Getting the "Free" Business Model Wrong Doesn't Mean the Model is Flawed

While "free" seems to be an increasingly popular business model, there are quite a few people who seem to be completely bungling what to do with "free" and then complaining when it doesn't work. Techdirt takes a look at some of the arguments surrounding why free as a business model may or may not work and why many of these arguments, while prevalent, just don't hold water. "you give away the infinite goods, not the scarce goods. Your time is a scarce good. No one is saying that everything needs to be free -- they're saying that infinite goods will be free, because of it's very nature in economics. In fact, Poole's argument is particularly weak when it comes to programmers, because most programmers don't earn any kind of royalties for the software they write. They are paid a salary, for their time -- but not for the software itself (which is an infinite good). And, I won't even get into the number of programmers who work on open source projects for free ... or the fact that Poole is blogging for free ..."

Comments

Getting the "Free" Business Model Wrong Doesn't Me

[Anonymous Coward]

While "free" seems to be an increasingly popular business model there are quite a few people who seems to be completely bungling what to do with "free" and then complaining when it doesn't work. Techdirt takes a look at some of the arguments surrounding why free as a business model may or may not work and why many of these arguments, while prevalent, just don't hold water.

"you give away the infinite goods, not the scarce goods. Your time is a scarce good. No one is saying that everything needs to be free -- they're saying that infinite goods will be free, because of it's very nature in economics. In fact, Poole's argument is particularly weak when it comes to programmers, because most programmers don't earn any kind of royalties for the software they write. They are paid a salary, for their time -- but not for the software itself (which is an infinite good). And, I won't even get into the number of programmers who work on open source projects for free... or the fact that Poole is blogging for free..."

I laugh

[bobwrit]

I laugh when I see people complaining when free woftware has bugs in it. I reply to that with "And Windows never has any problems or bugs" They stop at that point because they relize that the free software is better than the commercial software, and they don't complain about the commercial software.

Re:I laugh

[jeiler]

I wish I could be so lucky. My boss won't let FOSS anywhere near the system with the exception of one lonely PC set up as a webserver. He knows commercial software has its problems--his biggest problem with FOSS is "lack of support." I've tried showing him that there is support available, but when he wants support, he wants to be able to pick up a phone and get an answer the same business day.

Of course, this is the same boss who says "I'm not using anything I need to compile myself." Go figure!

Re:I laugh

[basiles]

I wish I could be so lucky. My boss won't let FOSS anywhere near the system with the exception of one lonely PC set up as a webserver. He knows commercial software has its problems--his biggest problem with FOSS is "lack of support." I've tried showing him that there is support available, but when he wants support, he wants to be able to pick up a phone and get an answer the same business day.

He can buy that kind of support. Of course, it is probably expensive!

Re:I laugh

[zappepcs]

Exactly. What he said!

When people that I deal with sit down, open a few documents, surf a bit, check out pictures on their camera... well, they almost invariably say "oh, it's just like MS. What is it called again?" Then after a bit more conversation, I have to explain that they don't need windows to run GNU/Linux, that it's a free alternative to MS Windows and it has alternatives for all the MS software that you have been using. In fact, some of it is better than MS software, and all of it is free! Mind you, you can contribute/donate to projects/software that you find very useful, but you don't have to give them hundreds or even tens of dollars. You can install it on any number of machines, and it won't prompt you for a license key. It has none of those MS annoyances. All software has some, that is how things work, but GNU/Linux importantly is missing the really nasty annoyances like fees, and restrictions etc.

Once that sinks in, they agree that it really is a cool thing. Linux good, MS... not so much.

Re:I laugh

[CastrTroy]

Ask him when the last time was he picked up the phone and called MS and asked them for support? What kind of response did he get? How much did they charge? Then look at the kind of and cost of support available for products like Red Hat. Ask him how what MS provides is better.

Re:I laugh

[palegray.net]

Are you a programmer, or is there someone in your organization who is? Support doesn't necessarily mean your boss has to call some other company. You could learn the desired products well enough to provide basic support yourself (assuming your boss will pay you for the time spent doing so).

If your boss isn't interested in paying someone internally to learn the products well enough to support them, he/she probably isn't really interested in spending money outside the organization either, no matter what the license on the product might be.

