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On paying for software

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Re: On paying for software

#171

Post by matheusmoreira »

kabdib wrote: post #124
matheusmoreira wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Lack of incentives didn't stop the artists of the past. Many were able to secure patronage.

You need to consider survivor bias. We don't have data for the number of "artists of the past" who were stopped because they couldn't find patrons. How many Da Vincis and Mozarts had to work in fields or row galleys rather than work as artists? It is really, really difficult to build a career around patronage. A few people can do it. Most cannot. The fundamental flaw of the "software should be free because duplicatio…

You make some good points. Concerning whether works should or should not be free, I'm not sure. I think people should get paid somehow. How to solve that problem is not clear to me.

What I've been observing, though, is people acting as if the software is free because copying is practically free. This happens all the time and nobody even thinks about it. Friends share programs, music, movies, pictures, documents and all kinds of data among themselves and they may not even realize the fact they're infringing copyright. I see my colleagues sending each other copyrighted scientific articles via messaging applications every week. Nobody really thinks about some journal's copyright, it's just "those people need this file and I have it, so I'll send it to them". Companies have been trying in vain to police this behavior for years. I don't think they're ever going to succeed. I think that's a sign this system is incompatible with current technology. What good is a law if you can't enforce it?

>It's like saying "gasoline should be free because it costs next to nothing to run the pump motor at the gas station".

I don't think this is the same thing. A more apt comparison to software would be "gasoline should be free because the pump is magical and can somehow duplicate existing gasoline, creating new matter in the process, and the cost is so infinitesimal we don't have coins worthless enough to pay for it unless we purchase a whole tanker's worth of fuel". I'm willing to bet that such a magical pump would drastically change how people perceive the value of gasoline. Even though creating that first volume of gasoline required a substantial amount of money, the magical pump can simply duplicate it endlessly.

Re: On paying for software

#172

Post by Rjevski »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #166
afarrell wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm running an enterprise, perhaps then I can budget enough time and money to communicate about and pay for that and deal with the uncertainty inherent in software schedules. In my personal life...that sounds like a stressor that I'd be willing to pay money to avoid.

Sure but this sounds like an opportunity for something like “Uber for FLOSS support.” Or perhaps it would be more like OkCupid. But you could pay money and your FLOSS problems get researched and solved for you by a developer who is experienced in this area. In practice I can see this as a forum where people make minimal effort posts and skilled people give them quality support. Just as I was forming the previous sent…

The issue is that even if he managed to find a good developer to pay to improve some FLOSS software, it would come out very expensive in the end, first because the UI frameworks & libraries you get in the Linux world are nowhere near what you get on macOS, so the developer will require more time, and also because you won’t be selling that software later on to make any kind of money back since it’s FLOSS, and even when it’s proprietary and not FLOSS, the potential market for Linux software (let alone paid Linux software) is very small.

Re: On paying for software

#173

Post by microcolonel »

If more of the developers who work on the software I use had Patreons or similar, I would pay monthly. Until that day I'm happier with a lot of the free software that I can't even pay for, than I am with a lot of the software I could pay for.

Re: On paying for software

#174

Post by Rjevski »

ropeadopepope wrote: post #118
pxeboot wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find open source developers to be far more passionate about their projects than developers of commercial software. This makes sense to me, as they work on these projects because they want to, not because they have to.

Passion isn't a barometer of anything but whether the developer likes his job. It certainly doesn't translate into better or more user friendly software.

In OSS I tend to see the opposite. The more “passionate” developers tend to be passionate about some implementation detail (like respect for a particular standard, the Unix philosophy, Stallman-compliant licensing, etc) without giving a crap about the actual user experience in day to day usage.

I see more passion in paid software in macOS when I see a beautiful UI because it shows that the developer actually wants me to use and enjoy his creation day to day.

Re: On paying for software

#175

Post by alexozer »

open-source-ux wrote: post #6

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…

Interesting, that Fair Source License seems like the perfect example of how your software can simultaneously be open source software but not free software. It doesn't matter if it's open source if I can't modify it and deploy it to however many computers I want to.

Re: On paying for software

#176

Post by gaius »

pxeboot wrote: post #116
ropeadopepope wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thing…

I actually find open source developers to be far more passionate about their projects than developers of commercial software. This makes sense to me, as they work on these projects because they want to, not because they have to.

Passionate about making the installation process seamless on every distro? And all the other mundane, tedious tasks that are expected by users used to commercial software?

My OSS project, which I haven’t worked on in ages to be fair, I never made any effort to make it work anywhere but on Debian for example. I know some people used it in Suse and RHEL so it can’t have been too painful but I never had that as a goal.

Re: On paying for software

#177

Post by derefr »

wazoox wrote: post #60
afarrell wrote: post #49

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 things that people choose to pay money for, in software, drive an incentive system that results in polished user experiences.

The things that people choose to donate for, in software, drive an incentive system that results in ever-increasing code quality and security and a bunch of other things that developers themselves care about, and feel that users should care about, but which don't actually affect application polish very much.

It's not even down to the companies choosing to do this or that with your money. It's a response to incentives. They know that, under a paid model, they'll keep getting money only if they do X; and under a donation model, they'll keep getting money if only they do Y. And so they prioritize X, or they prioritize Y, regardless of which one they think should be prioritized.

If you want X from your software, you should advocate for an ecosystem of paid software businesses. If you want Y from your software, you should advocate for an ecosystem of donation-supported software organizations.

If you want both... I'm not sure. Maybe support both ecosystems, and encourage the donation-driven organizations to put their work into "cores" or "engines" that can be wrapped into polished experiences by the paid companies?

Re: On paying for software

#178

Post by zerr »

mherrmann wrote: post #9

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/

As for the security (against illegal copying), I'm thinking having a basic stuff - so it won't be very easy to crack, but also it shouldn't be very hard, so people in 3rd world countries are able to use it - these aren't the loss sales anyway, and also help in popularization. What might be a reasonable price in the west, might be worth of monthly salary for some living in poor countries - I wouldn't want to charge anything to such people.

Re: On paying for software

#179

Post by justinclift »

michaelmrose wrote: post #150
justinclift wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's the dual-licencing approach e.g. Red Hat. This bit is confusing to me. AFAIK Red Hat doesn't use a dual-licensing approach. Is it something they've recently introduced?

Redhat owns Centos if I recall correctly. Prior to that centos was just a rebuild of all the open source parts of redhats software.

Yep, Red Hat (note - not "RedHat") does employ several of the core CentOS team these day, although it started out externally.

> ... just a rebuild of all the open source parts of redhats software.

That seems like super weird description of things. :)

All of the Red Hat OS software is Open Source. The only significant pieces CentOS don't include are the Red Hat branding and artwork:

https://www.centos.org/about/

As far a dual licensing goes... that doesn't seem related to this? :)

Re: On paying for software

#180

Post by pbhjpbhj »

BTeam wrote: post #156
theshadowknows wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Until someone actually do it, and better. Good luck monetize your proprietary alternative then!

You're perhaps forgetting that people use price as a value indicator. If you take FOSS and package it for sale then people may well buy it who wouldn't "use that shitty free software". Humans are complex beasts.
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