[deleted]
Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
31–40 of 136 posts
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#32[deleted]
RedHat ?
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#33Here's a mirror of the original version of this blog post. I'd like point out a couple of quotes. https://web.archive.org/web/20150211134734/http://blog.eleme... >We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software. Elementary's self-important attitude has and continues to completely baffle me. People joke about ElementaryOS being just Ubuntu + Pantheon Sh…
I don't disagree with what you said, but I'd like to comment on a few points.
>We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software.
(Auch, reading that hurt; still...)
There they didn't say users are cheating for not paying them, but for not paying in general.
Also consider that The Linux Foundation, the FSF, Canonical... all have way bigger communities and visibiliy, and relations with big companies and other ways of obtaining economical support. Elementary depends only on their reduced user base.
> it is just Ubuntu + Pantheon Shell.
Well, yes. But they still put a lot of work into it. It rest on the shoulders of the GTK and Gnome giants, but they have still put a lot of work. Describing them that way isn't, imho, fair at all.
Apart from the Pantheon's surface, they've been working on libraries as Contracts and Granite GTK. I've no idea if they're complicated behemoths or ridiculously thin work-of-an-afternoon additions to GNU/Linux.
I think I would be fine with it if they had just mentioned "hey, our hard work depends on the hard work of this fellas, consider donating to them too!". Specially if really they are not making any profit as of yet, I don't think it's that bad to ask for the funding to continue your work from the people who enjoy it.
PD: I'm writing this from Elementary, which I use on two computers. In this one I ended up going back to Awesome WM, but I keep Pantheon on the other. I really like it, even if it isn't an incredible distance away from Xubuntu.
Although I'm not particularly wealthy, I'll consider donating a few bucks to Elementary. It is not the first OSS project I donate to, but I'll also consider donating to it's upstream.
PD2: I was partly playing devil's advocate. Even as an Elementary user, I didn't particularly like this post.
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#34Here's a mirror of the original version of this blog post. I'd like point out a couple of quotes. https://web.archive.org/web/20150211134734/http://blog.eleme... >We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software. Elementary's self-important attitude has and continues to completely baffle me. People joke about ElementaryOS being just Ubuntu + Pantheon Sh…
> Elementry's Dev team doesn't pay for Ubuntu, they don't pay for the Kernel or GNU Tools
Yeah, totally agree - no matter how much they do, their work is close to nil compared to what was accomplished because of GNU tools, Linux kernel work and Ubuntu specific improvements made over the past xx years before ElementaryOS.
It's like they are only in for the money, which does not sit very well with this kind of communities.
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#35Earlier 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".
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.
The iso will be available through torrent in no time. This way all those who won't/can't pay at least see how they could do that in the future.
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#36[deleted]
Well, on the B2B side, there are many people working on Odoo, both for the main company and for the dozens (hundreds?) of companies that build stuff on top of the platform. The platform is LGPL licensed, and all the code we build on top of Odoo at the company I work for is (A/L)GPL licensed, as is most of the code built by companies like ours.
And we certainly get paid more than minimum wage :)
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#37Earlier 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".
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.
The GPL requires you to give source to anyone you gave binaries to, not publish the source to the world.
But the important part is that everyone you gave any source or binaries to has the right of redistribution
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#38This 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".
Synergy binaries (http://synergy-project.org) are behind a paywall. The same goes for Textual (https://www.codeux.com/textual/). They are both GPL and BSD-licensed pieces of software. Ardour (http://ardour.org/download.html) operates the same way.
By paying a small sum you get access to precompiled binaries, some level of support and peace of mind that you are helping developers continue their work in a sustainable way.
Frankly I would like to see this model adopted more often in the FLOSS world.
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#39>Keep in mind that this was a really difficult post to right.
Huh. That doesn't make sense.
Re: Payments – Why we make you type "$0"
#40This has already been discussed on HN before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9029995
Yes this is a 3 months old blog post, don't know why it's getting frontpaged again