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great blog post - thanks for writing it. I've had the same experience with people asking for an MIT license on dependabot-core (the public repo that holds the core logic for my SaaS business, but which has no license and a comment saying those who wish to use it for commercial gain should contact me instead). I already give the product away for free to open source projects and anyone using it in a personal capacity,…

> by owning the codebase I can protect myself from a larger player copying my work I find this statement confusing. In what sense do you not "own" your codebase if you release it under the GPL? And if the software is released under the GPL, large players have no advantage, because they have to release all of the changes they make to your code if they're using it to compete against you. What you're saying is that rest…

That's not what I'm saying, and I don't think I'm spreading any falsehoods about free software licenses here.

Building a business is about distribution as well as product. My product is pretty good, but my distribution, compared to a large player with an existing user base, is woeful. If I licensed under GPL I would be giving explicit legal permission to any big player (who was open source) to take my product for free, and compete with me solely on distribution.

Licensing my product in the above way wouldn't be good for me financially, and as a result would decrease my likelihood of working full time on Dependabot. Worse still, it would disproportionally decrease my returns from working on the product, as opposed to distribution.

Thanks to copyright law we don't need to hide our codebases in order to charge for our work. That's a great thing, and there should be acceptance of code that is developed in public but without a permissive license. It's a perfectly rational decision, and creators shouldn't be put under pressure to give their development work away for free instead.

Re: On paying for software

#73

As an indie dev of desktop software, I have grown tired of complaints that my products aren't free as in speech and beer. I now reply to such criticism by linking to this post: https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/

I don’t understand when people complain about software that isn’t free. You want it free? Go make it yourself and give it away...oh, you can’t make it yourself? Maybe that’s why it’s not free.

> oh, you can’t make it yourself? Maybe that’s why it’s not free.

That's not a complete argument. Anyone can mop the streets, but we still pay for their services.

Re: On paying for software

#74
post #31
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that was part of an effort to do this in the early .com days, it is a lost hope trying to sell open source software to consumers. While selling to enterprise can be made via consulting and training, most consumers just want a one time shot paying for their software. Well, if you do that with commercial software, usually the only way to avoid paying is piracy. In open source world, they can just go to anoth…

I don't think the primary problem is cost, but that when you build your product tightly coupled with a propretary product that is hard to migrate off of then the vendor of that product can shake you down, or they can go bankrupt or what have you. It makes your business vulnerable, and no one wants that. Also your production environment crashing because a license expired. Fun times.

Yes, but this is a symptom, not a cause, of a non-competitive market. You get stuck with only one option in markets where most of the other players have left the market because they can't figure out a way to make money in that market anymore. With competitive markets, switching costs are typically optimized away by the players that are interested in poaching one another's customers.

Re: On paying for software

#75
post #43
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it certainly isn't natural. So what? Nothing about software development is 'natural'. I don't even know what definition of 'natural' you're using here. > It's a phony concept that exists to support an unnatural business model. It's a social construct that we've adopted in society because it allows for things we like. > The real business model should be players paying you directly to develop and update the game…

> Nothing about software development is 'natural' Why do you say so? > I don't even know what definition of 'natural' you're using here I think that he's talking about the ease of copying software: it's quite hard to make people pay for something so easy to duplicate..

"You cannot go against nature Because when you do Go against Nature It's part of nature too." -- Love and Rockets, "No New Tale to Tell"

In the scientific sense, everything is natural. Truly "unnatural" things are like supernatural things -- stuff that exists only in fairy tales or horror stories or some metaphysical religions.

Saying that something is unnatural is typically a value judgement meaning that it is unhelpful, damaging, or against a goal considered inherent in some area of life, and so on.

Otherwise, a more valid if unfortunate use of the word "unnatural" is as the common short-hand for "human-made" or "artificial", similar to the way that "animal" is used as a short-hand for "animal that isn't human". Of course propulsion labs, parliaments, and property laws are absolutely as natural as mushrooms, mollusks, and manatees, but in addition to being natural the former are also human-made. In this truest and widest sense, everything that is artificial is also natural.

Other uses of the words "natural", "unnatural", and "nature" should be informed by this broadest and truest one, especially when making judgements about laws or norms or behavior. This might sound pedantic, didactic or even obvious at first, but with some consideration it may reveal itself as a surprisingly useful and clarifying point to keep in mind.

Rather than proclaiming copyright laws unnatural -- a value judgment masquerading as an objective fact (perhaps unintentionally) -- it would be more fruitful to ask questions such as, "How does copyright differ from other property laws?", "How are property rights justified?", "What are the differences and similarities between physical things and ideas?", and so on.

