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Payments – Why we make you type "$0"

blog.elementary.io

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

#91

Post by adekok »

rgbrenner wrote: post #61
orik wrote: post #22

Here'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 This attitude is why we don't see Linux startups -- just volunteer efforts, run on peoples spare time that they eventually get burnt out on and give up. They are asking for $10. They aren't asking for a huge sum of money. $10 could be a very reasonable amount of money for the effort they've put into it. Yes, it's built on free sof…

> They are asking for $10. They aren't asking for a huge sum of money. $10 could be a very reasonable amount of money for the effort they've put into it.

It's a matter of marketing. Everyone knows it's based on Ubuntu, so they feel cheated when they're asked to pay for a free OS.

A marketing solution is to sell it as:

* base system $0 - VM with free download, no whines about "cheating". And the base VM gets you an Ubuntu image which boots to a shell prompt.

* Elementary additions: $$. The base system plus our less-filling, weight-loss inducing proprietary magic!

People are happy to pay money for linux application. Not many people, and for not a lot of money. But people do pay.

Having happy paying customers is a lot better than calling your potential customer base "cheaters". That's just stupid .

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

#92

Post by ubertaco »

Before they published this blog post, I was mildly annoyed at having to type "$0" to download Elementary, but otherwise I dug their goal of making a clean and simple-to-use desktop environment.

Then they published this post -- and mind you, this is not the original version of this post (the original was worse).

With statements like:

>We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software.

...and...

>we feel that an entire operating system that has taken years of development and refinement is worth some money.

...when all they've really done is:

* Build a stripped-down Gnome-family derivative Desktop Environment

* Build a custom-skinned wrapper around GTK that fits their custom DE (and expect app devs to fall in line with it)

* Write a few super-primitive apps in it (a Rhythmbox fork, a notepad clone, and a basic email client)

is just a -bit- overstating things, to say nothing of the difference between a desktop environment and "an entire operating system".

Then they say:

> Most of the open source world is similar; Inkscape and GIMP only get money for development if users decide to give it to them.

without the slightest ounce of self-awareness to realize that neither of those projects make conscious design decisions to trick users into thinking they have to buy them. If I see a $____ box, my first assumption is that typing "0" has the same effect as typing "-1" or "aaaa": a validation error. It's a very close sibling of the "Sneak Into Basket"[1] UI "dark pattern".

These are the moves that turned me from a fan/advocate of elementary to a critic: not that their software was poor quality (the parts they had actually built were, for the most part, roughly as nice a UI as most other Ubuntu derivatives had in my opinion), but that their philosophy and attitude made them the kind of people I want to actively avoid promoting.

[1] http://darkpatterns.org/sneak-into-basket/

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

#93

Post by scrollaway »

toyg wrote: post #44
nubela wrote: post #19

Why don't you include the payment WITHIN the system? I wouldn't pay before I try eOS, it is only if I stick and use it, will I consider paying.

I'd go further and say that opensource distributions should all have a standard customizable package that will "nag" users after a certain amount of hours from first boot. The package could spring a pop-up if X is running, or send an email to root@ (or whatever the "admin" user is). If done well, I bet a lot of users wouldn't mind dropping $5 or $10 -- probably more than you get by doing the occasional donation drive…

Please think before you type. You're describing the universally hated nag for payment ever so "popular" in mobile apps. Hell, the other week when paid skyrim mods were a hot topic, some dev tried to do it in one of his free Skyrim addons and he got universally hated, flamed and hanged for it. I can't even begin to describe how negative the reaction was.

It baffles me people like you can actually still think things like these are a good idea. I'm all for getting FOSS devs paid, but your post essentially says "why don't they just preinstall some software from advertising companies that will pay them for it".

