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Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

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Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#31

Post by pedrocr »

nicholassmith wrote: post #15

The bigger issue is Ubuntu isn't a product. It's a nice community layer with some high level project management spearheading the direction and a team of core developers adding nifty features. If there is paying for the product then how is that money distributed to Jack John Johnson the guy doing patch fixes on his free time because he enjoys it. Does he get a salary? Some kind of financial bonus? Then you've got the…

This idea that what Ubuntu does is just some light packaging is pretty demeaning to their true value. Ubuntu really pushed the state of the art in terms of polish for Linux distributions. You can argue how much of the total product value that is but I don't think it's at all reasonable to say "Ubuntu isn't a product" and that it's just a "nice community layer with some high level project management".

I'm also curious about why you take as a given that money needs to be distributed to "Jack John Johnson"? There's certainly nothing in the licenses that forces it, and when Apple takes BSD software and sells it nobody thinks that's out of line. When RedHat charges for RHEL nobody complains either, even though most of the software is open source as well. What line is Ubuntu crossing here?

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#32

Post by eloisant »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #26
TimSchumann wrote: post #5

Are you willing to pay one dollar every time you open up a web browser in Ubuntu? Or even one dollar a day? Look into what advertisers are paying, I'm betting you're not willing to match their price.

I highly doubt they're going to make a buck a day from even 1/4 of the userbase from search ads. Also, they're not being paid every time someone opens their browser. They're paid if someone searches in the Unity lens, sees something they like, clicks on the link, and buys something within 24 hours from Amazon. Amazon's commission rates are I think they'll be lucky to make $100k from it.

As I recall Firefox used to make about $3 per user per year. (I'm using the past because the data I have is pretty old).

If we consider they have about 15 million users, that's about 45 million dollars. But maybe they have other sources of revenue.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#33

Post by natex »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #10

This seems like a really bad idea to me. You can't charge for something that the user can just build themselves for free. Someone else is just going to distribute the binaries. And so what do you do about your repos, are those just for paying customers as well? You wind up with 2 Ubuntus in this scenario, both weaker than the 1 today.

> You can't charge for something that the user can just >build themselves for free.

Um, sure you can. Ubuntu, RedHat, and Slackware are quite successful at this already. Pat Volkerding has been doing it for as long as linux has existed (Slackware). Yes, someone can distribute the binaries, but they can't use the {Ubuntu, RedHat,Slackware} name.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#35

Post by pgeorgi »

cf0ed2aa-bdf5 wrote: post #20
ojii wrote: post #18

Am I just blind or where the heck are those ads on Ubuntu? I use it exclusively all day and I just cannot find ads anywhere (other than on websites in the browser, but that's not Ubuntu's fault).

This seems to be a post in response to Canonical's plans to add amazon ads to searches in your home lens. See: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/online-shopping-features-...

apt-get purge ubuntuone* landscape* unity-lens-shopping # gets rid of all Canonical tie-ins.

Not so hard, isn't it?

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#37

Post by kintamanimatt »

eloisant wrote: post #32
kintamanimatt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt they're going to make a buck a day from even 1/4 of the userbase from search ads. Also, they're not being paid every time someone opens their browser. They're paid if someone searches in the Unity lens, sees something they like, clicks on the link, and buys something within 24 hours from Amazon. Amazon's commission rates are I think they'll be lucky to make $100k from it.

As I recall Firefox used to make about $3 per user per year. (I'm using the past because the data I have is pretty old). If we consider they have about 15 million users, that's about 45 million dollars. But maybe they have other sources of revenue.

Firefox is more valuable though. They have a revshare agreement with Google and others. People actively use Firefox to search for things, at least a few dozen times a day, not to mention are more apt to click on ads based on their current mindset.

I don't think that same behavior is going to be exhibited in a Unity lens, certainly not with the same frequency. I also doubt the click rate too.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#38

Post by RyanMcGreal »

realize wrote: post #7

Getting pretty tired of these "dear company, let me pay for your product instead of showing me ads" arguments. They show a lack of understanding of business models.

I think it shows a clear understanding of business models. In an ad-supported service, the advertiser is the customer and the user is the product being sold.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#39

Post by brusch »

pedrocr wrote: post #31
nicholassmith wrote: post #15

The bigger issue is Ubuntu isn't a product. It's a nice community layer with some high level project management spearheading the direction and a team of core developers adding nifty features. If there is paying for the product then how is that money distributed to Jack John Johnson the guy doing patch fixes on his free time because he enjoys it. Does he get a salary? Some kind of financial bonus? Then you've got the…

This idea that what Ubuntu does is just some light packaging is pretty demeaning to their true value. Ubuntu really pushed the state of the art in terms of polish for Linux distributions. You can argue how much of the total product value that is but I don't think it's at all reasonable to say "Ubuntu isn't a product" and that it's just a "nice community layer with some high level project management". I'm also curious…

I think Ubuntu moved away from "polish for Linux distributions" some versions ago. This was the time they've started making their own user interface with Unity, they're own shop with I-don't-know-what-it's-called (App center ?) and their own online storage with Ubuntu one.

They make decisions you may like or may not like (moving the window controls to the left..) - but at least for me it was time to go - and I don't look back.

Re: Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu

#40

Post by mapleoin »

pedrocr wrote: post #31
nicholassmith wrote: post #15

The bigger issue is Ubuntu isn't a product. It's a nice community layer with some high level project management spearheading the direction and a team of core developers adding nifty features. If there is paying for the product then how is that money distributed to Jack John Johnson the guy doing patch fixes on his free time because he enjoys it. Does he get a salary? Some kind of financial bonus? Then you've got the…

This idea that what Ubuntu does is just some light packaging is pretty demeaning to their true value. Ubuntu really pushed the state of the art in terms of polish for Linux distributions. You can argue how much of the total product value that is but I don't think it's at all reasonable to say "Ubuntu isn't a product" and that it's just a "nice community layer with some high level project management". I'm also curious…

RedHat charges for RHEL support, not for the software, they give that for free (see CentOS). Canonical also charges for Ubuntu support.
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