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How Can Companies Profit While Giving Code Away?
An anonymous reader writes "In an almost philosophical essay replete with references to everyone from Larry Lessig and Tim Bray to to Professor Yochai Benkler, Sun Micrososystems evangelist Simon Phipps explores the metaphor of subscription (well, of course it's not just a metaphor any more from Sun's point of view) as the way that companies will make money off of deploying open source solutions. His distinction between OS developer and OS deployer is useful, but the crux is his contention that, with a "system" such as Sun has put together like the JDS, 'You don't buy the software from Sun - instead you subscribe to the editorial outlook.' It's an alluring analogy - Sun as the editor-in-chief of a 'publication' (JDS) with readers who may or may not choose to subscribe. Worth reading."
Advertising. Giving code away would give software the attributes of free-to-air broadcast media. And given that software usually needs regular updates for bug fixes, downloading would be more than just a one-time affair. Free-to-air broadcast media revenue comes from advertising. And although general advertising doesn't guarantee the audience will have any interest, the type of software being downloaded will give a better idea of what kinds of ads would interest their downloading demographic.
If i understand them correctly i believe that Gentoo and Lin(spire|dows) are pushing the same sort of model.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I dont think that is the only way. There was an article a while back on the different business models around OS and there were some good examples that were not advertising.
One way, which my company is doing it is by giving away source code of components that plug in to our services system. What you are really buying from us is infrastructure, management, and time.
We are expecting that many people will build their own systems but that is OK, we dont need to be a monopoly, we just have to offer value to customers such that the say its worth the money.
When you cancel a software subsciption, you can't use the code anymore.
No, that's not how it works. You subscribe to Sun's software, and you get new releases on a quarterly basis. If you cancel you still keep the software, but you don't get anymore updates.
You're confusing subscription with "maintenance" contracts.
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Traditionally, I believe the revenue generated from newspaper sales merely covers the cost of distribution (paper, trucks, delivery people, etc.). Since distributing bits is very cheap by comparison, one could plausibly conclude that the "subscription" price for software should be very low.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
I still get an uneasy feeling from parts of this essay. The link between community governance and control of the commit authority is played up a little too much for my comfort. Open source has a fallback mechanism for users/customers who are unhappy: the code fork. This is one way in which the analogy with newspapers is a bit week. A newspaper is ephemeral, the stories change every day. A "fork" doesn't make sense. Sure you can make your own by going to base news sources, but you can't re-use the mechanical bits that make up the NYTimes layout or the website. If you tried to my a MYTimes that re-cycled the NYTimes content directly, you would certainly be violating their terms of use and copyright.
This article gives me the impression that Sun is still clinging to control of the commit mechanism as a way to exercise ultimate authority over the community. In contrast, if you read interviews with Linus Torvalds, he is usually very careful to express how limited his control is, downplaying the fact that he holds the ulimate "commit" keys, and emphasizing that his true power comes from the amount of respect he has earned (and is able to sustain) from his fellow kernel developers.
Yes, I would pay for a free software subscription. I even occasionally click on google ads while searching to buy a particular item. But it would be a long time before I spend $299 that I might pay for a complex app that really meets my needs. Yes you can make money from side business if software itself is free, but probably not enough to cover writting software in the first place. Perhaps enough to cover distribution and minor bug fixes.
Of course support can be expensive, but that's only for corporate customers, and even then many free apps can be "supported" by googling for info. What kind of questions about Firefox are worth $100 a pop?
Let's just accept that most free software is written as a hobby, as an academic project or for personal use. Linus didn't set out to make great riches, and as far as I know he didn't. If you are trying to make money off either free or pay software that other people are willing to write and maintain as a hobby, well you should have known better.