Live data from Hacker News

Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

blog.elementary.io

11–20 of 136 posts

Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

#12
post #9

This is completely baffling. Just remove the option to download your thing for free. You know it has value. You just spent a thousand words explaining why you think people should pay money for your thing. There's an easy way to get them to do that: Charge money for your thing . No need to guilt anybody. No need to apologize. You built an entire operating system . Those cost money. Give your users the option of paying…

Removing the option to download GPL software for free seems like a pointless exercise... Also: they build a set of desktop apps for Ubuntu and did some other polishing work. Not to say that isn't hard and important work, but it also isn't "building an entire operating system".

Not at all. The "download" we're talking about here is the binary (unless I'm mistaken).

People with $10 in their bank account and the ability to calculate the value of half an hour of their time will happily pay to avoid fighting dependencies to compile this thing from source. The angry entitled people commenting on this poor guy's blog can download the source for free.

(And to your edit, people who think that there is not $10 of value added can simply not install it.)

Everybody wins.

Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

#13
post #9

This is completely baffling. Just remove the option to download your thing for free. You know it has value. You just spent a thousand words explaining why you think people should pay money for your thing. There's an easy way to get them to do that: Charge money for your thing . No need to guilt anybody. No need to apologize. You built an entire operating system . Those cost money. Give your users the option of paying…

Removing the option to download GPL software for free seems like a pointless exercise... Also: they build a set of desktop apps for Ubuntu and did some other polishing work. Not to say that isn't hard and important work, but it also isn't "building an entire operating system".

I don't see why. The GPL requires that you provide the source for free. It says nothing about providing the binaries for free. The entire job of a distro is packaging and ease-of-configuration-management. If you do that part yourself to spite them, you're removing the entirety of the advantage you were getting by using their distro in the first place. The incentives work out.

Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

#14

This is completely baffling. Just remove the option to download your thing for free. You know it has value. You just spent a thousand words explaining why you think people should pay money for your thing. There's an easy way to get them to do that: Charge money for your thing . No need to guilt anybody. No need to apologize. You built an entire operating system . Those cost money. Give your users the option of paying…

"You built an entire operating system."

It's Ubuntu (under the hood), marketed at people that wouldn't consider using a *nix OS.

Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

#15
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how Canonical feel about Elementary making money off an operating system that receives updates from archive.ubuntu.com

It really doesn't matter how they feel though.

It all seems a bit similar to Red Star OS.

Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

#16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing the option to download GPL software for free seems like a pointless exercise... Also: they build a set of desktop apps for Ubuntu and did some other polishing work. Not to say that isn't hard and important work, but it also isn't "building an entire operating system".

Not at all. The "download" we're talking about here is the binary (unless I'm mistaken). People with $10 in their bank account and the ability to calculate the value of half an hour of their time will happily pay to avoid fighting dependencies to compile this thing from source. The angry entitled people commenting on this poor guy's blog can download the source for free. (And to your edit, people who think that there…

People tend to use Linux for mass installs, though. Once you say "it costs $10 to download this software", you have to ask "but what if I want to download it again? Or, conversely, download once but install onto 1000 PCs?"

The fully-correct-and-flexible answer is, sadly, the Microsoft-like enterprisey one: to have a user account and charge the user for a multi-seat license to the software, which provides a product key entered during the installation. That way, you can reuse the same installation image as much as you want, but each activation has a cost.

Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

#17

This is completely baffling. Just remove the option to download your thing for free. You know it has value. You just spent a thousand words explaining why you think people should pay money for your thing. There's an easy way to get them to do that: Charge money for your thing . No need to guilt anybody. No need to apologize. You built an entire operating system . Those cost money. Give your users the option of paying…

Then they would lose 99.875% of their userbase. The support forums would dry up, there would be fewer advocates etc. A Linux distro needs a critical mass of users.

Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

#20

This is completely baffling. Just remove the option to download your thing for free. You know it has value. You just spent a thousand words explaining why you think people should pay money for your thing. There's an easy way to get them to do that: Charge money for your thing . No need to guilt anybody. No need to apologize. You built an entire operating system . Those cost money. Give your users the option of paying…

Then they would lose 99.875% of their userbase. The support forums would dry up, there would be fewer advocates etc. A Linux distro needs a critical mass of users.

still comes across as a dick move to have people enter the zero. making people feel guilty for an allowed act is just dumb if you are trying to establish a working relationship
Post reply on HN