Slashdot Mirror
Software For Ransom
rbp writes "I just received a message from Adam Theo on the Jabber Developers Mailing List about what he calls "The Ransom Model" for software publishing. The principle, according to the above linked site, is that the "rights to the source code remain restricted until a set amount of money is collected or a set date passes, at which point the code is freed". Seems like a very interesting way to make money and produce free software. I think it's worth discussion. Take a look at the Ransom Model webpage and join the Ransom mailing list! (You might also be interested in recent news about Blender)"
Reader Apreche adds a link to a Freshmeat editorial piece which draws on Theo's idea, writing "This has some obvious problems, but it is worth discussing. The biggest problem I see is where vaporware fits into the equation."
Rights to the source code remain restricted until a set amount of money is collected or a set date passes, at which point the code is freed.
What happened to the "more eyes = better code" paradigm that so many Slashdotters and Open-/Free- Source gurus so frequently praise.
Listen, people -- if these new, deviant "random" coders start projects with expiration ("freed code") dates of 10 years down the road, no one will ever learn, improve, or assist innovation in the realm of software engineering. We will simply end up with thousands of under-funded vapourware applications, which in turn will stifle innovation for years to come when one considers all that *could have* been produced in the same amount of time with a more reasonable development model, such as Microsoft's Shared Source or ESR's Open Source.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I don't believe it does. Here's why.
If a company uses open source software, they'll have extra money (saved from not having licensing costs). If they're smart, they can then use this money to hire developers to work on open source projects, giving back to the community which has given to them. It's like planting a tree when you chop one down; smart in the long term.
Now they won't have to cook books anymore. They'll make exactly the amount of money they said they would, no lies.
It's just that then they'll realize that they could have made more...
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
The problem with this whole situation is this IMHO... first of all, this will cause people to (a) pirate what used to be free source anyways. (b) cause people like me to wait out the time limit so that i will always be two steps behind what is current unless we will fork out ca$h, (not bloody likely) (c) cause the free source community to stop doing it for the reason they started in the first place... Its a hobby, they enjoy it, and they want to make the computing world a better place. I am not trying to be flaimbait, but if i have to pay for *nux, or any software really, I would just stick with microsoft, due to the full featured compatibily and mainstream acceptance. Granted *nux is more robust, and far more efficient. Overall I am more inclined to do things by my pocketbook.
Alright, so what happens when you "donate" to one of these projects? You give money, and if enough other people think it's worth their money, you get the software. Doesn't this mean that unless you're willing to finance the project in whole, there's no guarantee that you'll ever see the software? While I can see a good number of people supporting ransomed software out of good will, I can't see it working as a real business model, as people generally want some reassurance that they'll receive that for which they've paid.
That's right, we must pay these people for code that others would provide freely, in order to protect their jobs.
Or alternatively we could pay them to dig holes and then fill them in again all day; this would have the same wonderful job creation effects without penalising every software user.
Either way it's more important that they have jobs than that they're actually doing something useful.
I just want to point out that Ransom is not likely to work for people who would otherwise be able to purely open source the project. If a project is so easily done as an open source project, then a competing (fully open source) project will come along and take away the Ransomed project's users. Ransom will work best in areas where traditional (is open source old enough to have a "traditional" label???) open source can't work very easily, areas where the proprietary, corporate developers still rule.
Theoretic Solutions - Public think tank, creating grand ideas
Not off-topic. Please bear with me.
:)
I remember during a telethon by a local radio station, they had a very successful bit called "Give Us Money or We Play the Carpenters." If I remember the exact rules, they had a certain number of Carpenters songs they intended to play (30-ish), and people could call in and buy up a song, keeping it from being played. It was working wonderfully until a small but vocal group of Carpenter fans started giving them money to play more songs.
Why not something along that line? You could implement a ransom system where the code is set to be released at a given date, but people could give money to shorten that date. Until the GPL does kick in, the goal is to make the code useful enough that people want to support it.
But I do see your point. If someone tries to do this, and then starts messing with the conditions of the agreement, or started getting money based on some feature he's promising to implement at some unspecified future date, the whole model would become suspect.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
sendmail, wu_ftpd and bind have proven that this is not true.
Open source does not give any advantage simply because almost nobody actually reads the code.
In theory, yes you can read it, in real life however, almost nobody takes advantage of this to audit the code and search for problems.
The fact that open source allows you to read the code doesn't mean that people actually read it.
yes, it certainly does beat nagware. If you are even mildly interested, sign up for the Ransom mailing list, even if it is just to watch (although I hope to draw in most subscribers. This model needs feedback).
Theoretic Solutions - Public think tank, creating grand ideas
I got a bunch of problems with this model. I'll mention them. Feel free to disagree.