With software support, you pay up front for the software, or pay for support after the sale, or both. Even in cases where you get support included with the package, you've gotta ask what level that support is. If your boss wants to be able to pick up a phone and "get answers the same day" it's gonna cost. If he wants solutions (i.e. fixes) the same day (or ever in many cases), that's gonna cost a lot more. No matter how you slice it, money will be spent.

For many applications, I'm convinced it makes a lot of sense to go with an open source solution that has a very active development community. Couple that with someone in your organization who understands the product, and reasonable support can be had for a lot less money than comparable commercial solutions.

Re:I laugh

[jeiler]

Are you a programmer, or is there someone in your organization who is?

I am--but the catchphrase for our department is "We don't code. Ever."

It's not a situation that's at all logical, and he knows that taking an absolute stand against FOSS isn't rational. But this is the same guy who will cheerfully pay $450 per hour for a consultant to come in and do something that we can (and have) done.

On the plus side, he keeps the rest of the departments off our backs, and gives us the tools and the freedom to do what we have to do. And if we make a decision--provided that it's within the limits of "allowed" software--he will back us to the hilt. So it's not all bad.

Re:I laugh

[baffled]

Maybe I'm too proud, or maybe I'm too cheap - but I've never contacted support from either MS or Red Hat. Perhaps someone who has could detail their experiences here? I'm interested to see how they compare.

Re:I laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's paid support is pretty good in terms of price/performance, as long as you can prove to their satisfaction that anything you call them about is caused by a previously undocumented bug in their software. One of my coworkers (working on Exchange integration) has had 12 of 13 $250 support ticket charges refunded on that account.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree that putting an OSS project's maintainer on retainer is generally speaking far more effective; getting a phone number to call to talk to one of the people who actually writes the code is a far sight better than any commercially offered support I've been beneficiary of thus far... and having the source code and access to the dev mailing list (and thus the ability to DIY on simple things) is likewise helpful. That said -- if you can prove to their satisfaction that your problems are all their fault, MS's commercial support isn't as bad as you suggest.

Re:I laugh

[Telvin_3d]

For what it's worth, I can sympathize with his lack of interest for anything he has to compile himself. I'd consider myself quite computer literate. I can and have compiled programs in the past and likely will again in the future. Still, when I am trying to figure out what software to go with, anything I have to compile (or run in any other non-direct/standard fashion) is always going to be at the bottom of the list. This goes double for smaller software projects. If I run into any problems installing or running, the last thing I want to have to trouble-shoot is if I screwed something up compiling it or if the package wasn't quite complete or if a dependency is missing or god knows what.

In my experience and with rare exceptions, anything that needs to be compiled by the end user or anyone directly working for the end user is either not ready for prime time or so specialized and niche that it is almost unavoidable.

Re:I laugh

[davolfman]

The trick with in house experts is they move on to other things. If your expert works for the manufacturer you have something of a guarantee that the expertise will always be at the other end of the phone line.

Re:I laugh

[AlecC]

From my experience, you can buy support for any FOSS package worth mentioning, at a price that still beats commercial rivals. It is also my experience that the support thus purchased is outstandingly better than that for paid-for software. Problem responses within four hours, from somebody who really understands the system, instead of taking to weeks to dig through layers of ignoramuses to get to the expert. This, I conjecture, is because FOSS support teams live or die by the quality of support, whereas paid-for software put the best developers onto new features and regard support as very much a second-line function.

Re:I laugh

[tsm_sf]

For the MS support experience in a nutshell, google John Belushi's Ma Bell sketch from the early days of SNL.

Re:I laugh

[Crazyswedishguy]

It's not only "lack of support". It's also a question of liability. Who do you sue when things go wrong? It's much easier to hold a company liable when you paid for their product.

Re:I laugh

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

If your expert works for the manufacturer you have something of a guarantee that the expertise will always be at the other end of the phone line. Yes, the expertise will be there, along with all the money you'll be shoveling to the manufacturer to keep him there. :)

Just kidding...in all seriousness, I expect most of the time it's cheaper and less hassle to make support payments than it is to find/keep in-house experts.

Re:I laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Your boss does not want support. He just wants to cover his ass. If you have downtime because of a MS bug that takes months to fix, he can point the finger to MS and probably get away with it.
If this happens with a FOSS product, upper management will start asking questions and eventually blame him for the choice of software. Your boss knows this.

Re:I laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

My company recently paid something around $300 for resolving our problem with MS Server 2003. The call did resolve the issue, BTW.

