Would an Ad-Sponsored OS/Desktop Work for OSS?

Gentu asks: "OSNews runs a quick blurb and poll on the idea of an ad-sponsored OS or desktop. What is interesting is that the answer is a bit hard, as embarrassing commercialism is against the freedom of Open Source Software, while on the other hand, it is a handy and easy way to get funding for your favorite open source project. What does Slashdot think about the issue? Which is more important: the software and how we can continue evolving it by any legal means, or the licensing and philosophy behind it?"

Comments

Why this won't work on an OSS project.

[MongooseCN]

/* DrawAdvertisement(Desktop); */

Re:Why this won't work on an OSS project.

[Ninja Programmer]

That's bad coding style (C-based comments don't nest properly). Instead use:

#if 0
SpyWareReport ("$user");
#endif

Screensaver Ads

[bildstorm]

One of the comments I saw that was really cool was screensaver advertising.

I think most of us who are willing to use our processor time on things like SETI would be willing to let ads run on our system during screensaver time if it would bring any funding to these projects.

Additionally, if there were bonus incentives for actually looking at ads, etc., I would be on it like a heartbeat. I would support it even from my Windows boxes.

Could be a good idea

[nemesisj]

I don't see why everyone goes nuts about advertising. I think its ridiculous how everyone whines and moans about ads when they're getting something for free. Heck - I click on Slashdot's ads all the time, just because I know that by doing so I'm keeping the site available FOR FREE. Often, the ads on slashdot and other sites I visit interest me too and are higher quality than the "film girls with our digital camera" X10 crap. I would love to see redhat include an open source ad display app and just let people turn it on - maybe even turn it on by default, but make it easy to turn off, and explain where the money's going to and how much you've generated, etc. It could be a contest to see who generates the most revenue for a project. I'm all for something that lets me SPONSOR OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS FOR FREE SIMPLY BY WATCHING ADS.

Re:Could be a good idea

[forevermore]

The problem with this idea becoming a "contest" sort of defeats the purpose of having ads, or paying more for "clicks" than "views." If people were just randomly clicking ads, for the sake of generating revenue for the host, but theoretically not paying attention to the CONTENT of those ads (I do it occasionally for places like thehungersite.com), the value of those ads will decrease incredibly, to the point that a "click" would be worth no more than a "view". And since people would rarely actually be looking at the ads, neither would be worth very much (sad, considering how little they're worth now).

I think it would be MORE important to host advertisers that actually have interesting stuff to sell, so users would be genuinely interested in clicking and browsing the site, thus making the advertisements worth more, not less.

Missing the point?

[Subcarrier]

A lot of the posters seem to be missing the point here. Of course it would be easy to recompile remove the adds. That is not the point. The question is, would people be willing to put up with the adds voluntarily to support a cool opensource project? This is a good question especially to those, who feel they should contribute somehow but do not have the necessary computer skills. (Slashdot may be the wrong audience to ask this question, though.)

Re:no it wouldn't

[douglas jeffries]

the article does say "an ad sponsored version", so it seems to me that their poll is asking whether users would optionally use this version to support development, with the choice to use the ad-free version as usual. so ad-blockers would be unnecessary.

given that, this might be an easy way to support your favorite OSS projects. an interesting idea at least.

Donations vs. Ads

[Bouncings]

Indeed. Advertising and simply requesting donations are two very different things. It's pretty similar to the broadcast media:

• Donation-supported media (public radio)
• Begging-for-donation-supported media (public TV w/ pledge drives)
• Sponsorship media (public radio, public TV)
• Ad-based media (standard TV, radio)
• Pay media (HBO)

Note that I would almost put public TV in the ad-based media, but their ads do not interrupt content, so I didn't. I put that in sponsorship media, which isn't exactly the same. Sponsorship is more of a charity-based act, and although some new customers may notice the company through the sponsorship, it might not result in greater profits.

