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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"

#21

Post by rlpb »

It troubles me when I see statements like "an entire operating system that has taken years of development and refinement" and "However, developing software has a huge cost", but there's no mention of the money they're collecting going to the developers of Ubuntu, Debian and upstreams that surely together comprise the majority of the work that they're referring to.

Basing their wording on the huge development cost of the entire work, rather than what they're adding, seems misleading to me since what they're adding is a tiny proportion of the entire cost they're referring to; yet they seem to want to take the money as justified by the entire cost.

That's not to say that Elementary OS developers aren't adding value. Clearly they are if users are downloading from them, and it's fine to ask users to pay for that.

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

#22

Post by orik »

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 Shell, because it is just Ubuntu + Pantheon Shell.

Elementry's Dev team doesn't pay for Ubuntu, they don't pay for the Kernel or GNU Tools, and yet they made the argument that the end user is 'cheating the system' when they download a prebuilt iso of a collection of free software for free.

If Elementary wanted to take the high ground, they'd introduce a Humble Bundle style payment system split between the various foundations they're building off of. Maybe the defaults would look something like 30% to the Linux Foundation, 20% to the FSF, 20% to Debian, 20% to Ubuntu, and 10% to themselves.

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

#23

Post by mahouse »

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…

As easy as googling "elementary os iso download" and there will probably be some website with all ISOs ready to be downloaded for free.

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

#24

Post by Mikeb85 »

derefr wrote: post #13
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".

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.

Most of the binaries come from Ubuntu repositories...

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

#25

Post by joosters »

But it's entirely the wrong time to try and charge customers. How can I decide how much to pay for it before I've even downloaded the thing?

(Also, the shading on the payment buttons is so minor that it is very difficult to see which one is selected on my iPad screen)

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

#26

Post by mikekchar »

detaro wrote: post #9
jasonkester wrote: post #6

This 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".

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 source) is far from useless. Back in the day I often bought CDs with a Linux distribution on it. It was easier than downloading it when the internet was not as pervasive as it is now.

Having said that, I don't think they have a viable business model. Charging for distributing a Linux base OS, even if you have added your own changes, is unlikely to make a lot of money. They would probably be better off trying to find a niche and then do contract work to improve it.

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

#29

Post by mcjiggerlog »

jasonkester wrote: post #6

This 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…

This would just mean that people would pirate it. It might not be a problem for you now, but for people in some parts of the world or budding young users will have issues with having to pay.

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

#30

Post by jitix »

It's not bad that they are asking for money. Although the current norm is to give away the binaries for free, I think they can and should charge for the service they are providing by building the binaries and making them available for download. Especially since it's a very polished distro. But the wording on the blog post appears a little arrogant since it is not an entire OS built from scratch.
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