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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"

#101

Post by tommorris »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #60
toyg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Microsoft included decent compression facilities in Windows, a lot of people did in fact pay for WinZip. I bet some still do, considering it's still on sale -- something that cannot be said for most Linux distributions.

I highly doubt many people were paying for WinZip or WinRAR, given that they're a running gag in the IT sector (just like paying for Total Commander). But I'd love to see data on it, if anyone has some.

Anecdotal data...

http://www.reddit.com/r/PaidForWinRAR

;-)

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

#102

Post by couchand »

pjmlp wrote: post #67
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…

This is why after my open source phase as university student back in the mid-90's, I ended up doing mostly commercial software. Unless one hits jackpot a la RedHat, or is doing consulting/teaching/web paywalls, open source seldom pays bills.

This is a false dichotomy. Some of the best open source work has been done by folks who do pull in a salary from a commercial venture. A few of those are designated open-source positions, but the vast majority are just people who contribute on the side.

And I hope you can appreciate how demeaning it is to call your time contributing to open source a "phase".

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

#103

Post by ams6110 »

hueving wrote: post #51
mikekchar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some people (including the other repliers) don't quite understand the GPL. You don't have to distribute the source code, but if you distribute a binary, you must offer to distribute the source to the people you distributed the binary to . Similarly, you can't stop them from redistributing either the binaries or source, or modifying them under the GPL license. So charging for GPL software (whether binary or so…

Someone could put the code on github and have an s3 download link up in all of 5 minutes. A blog post and 15 minutes of retweets later and it has the number 1 spot on Google for elementary os. It's incredibly trivial to spread gpl code now so charging for it is a non starter and just makes you look a bit foolish.

A large portion of the appeal of something like ElementaryOS is going to be that I do not need to download source code, build binaries, try to follow some poorly-written installation README file, etc. I would certainly be willing to pay $10 or more for the convenience of not having to do that. Focus on your paying customers, and just accept that some people will not pay. So what? If your code ends up on github it isn't costing you anything, and you're not going to lose many paying customers because the people going to github were never going to pay you in the first place.

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

#104

Post by krat0sprakhar »

ekianjo wrote: post #89
unicornporn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daniel recently quit hos job to work full time on Elementary[1]. Perhaps that is one reason they've been pursuing this shaming for not paying strategy lately. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/danielfore/status/583810531766722...

> Daniel recently quit hos job to work full time on Elementary Fine, that's his decision, but he does not need to make it others' fault to pursue his lifestyle.

That's unnecessarily harsh. On one hand HN has articles of people jumping off the 9-to-5 rut to pursue something they are passionate about full-time while on the other we have people accusing Daniel of the same choice.

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

#105

Post by zxcvcxz »

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…

>This attitude is why we don't see Linux startups

What are you talking about? A startup that sells Linux distros? There are A LOT more reasons we don't see people selling Linux distros than just this.

So what does this have to do with anything?

If your argument is that people don't use Linux in the start up world that's wrong too. Plenty of start ups use Linux and I'd say it's about 50/50 when it comes to share between OS X and Linux. We already know from stack overflow surveys that OS X and Linux are neck-and-neck when it comes to developer use, and we already know that Linux is almost always the choice when it comes to servers for start-ups.

Is your argument that people don't want to buy Linux software? There are plenty of people paying for Linux software (especially enterprise) and you can just look at the humble bundle for evidence that Linux users are more than willing to pay for software. I don't know many Mac only start-ups that are very successful.

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

#106

Post by aledujke »

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…

I used elementary in the past and I was very happy with it. I did not want to donate but I did want to support them by buying their ware. Stickers and shirts. Problems is... for over 3 years now their store only supports US customers. A year ago they said they are working on it and still have not fixed it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/23v9o9/element...

Yet they want you to donate.

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

#107

Post by njloof »

markild wrote: post #7

Interesting read. Maybe I've been living under a rock, but this is the first I've heard about elementary. Though, not directly related to their payment model, I wish they would more clearly state that they're a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. I couldn't "quickly" find any info on it anywhere on their site, so I had to find out from Wikipedia. I guess this has something to do with their target audience, and the wa…

It's also unclear from their homepage why I would want yet another OS/UI combo. What are the advantages? Does it run any apps? I'm definitely not paying $10 sight unseen. Maybe a 30-day trial would be a better model before asking for payment.

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

#108

Post by adekok »

SunShiranui wrote: post #95
adekok wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

That's not the point.

The point is right now, they are asking people to pay for a free version of Ubuntu. This annoys people.

They should change their pricing model to make it clear that the base OS is free. And that their additions are a product which should be paid for.

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

#109

Post by nathanb »

I think there are some interesting dynamics at play here....

The post (even with the edits to remove unfortunate phrasing) seems really aggrieved at the community's expectation that open source projects are by definition free as in beer. Reading the comments on that article, it does seem true that many folks seem to feel entitled to a free copy of this software.

This is part of the culture and the ecosystem, though. It doesn't justify being an entitled jerk, but if you're going to operate in a particular space, you have to understand the culture behind that space.

(And for those on HN stating "this is why you don't see entrepreneurial activity in the Linux ecosystem"...well, how much entrepreneurial activity are you seeing in the Windows ecosystem these days? I think the Linux attitude may foster rather than hamper long-term innovation, because even when the money moves elsewhere there's still that core group of people working on projects for love and passion rather than for money.)

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

#110

Post by zxcvcxz »

pjmlp wrote: post #67
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…

This is why after my open source phase as university student back in the mid-90's, I ended up doing mostly commercial software. Unless one hits jackpot a la RedHat, or is doing consulting/teaching/web paywalls, open source seldom pays bills.

Being a Chef seldom pays bills too, but it doesn't mean you should stop so you can get a job at McDonalds. (And once you get that McDonalds job, it doesn't mean you have to stop cooking good food).
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