I'm assuming that the binary must be free and freely distributable, otherwise, who would ever know about this project, and who, then, would donate money towards it. (Or, of course, this could have already been a commercial product that was not freely distributable, but that has a wide following.)
1) If a user does not care about every seeing the source code, he has no reason to pay for it, because again, he already has an unlimited right to use it as much as he wants.
2) Even if a user would like to see the source, he knows that it will one day be released, regardless of making a donation.
3) Even if a user would like to see the source as soon as possible, unless he can afford the entire ransom amount, he has no reason to believe that his donation will make the source released earlier: either not enough other people donate, so his donation is meaningless, or more than enough have donated, in which case his donation is unnecessary. (Do a google search on Kitty Genovese to see what I'm talking about).
Anyway, it doesn't seem like there is any reason for someone to donate, except for the same reasons they donate to OSS projects now. In fact, people might donate less, because nobody likes to pay "ransom" for anything.
The server was slashdotted before I could read more than the front page (see Google cache), so I missed the "step-by-step process" description.
People have mentioned concerns about sky-high ransoms, but the free market will vote with its feet so that doesn't worry me. Likewise, the problem of a programmer who raises the ransom after the initial announcement will be solved because people will get disgusted and won't pay.
But there's a problem of fraud. Joe Programmer wrote Foo Program and I've donated ten bucks to have the source released. But I don't know if Joe counted my ten bucks toward the ransom, or simply pocketed it. If I'm patient and trusting, I can wait for market forces and reputation to filter out the programmers who pocket donations.
But Joe can do better by posting a list of donations. For donors who prefer to be anonymous, he assigns them a number and emails a copy of the number to them, so they can verify that their donations have been counted. Anybody can grab a snapshot of the donation list and throw it in a spreadsheet to verify the current tally.
Anybody whose donation was ignored can gripe in some suitable forum (Slashdot, Usenet, wherever) and if there are enough gripes that don't look like kooks, Joe's reputation will suffer.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
It sounds like a good idea, until you start trying to explain it to the public.
... But that can be done without a Ransom License anyway!
Salesguy: "Okay, yeah, the first thousand people to pay for this, get it... and so does everyone else."
Customer: "Even the people that don't pay for it?"
Salesguy: "Yup! That's how it works."
Customer: "... Why would I pay, then? I can just wait for someone else to."
Unless the ransom's low enough that the few people that really want it do pony up right away make the difference, it seems like people will end up waiting indefinitely. And forget about it when it doesn't come out.
You could maybe make the case that the instant gratification urge will win, and they'll want it right now even though they could have it free later, but I wouldn't be sure enough of that to put money on it.
This wouldn't apply to libraries and such, though, so maybe -- but what's really in it for those sorts of developers? The biggest draw I can see for this sort of license is for people who are going to deliver straight to the public. The cut-down version for the small fee draws them in, provides funding, and then once the ransom is met, you get a full release.
Well, it'd probably be in the EULA that the company *must* release the source after x dollars have been made. Otherwise people wouldn't really believe it. If you paid and the company doesn't release the source when specified, then you can sue.
A while ago, a friend of mine asked me how he could apply a sound economic model to the distribution of digital (a.k.a. easily reproducible) media. He wanted a system that fully accepted the near-uselessness of DRM technology. I told him about the "Street Performer Protocol".
This is the only model that makes sense to me in that it is clear, well-defined, and simple, yet complete. As the world "gets smaller", the information (knowledge) economy seems to be converging on a sort of minimum -- where the moment a piece of private information becomes public, it becomes public with a capital P (anyone who wants it will get it whether you like it or not). Digital technology allows the game of telephone to be played ad infinitum, and the message at the end of the line is the same as it was at the beginning. Sure, we can try to stretch the Copyright and Patent laws to fight this, but isn't the more intelligent solution to adapt to the new environment in a profitable way?
I have heard economists argue that "secrets" will become the most profitable asset in the information economy (as if they aren't already). This certainly applies to international politics and military affairs already.
In any case, it seems to me that SPP is in sync with all of this. And of course it applies to source code! I think that distributed development deserves a distributed payment system, based on SPP or something like it...
As for practicality, please note that SPP is not new or untested. Public Radio & Television, for example, has been doing it for decades: "We'll give you a quality stream of news/entertainment if and only if you pay us $X by date Y". And guess what -- it works. The government backs out of more of its commitment to funding public media each year, and yet the industry is here.
Probably the name is the worst part of the whole idea. I thought SPP was bad, but "Ransom" -- that's near idiotic -- the kind of name that makes great soundbites for the RIAA. Yeah, "Ransom" sucks. The idea of SPP is great though -- I just wonder why more folks aren't on the bandwagon yet?