Yes, it's nearly free to copy digital works, which therefore lack the same level of scarcity that we experience in the rest of our lives.

Yet the creators and consumers of intellectual and digital works have little choice but to create and consume those works in the broader context of the world of physical scarcity in which society is embedded. It's sad, but you can't stop burning calories and taking up space just because you are consuming digital media.

Re: On paying for software

#76

As an indie dev of desktop software, I have grown tired of complaints that my products aren't free as in speech and beer. I now reply to such criticism by linking to this post: https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/

Paying for software may be moral , but it certainly isn't natural . As the game's developer, you're the scare resource. Making copies of the finished game itself costs approximately $0. Copyright makes your game artificially scarce so that you can charge for it. It's a phony concept that exists to support an unnatural business model. The real business model should be players paying you directly to develop and update…

Are you saying that the "phony concept" of copyrights shouldn't exist? Authors and artists (and software developers) would have little incentive to produce in such an environment.

Re: On paying for software

#77
post #60

One of the reasons that I switched from Linx to OSX was so that I could pay for more of my software. Why? Because then I more of the software I used could be maintained by someone who had the time to dig into bugs and UI problems and to fix them. But in Linux, couldn't I just edit the source myself? Realistically, no. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to source-dive in a totally new project in a language I never…

I use Linux and most free software projects allow donations. I even donated to projects I don't actually use, like FreeBSD. I donated money to many free software projects, Ardour, Mozilla, LibreOffice, OpenBSD, etc. This is clearly a false dichotomy.

Relying on the good will of others does not work, period. The fact that it works sometimes is not something that one can use as the reason to quit their job and start an "endeavor" (you can't really call it a business).

Can we please dispense with this notion and start realizing one simple fact: people will typically only pay for something if you make them pay.

Re: On paying for software

#78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so I'm going to charge for my development time - how exactly am I going to divide that up among the customers, many of which don't exist yet, without over-charging anyone and how are you going to make sure I don't do so in a way that doesn't "illegally institute artificial scarcity" ? The issue here is that there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work. Toro could choose to cut production…

> Okay, so I'm going to charge for my development time - how exactly am I going to divide that up among the customers, many of which don't exist yet, without over-charging anyone and how are you going to make sure I don't do so in a way that doesn't "illegally institute artificial scarcity" ? It's not my job to invent business models for other people, but all Kickstarter-type funded software is a good example of one…

The software industry had/has a lucrative, self-sustaining business model that was very much the same as every other business on the planet. I'm a part of that industry, so I do have a business model. IOW, I'm not the one trying to tell someone that they shouldn't charge for their efforts/products, so it seems to me that the onus on coming up with a workable model is on those that have been trying to institute the "everything is free" model for some time, not me.

As for your other comment: I believe there's a saying that covers this:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_my_aunt_had_balls,_she%27d...

Re: On paying for software

#79
post #10

Why is it so hard for developers to make a full-time living selling their open-source software? Are the available options stacked against them? Thousands of developers make money building products or services for clients using open source software. But what if you don't want to be a consultant and simply want to charge a business for using your open source product? The Free Software Foundation (FSF) says that you can…

As someone that was part of an effort to do this in the early .com days, it is a lost hope trying to sell open source software to consumers. While selling to enterprise can be made via consulting and training, most consumers just want a one time shot paying for their software. Well, if you do that with commercial software, usually the only way to avoid paying is piracy. In open source world, they can just go to anoth…

What do you think of the viability of providing source code with the software that you sell? It would be open source in the sense that you could alter the software and contribute patches, but you had to pay for the software first.

It would have to eliminate forking by necessity. I don't see that as being a downside, though. I think the open source community commonly forks code to save time when the correct technical decision should really be doing ground-up rewrites.

I think the primary issue would be giving away the 'secret sauce' so to speak. But a motivated competitor could still decompile and reverse engineer an application. Would giving away the source code make it easy enough to do that it makes a big impact? like how Android apps are so trivially easy to clone that Chinese competitors can clone an app in seconds.

Re: On paying for software

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by owning the codebase I can protect myself from a larger player copying my work I find this statement confusing. In what sense do you not "own" your codebase if you release it under the GPL? And if the software is released under the GPL, large players have no advantage, because they have to release all of the changes they make to your code if they're using it to compete against you. What you're saying is that rest…

That's not what I'm saying, and I don't think I'm spreading any falsehoods about free software licenses here. Building a business is about distribution as well as product. My product is pretty good, but my distribution, compared to a large player with an existing user base, is woeful. If I licensed under GPL I would be giving explicit legal permission to any big player (who was open source) to take my product for fre…

   Thanks to copyright law we don't need to hide our codebases in order to charge for our work. 
I don't understand that part ?
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