Payments – Why we make you type "$0" • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by Nursie » Tue, May 12, 2015, 7:00 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #12

detaro wrote: 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…

Or people that want a binary can get it from someone sharing them, as is their right under the GPL.

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

#132

Post by derefr » Tue, May 12, 2015, 9:40 PM UTC

Redoubts wrote: post #126

anon3_ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm honestly surprised that nobody is trying to out-OSX OSX as a software/services play. It seems like such an easy pitch.

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

#133

Post by aledujke » Wed, May 13, 2015, 2:27 AM UTC

anon3_ wrote: post #124

aledujke wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

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

I am, like people from KDE or Gnome or whichever WM out there. You still don't see them being smug about donations. Oh and elementary guys don't even want to call it a donation. They've built their distribution on top of GPL software and they think you should pay for what they did, not donate. Quote from the comments section from that article: ======================== Cassidy James Mod Andrew Sauder • 3 months ago

We never use the word "donate." That's kind of a the core idea; we're not saying, "here's this free thing, donate if you want."

We're saying, "We've poured time and money into making this thing, and we think it has value." You get to choose how much you value it, or, if you can't afford it, that's okay too. ======================== If anyone is a pirate (oh the irony of calling someone who uses gpl a pirate) here it's them.

>Serious? The gap of money they'd keep to feed themselves from that - plus the extra labor (distraction from improving the code). Then why are they even selling the wares? You make it sound like they are losing money on that stuff as if the developer is packing my shirt. If you read the comment that I linked you would see that the shop is web team's responsibility.

>commenters seem to view GPL more as a right to pirate legally. I think that if Richard Stallman were to read this it would make him sad.

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

#134

Post by quesera » Wed, May 13, 2015, 4:38 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #132

Redoubts wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm honestly surprised that nobody is trying to out-OSX OSX as a software/services play. It seems like such an easy pitch.

That's an interesting idea, but I would not call it easy.

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

#135

Post by thewhitetulip » Wed, May 13, 2015, 3:05 PM UTC

misframer wrote: post #100

staz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, it can come on the front page: what worried me the most was that people were commenting on it as if it is for the first time it has arrived on HN! Time travel!

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

#136

Post by mikekchar » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:02 AM UTC

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.

You definitely can do that, but most people will not. As I said, I don't think they have a viable business model, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible to make money charging for GPL code. As an example, take a look at the game Tales of Maj'Eyal. You can download it for free on te4.org. You can also donate money from that website. You can also buy it on Steam and a few other places. It was also available in a recent Humble Bundle. People have paid for it and continue to do so even though it is well known that it is available for free at the author's site. If the forum is anything to go by, people who buy it on Steam just find it easier to use Steam and are happy to pay a few dollars for the convenience. You can play the game online which gives you a few benefits. The author has reported in a recent Roguelike Radio interview that 70% of the people who play online have either donated or bought the game. (Admittedly I do not know if the author makes enough money to survive only on sales of his game alone).

Having said all that, you are correct that you have no vendor lock in and people are able to change suppliers (including no charge suppliers) without any cost to themselves. As a supplier of GPL software, you can not rely on artificial scarcity to pay the bills. There must be some other reason for people to pay you (not the software itself). In the case of TOME, people are paying for the convenience of using Steam, or they are paying as a way of thanking the author.

There are other niches where you can make money selling GPL software. For example, quite a while ago I worked for a very small start up that was trying to build a VOIP infrastructure company. The idea was to enable new, small ITSPs to get up an running. We bundled and sold turnkey systems that was composed of free software. None of our customers cared that they could download the software for free somewhere else. They wanted a turnkey system that was configured and set up for them. They also wanted us to support their infrastructure so that they could concentrate on sales. The cost to us for packaging everything and doing custom configuration was dramatically lower than it would have been for them to try to set everything up themselves. Often they didn't even have a technical person on their staff. We could charge for our time and also charge for the software and it was still quite a bit cheaper for our customers to use our services. (As a side note, we unfortunately moved out of this lucrative area to concentrate on selling proprietary software without attached services. This ultimately failed, which I have often thought is a bit ironic.)

The thing is, I think I understand what you are trying to say, but you are making too general a statement. There are lots of ways to make money selling GPL software. However, you can't sell it the same way you would sell proprietary software which is why this company will probably not succeed unless they change tactics.