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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"

#121

Post by lukaslalinsky »

narrowrail wrote: post #118
njloof wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would they need to offer a trial? Just type in 0$ and download or just download the torrent directly (they default to a torrent anyway, at least when choosing 0$).

Because it's not clear that you can actually type in $0 and if you do you are a "cheater". Right know it asks for money, before you even see what it is and what it does.

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

#122

Post by jokr004 »

Shivetya wrote: post #20
TorKlingberg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm actually totally fine with having to type in zero, noting seems that unreasonable about that to me.. in fact I think there's some value in drawing attention to the fact that open source projects rely on donations.

However I find this whole guilt trip explanation in serious poor taste.

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

#123

Post by anon3_ »

Nursie wrote: post #37
derefr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's the fallacy of the GPL. It's less about privacy (YOU Vs big brother) and more about people feeling entitled to free software. All the time.

And now it's too far - you're trying to bankrupt people who aren't big corporations in big suits - but people who felt humble, artistic passion. You think you can act like a mob to crush their dream and gut it out.

This is another example of people swarming like locusts because they fail to understand that other people have mortgages to pay too.

Taken further, the license that Linux falls under makes like all the more miserable for providing your own value and creativity. GPL is truly a minefield for commerce.

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

#124

Post by anon3_ »

aledujke wrote: post #106
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.

> I used elementary in the past and I was very happy with it.

Are you aware that they just may want to be able to have a part or full time job doing software?

What do you expect them to have? A trust fund from their parents and they just give you free stuff?

> Stickers and shirts.

Serious? The gap of money they'd keep to feed themselves from that - plus the extra labor (distraction from improving the code).

I think you mean well, but here and other commenters seem to view GPL more as a right to pirate legally.

Who is the real freeloader, the guy who is very happy with [software]" and can't pay without foaming at the mouth, or someone who actually developed a created work in the first place*.

The insensitivity and entitlement is mind-boggling, from my perspective as a coder.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #90

For all of the people asking about contributions to the OS...its a fact that most people who work on Linux aren't volunteers anymore. Most kernel contributors are paid to work on the kernel. The same goes for a lot of the work that is done on distributions...even the free ones. These guys are doing some great work and it would really be a shame if it didn't continue. They are attempting to put together the kind of po…

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by Redoubts »

anon3_ wrote: post #123
Nursie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's the fallacy of the GPL. It's less about privacy (YOU Vs big brother) and more about people feeling entitled to free software. All the time. And now it's too far - you're trying to bankrupt people who aren't big corporations in big suits - but people who felt humble, artistic passion. You think you can act like a mob to crush their dream and gut it out. This is another example of people swarming like locusts be…

They could have worked on a BSD. This strategy has worked well in the past...

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

#127

Post by superuser2 »

neuropie wrote: post #4
Mikeb85 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything is really polished and well done. I'm using Elementary OS right now. It's pretty, but it's really no more polished than Ubuntu. In fact, it just mostly uses the same Ubuntu repositories. That's not a bad thing, but it's worth keeping in mind that Elementary OS is as good as it is because it's building on Ubuntu.

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

>making money

I highly doubt they're turning a profit.

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

#128

Post by csense »

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…

Base system: $0. You have to manually edit a bunch of config files and compile some things from source.

Easy point-and-click installer: $$.

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

#129

Post by hueving »

ams6110 wrote: post #103
hueving wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you miss the part I mentioned about putting that on s3?

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

#130

Post by Nursie »

anon3_ wrote: post #123
Nursie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's the fallacy of the GPL. It's less about privacy (YOU Vs big brother) and more about people feeling entitled to free software. All the time. And now it's too far - you're trying to bankrupt people who aren't big corporations in big suits - but people who felt humble, artistic passion. You think you can act like a mob to crush their dream and gut it out. This is another example of people swarming like locusts be…

>> That's the fallacy of the GPL. It's less about privacy (YOU Vs big brother) and more about people feeling entitled to free software. All the time.

It was initially about access to the code that's running on your machine, and the ability to modify it - i.e. grant you control of what happens on your hardware. But it was always also about sharing with each other, for free. That's been part of the RMS and GNU thing since the beginning. It's not a fallacy, nor is it a deception.

>> And now it's too far - you're trying to ...

I'm not sure why you're accusing me of anything, I've never even used this product, let alone given it out to anyone.

>> ... trying to bankrupt people ...

WOW.

OK no this is just ludicrous.

The people that make this distribution had a choice - they could start a new OS from scratch, they could choose to base their product on something that would give them control over further distribution licenses (BSD), or they could choose to base it on GPL'd code. This was their choice. They chose to base their work on the incredible amount of work others have already put in to the Ubuntu (and general Linux) ecosystem, knowing the license it was under.

They have no right whatsoever, none, to now cry about this and your position there is extremely unreasonable. I don't get to take another artist's song, add an extra drumbeat and release it as my own without regard to the license of that original. This is much the same.

>> Taken further, the license that Linux falls under makes like all the more miserable for providing your own value and creativity.

It really doesn't make anyone's life miserable.

Basing your work on an immensely more massive body of work done by other people, and then getting arsey about license obligations, is not on.

And the GPL is not a minefield, it's a reciprocal agreement - you can do what you like with this, but you must preserve the freedoms you get with it and pass those on.

It's really very simple and fair.

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