More importantly, the Internet is now facing a reality that commercial TV and radio faced in the 1940s: Ads wear out. After a while we become numb to ads, and don't pay much attention. The more annoying and rude they get, the less attention we pay. The difference is that TV, radio, and porn sites seek ways to make ads more annoying, and companies like Google try to sell ads based on useful information and non-obstructive delivery.

A Better Question

[N8F8]

Has irresponsible and ill-conceived advertising on the desktop left users unreceptive to this form of advertising?

After all, I can honestly say I enjoy many commercials on the TV. When it comes to banner ads and popups I'm more likely to have a negative opinion of the site/application and the sponsoring company.

micropayments, code reuse

[bcrowell]

Well, we know that online advertising as a revenue source hasn't really worked out as well as people thought, so I agree with you that donations make more sense than ads. A five-second startup delay might not sound like much, but multiply by 100,000 users, and you're wasting a lot of people's precious time here on earth. And it also means you'd lose one of the main selling points of open source. One of the only things that seems to get ordinary people interested when I talk about open source is that they're annoyed with the advertising built in to Windows, AOL, and other software.

So yes, I think donations make more sense than ads. However, there's a problem with asking people to write a check for $50 or something. It's a big chunk of cash, and experience has shown that only a vanishingly small percentage of users will pay shareware fees. One of the problems is that you really don't know how much you're going to use a piece of software until quite a lot of time has gone by. I've downloaded a lot of open-source stuff, but there are really only 5 or 10 open-source apps that I use on a regular basis every day. So micropayments might make more sense. I wouldn't mind paying one cent every time KDE fired up. The problem is we don't have a micropayment infrastructure that is widely used and practical.

Another problem I see with this kind of revenue-seeking is that you don't necessarily know whose software you're using, because one of the main advantages of open source is code reuse. For example, I'm using Mozilla right now. Well sure, it might make sense to give some money to the Mozilla developers. But Mozilla also uses XML heavily, and I'm sure it uses a library for that, maybe Expat. So doesn't the guy who wrote Expat deserve some of my money? When I click on the submit button to post this, Slashdot's server is going to run a Perl script. Shouldn't Larry Wall get some money? And what about any BSD boxes that my packets pass through in order to get to Slashdot -- shouldn't those BSD developers get some money? Oh yeah, and all of that software was compiled with gcc, so Stallman should get a cut. The whole thing just gets silly.

Would look bad for people considering OSS/FS

[Rulle]

For me it would be fine with optional ads to support for example the KDE project. But having ads will make Free Software look bad to outsiders and newbies considering switching from their current desktop to Free Software (Ads is something Joe User doesn't like). And proprietary software vendors would say (Imaginary quote): "Dont go with that freeware stuff, they are just out for making money with those ads you have to click on". I dont think the fact that it would be optional would get through. It would be like Free Software == Annoying popup ads.

Sure

[Sven Tuerpe]

If the advertising integrates nicely with the shell, why not? Right after one issued a find, make, or latex command might be a good time to place an ad on stderr.

Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

If we are talking Free Software (eg. Gnome project, etc..) then no it would. Freedom to change software is one of the main drivers of the GNU GPL. So I shall freely remove the ads.

Not again...

[Yes]

Lets get real. What do you think, are the advertisers an infinite money source or something? It seems that ad-revenue is the number one trick to get money. You know, the pattern below is everywhere:

Step 1: A superb dotcom/software/whatever idea
Step 2: Sell advertising space
Step 3: Profits

I think advertisers already have too much choice (tv, radio, print media, web, movies, mobile phones etc). Where are we going to find even more advertisers? Where are we going to find people that care about all this advertising (I don't)?

I think it is time to get more creative. Or, lets be less creative. The work done by software developers should somehow be compensated by the users of their work, right? In exchange the software users could give some of their work to the developers, right? We could even use the universal exchange unit of work, right? Hey, wait...but that's money!?!