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

#94

Post by embik »

markild wrote: post #80
embik wrote: post #59

Hello everyone, I'm a contributor to elementary (did some small coding and sitting around in their Slack). I'm not 100% sure I should post, but I've seen the HN community being very reasonable, so here we go. Please note I'm in no way official for elementary and I wasn't involved with this blog post at all; I just would like to provide another perspective on the topics discussed here. Yes, the blog post is/was terrib…

To me, it's not the money that's the issue. I just learned about elementary today, and when I'm presented with the main landing page, I feel that it is being very dishonest in what it is actually selling me. I'm not arguing the value of your work, but I feel that the whole product is very conscious about not mentioning Linux, Ubuntu etc. Give me a proper explanation about what you (the group of people) are doing that…

Mh, I agree there should a mention of Ubuntu. As I'm not involved with the ... mh, let's say "marketing" / PR side of elementary, I can only guess, but most likely it wasn't considered an information a potential (target) user of elementary needs (I don't agree with this, I'm a technical guy, but I'm not elementary's target audience either). The main page does mention "Open Source" and "Linux" in big letters. It's at the bottom though.

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

#95

Post by SunShiranui »

adekok wrote: post #91
rgbrenner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elementry's Dev team doesn't pay for Ubuntu, they don't pay for the Kernel or GNU Tools This attitude is why we don't see Linux startups -- just volunteer efforts, run on peoples spare time that they eventually get burnt out on and give up. They are asking for $10. They aren't asking for a huge sum of money. $10 could be a very reasonable amount of money for the effort they've put into it. Yes, it's built on free sof…

> They are asking for $10. They aren't asking for a huge sum of money. $10 could be a very reasonable amount of money for the effort they've put into it. It's a matter of marketing. Everyone knows it's based on Ubuntu, so they feel cheated when they're asked to pay for a free OS. A marketing solution is to sell it as: * base system $0 - VM with free download, no whines about "cheating". And the base VM gets you an Ub…

Surely one can already download the "base system" from the Ubuntu website?

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

#96

Post by bostonpete »

krat0sprakhar wrote: post #82
ekianjo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 communit…

Even if their OS is nothing but Ubuntu + Pantheon wrapped in a fancy cover how does that make them 'wrong' for asking money for their efforts? How exactly is this different from someone making a fancy HTML5 bootstrap based template for wordpress and then charging money for it? Clearly the number of man-hours gone into making that template is nothing compared to the effort spent on bootstrap and wordpress - which are…

I don't think it's wrong to "ask" for money, but it does seem wrong to state that paying $0 is "cheating the system". The implication is that if you choose to pay $0, you're doing something devious or unethical.

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

#97

Post by SunShiranui »

onli wrote: post #86
SunShiranui wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the amount of work those upstream projects have contributed is indeed monumental, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss elementary OS' contribution to the free software operating system landscape. I think their work in providing a good UX for GNU\Linux operating systems is admirable and it's a very important step to really make something most would be happy to use.

Why do you think that? Elementary is not the first distribution to focus on user experience and usability. Especially Ubuntu, on which they build their system, had that goal in mind, it's even in the name. For me personally, I did not see much more in Elementary than an OSX clone.

It's not the first, yes, but in my opinion they're the best at it. Either way, it doesn't hurt having more than one organization working on good Linux UX.

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

#99

Post by brusch64 »

embik wrote: post #88
brusch64 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are volunteers doing this work (unpaid ?) - what are you using this money for ? Just for infrastructure ? If not, how do you get paid ? And how many percent of the developers get paid ? Who makes the decision who gets paid and who doesn't get paid ? I am just interested how something like this is done in an open source project. I've seen some other projects (not programming related) which got really complica…

Mh, as hinted I'm not part of the core team, so I cannot say anything definite, but a lot of money is going into bug bounties: https://www.bountysource.com/teams/elementary/bounties (a blog entry from february talks about $15,000 total in bounties and $3,470 to upstream projects). These bug bounties are paid out to contributors solving nasty bugs, but it's open to everyone to solve these bugs and get the bounties. Cu…

Ok thank you for making this clear. Doing it with bug bounties makes sense to me.

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

#100

Post by misframer »

staz wrote: post #40
thewhitetulip wrote: post #18

This 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

It's quite normal for submissions to be reposted and make it to the front page again.
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