We also paid $25,000 to LinuxWorks for 5 seats/1 year support (we had 2 seats only but LW did not have 2 seats packages). The support itself was not good (they have used outsourced clueless developers from India). At the end, we resolved all our problems ourselves.

Re:I laugh

[Rakishi]

Who do you sue when things go wrong? Cry because that's about all you can do, you've already agreed when buying the software that you do not hold the maker liable for anything.

Re:I laugh

[mehemiah]

Ah, but first you must read their EULA. For example, before we go into a contract, the other company must sign a contract for us. one denied because we had a clause in the contract to the tune of "you will be held responsible for loss of life resulting from the use of your software". In their defence, it was a resource management system that managed hardware. it was so fine grained and expensive that I could see someone jumping off a building after paying for it and seeing that it's crap(or miss managed medical equipment but we don't do that). I could see someone dieing because their cvs import was flawed also (in the same way).

Re:I laugh

[Crazyswedishguy]

Right, that was my point...

Re:I laugh

[hedwards]

It really depends, in general you're better off not calling them. In most cases they charge for the privilege. I did have to call them one time because the registration server was down, preventing me from using the program I had bought. MS Money FWIW, Intuit is one of the few software companies I can think of that makes MS business practice seem quaint. Charging for upgrades, forced sunsetting of software, inability to import files from older version or from competitors, inability to use OFX because it wasn't supported by their business model etc. Even the more draconian MS measures can't touch all that.

And that's not really as off topic as it might seem, many business models forget that users don't have to look at the ads and that any company that has ads which crash browsers is likely to make a lot of enemies.

I like the business models that were held up as examples. A tiered model is really a good thing when it works. Personally, I want a physical CD/DVD/equivalent with uncompressed full quality available. I realize that I don't hear all of it, but having the extra quality allows for me to decide what bitrates to use and change my mind about the compression codecs when necessary. I know a lot of people are satisfied with 128bit, but lets be honest, that sucks. I'll use it, but only for certain things, and I'll generally want to have songs at several different bit rates depending upon what I'm wanting to do.

A business model which wasn't mentioned was weedshare, when I first came across it a few years back, I thought that it was a great use of DRM. You can listen to it for free for 3 tries and distribute the original unlocked file as much as you like without any consequences. In fact the artists represented would really appreciate it if you would distribute it via p2p or whatever other means. You could either unlock the tracks or in many cases the artists have CDs available for purchase.

Unfortunately, it's defunct for the time being do to player problems, which is unfortunate. I hope they can get things working again. Because it was a great model to work with otherwise.

Re:I laugh

[westlake]

Ask him when the last time was he picked up the phone and called MS and asked them for support?

This always sounds like a great comeback...

But if your boss is comfortable with where he is now it is probably because he is getting the support he needs and at a price he thinks is reasonable.

He is not seeing the kind of problems that would make rebuilding his business around a Red Hat solution worthwhile.

Re:I laugh

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

They stop at that point because they relize that the free software is better than the commercial software

I'll just stop you there. Free software is generally very good, but the top spot of most (all?) software fields is usually occupied by a piece of (often expensive) proprietary software. For instance, open office just isn't quite as good as Microsoft Office, the GIMP isn't as good as Photoshop, Rosegarden isn't as good as finale, etc. Still, for zero dollars down, they have my support (even if they sometimes don't have the support of professionals in the field).

Re:I laugh

[killjoe]

Who do you continue to work for somebody who is that stupid and irrational?

Clearly the man lacks the capacity to make sound decisions and your company is not going to last very long.

One day he is going to make a business decision based on the phase of the moon or something he read in his horoscope and sink the business.

Re:I laugh

[jeiler]

Who do you continue to work for somebody who is that stupid and irrational?

Because on any other issue besides FOSS, he's one of the best bosses I've ever had, and one of the best CIOs around. He's been CIO of where I work for over 20 years, and not shot himself in the foot yet.

Re:I laugh

[westlake]

For the MS support experience in a nutshell, google John Belushi's Ma Bell sketch from the early days of SNL.

Th standard of perfection among elders in my family was and remains Ma Bell. 100 years of practical experience.

Re:I laugh

[killjoe]

>Because on any other issue besides FOSS,

The issue is not FOSS. The issue is your bosses ability to make sound and rational decisions.

>He's been CIO of where I work for over 20 years, and not shot himself in the foot yet.

Except this one time. You yourself admit the decision is irrational.

Maybe his mind is going. Maybe he has brain tumor. Maybe he is ill in some other way.