BTW, the whole Stephen King experiment is an awful example of this, since there are so many external contributing factors. A fair first experiment with this concept would use a medium that is commonly distributed in digital format. While people do read from computer screens frequently, they do not tend to read novels on the computer. A more fair test would be in the distribution of music, software applications, software documentation, digital images, etc.
OK -- rant done.
Yes, I agree. You need to decide up front how much money your project is worth. Base this on the number of hours invested and your experience/skill/creativity.
I know some authors may write one superb application that could have made them millions, but instead pays them for the effort they invested. That's unfortunate, but they are still rewarded as their reputation should allow them to raise their price / hourly rate next time around.
You must assume some risk to enter the scheme, but you're your own boss. You should get paid for the work you do, provided it's accepted and used by customers. If it's not, then do you deserve payment?
I think this is an excellent model for music distribution as well. The artists/studios etc. paid for the work put into producing and marketing an album. The quality of the work and the artist's reputation can be reflected in the price. Finally, customers eventually "own" the music, and can p2p it legally after a certain point, so formerly popular titles can be easily obtained after the event. It also discourages the unfair practice of bundling a load of garbage with 2 or 3 good songs and releasing the lot as an "album". Each track could be individually valued, with proportional contributions being made from each compilation sale.
Surely this is a good compromise serving everyone's best interests?
One final thought. Can you charge for successive versions. If you write an popular application and almost give it away (small ransome) can you charge each of the established users a small amount for the extra coding going into the next version, generating a lot of revenue for a small amount of work by virtue of the popularity of the app?
Not so fast...
First, the opensource model is great and all but it only serves right when is used to develop very common software, something almost everybody wants or something that can be built in small steps.
But there is a lot of software that simply doesn't fit the opensource model, because it will be used by very few people (which can't contribute with much developers, but surely can with lots of money), or because it represents a really big effort before a barely useful product and no group of developers could dedicate themselves to such kind of effort unless they are jobless.
This ramson model seems to fit the gap between the purely commercial software and the purely opensource software, and remember that a software fits in any class because functionality and target users, not only because the beliefs of the programmers. That includes technical beliefs.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
I agree, "ransom" is a good choice for simplicity and making its intent obvious. And "ransom" hasn't always had the negative connotations of the present. An older meaning is essentially equivalent to paying to get your property out of hock, more akin to escrow than to kidnapping.
I think it's a reasonable idea. It lets the developer set the return they feel they need to get for their efforts, while in due course giving "extra value" to their product (personally, I view assured eventual source releases as incentive to buy a program now, particularly one I can't live without).
I see it also can optionally tie this to a date after your major market is expected to have come and gone. That way it would function pretty much as copyright was originally intended to -- let the creator derive whatever "limited monopoly" benefit they can in a reasonable timeframe, then give their work to others to build on.
The one point where this gets a bit sticky is if it's an ongoing process where a program has regular upgrades built on the same codebase. Even so, releasing source when support for older versions is retired would be a reasonable thing to do (a la idSoftware), and the goodwill may well be worth far more in future sales than what little commercial value is left in outdated source.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This model seems stupid to me.
1. Software is released under a 'Ransom' license.
2. People don't buy the software, waiting for it to become free once x others have bought it.
3. No one buys the software.
4. The software never becomes free, and no one uses it.
It's wholly unfair that some people get to use it for free whilst others pay for it. Opensource developers SHOULD code apps because they like doing so, and because they're useful, and they should make their wages doing maintainance/individual projects for companies.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Vapourware isn't a problem. A Ransom licence (as proposed by the site in the article) only comes into effect when you actually have a set of binaries to go with the source. The binaries are still released as a free download, but then you pay to actually get at the source. So for example, you wanted to re-compile the new Apache with your own personal code, and it was under the Ransom Licence, then you'd have to cough up the cash to get at the source (or wait for the time limit to expire). So basically, you can't Random License vapourware, as you don't have any binaries to distribute.
A had an interesting thought on this issue: I wonder if something like this would solve the "abandonware" problem.
What I refer to is in the realm of games (or at least this is where a most commonly hear the term used; it could really apply to any older, still useful software). There have been cases where a really neat game that still has play value (or at least nostalgia value) is no longer being produced, but attempts to distribute copies of the game result in lawsuits for copyright infringement from the company that authored the game, even though there is no revenue coming in from these games for them anymore.
If this ransomware (and, yes, it needs a better name) were in place, then after a certain amount of time the source code would be made public and people can enjoy the game again, even enhance it or modernize it, or derive something else from it.
Naturally, this system would have to have a lot of controls in place to prevent abuse. You don't want a company setting it up so you can't get the source before 20 years have passed or something like that. A good way to determine a money/time limit would be to perform some sort of anaylsis on past revenue and compute in what time do you make X% of your revenue on a software product, and the value of X would depend on what safety margin the company wants for itself.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)