Either way he has lost the ability to make rational decisions. He is making decisions based on ignorance and superstition.

In short he was become a zealot. He has ruled out an entire category of solutions simply because of some ideological belief.

Trust me this is not going to end up well for anybody involved with the company.

People like that should not be put in position of responsibility.

Re:I laugh

[linhares]

It's not only "lack of support". It's also a question of liability. Who do you sue when things go wrong? It's much easier to hold a company liable when you paid for their product. ha-ha. So windows gives a BSOD and your patient dies. Try suing Microsoft and see what happens. They'll point to the EULA and that's that. You've accepted it. And that's that.

Re:I laugh

[p0tat03]

It's a liability problem. If Windows borks, Microsoft's on the hook, your boss has a fallback, and can pass the buck to the vendor. With FOSS is much harder to do. Oops, our system broke, time to go in front of the board and blame it on a bunch of weekend programmers. Corporate America is really just a bunch of people too busy covering their asses to worry about doing what's actually good for the company.

Re:I laugh

[lena_10326]

It's also a question of liability. Who do you sue when things go wrong? It's much easier to hold a company liable when you paid for their product.

Business by definition is a venture riddled with risk. Managers try to minimize risk, but it's always there. I find it strange that those managers frequently bet the company on core products developed in-house, which aren't even proven business models, yet refuse to be willing to bet on FOSS.

Re:I laugh

[jeiler]

In short he was become a zealot.

Just asked him about this--he says part of the reason he avoids FOSS is not the software ... it's the community. He got tired of dealing with the folks who looked down on him because he has certain business functions that he is required to use Windows for.

But we've wandered pretty far from the topic of the article. Best of luck to you.

Re:I laugh

[Opportunist]

Not lack of support. Lack of a company behind it.

It's funny. I've had arguments of FOSS vs. commercial software with more than one company (being IT security freelancer gives you quite a bit of insight into a few companies IT makeup). When asked, you usually get the answer "We don't go Linux, because there is no company behind it".

When asking why that's important, the omnipresent answer is "Well, if there's a company and something goes wrong, you can sue". Explaining that software is provided as-is most of the time and no software manufacturer ever got sued successfully when his software caused some outage, the answer is "But this is $big_software_company, they can't afford the goodwill loss and they will do what they can to help us minimize damage, even if not required by law".

I am not kidding.

And yes, these are even most of the times people who do have experience with IBM in the 70s.

Re:I laugh

[kklein]

Silly boss, valuing his time and that of his company! Doesn't he see that supporting people's hobby projects is more important than making money???

Re:I laugh

[Opportunist]

It is? Most experiences in that matter I have run akin to this comic.

Re:I laugh

[tsm_sf]

Bell can't be accused of doing everything wrong. Far from it. The reliability and durability of their hardware was never an issue. You could beat a man to death with a Bell handset. Their main problem, from a general customer's point of view, was that if you needed customer service you could go fuck yourself as far as they were concerned.

Re:I laugh

[Opportunist]

I can't vouch for Red Hat, but here's a bit of my experience with MS support.

My question: I plan to ackquire VS 2008. Could you please inform me about the differences between the various packages you offer, so I could pick the license(s) that suit our needs best?

One would assume that it, being a question dealing with making a sale, first of all has some sort of priority and second, should be part of a standard info. I was actually surprised that I couldn't find the info online, but maybe I just didn't manage to find it.

The answer was that the service rep doesn't know and he will escalate the question. After that, a week of silence. After that week, I got an email with a link to a page giving me admittedly exactly the information I wanted.

Asking how I could have found this page, so I don't have to bother their support the next time I need information about different software bundles, I was informed that there is no link from the main or search page that would have enabled me to find it.

Re:I laugh

[Darkness404]

For what it's worth, I can sympathize with his lack of interest for anything he has to compile himself. I'd consider myself quite computer literate. I can and have compiled programs in the past and likely will again in the future. Still, when I am trying to figure out what software to go with, anything I have to compile (or run in any other non-direct/standard fashion) is always going to be at the bottom of the list. This goes double for smaller software projects. If I run into any problems installing or running, the last thing I want to have to trouble-shoot is if I screwed something up compiling it or if the package wasn't quite complete or if a dependency is missing or god knows what.

But for a large business it is good to compile some software by hand. For example on limited hardware, compiling a program may allow you to squeeze some extra performance out of the code or compile it to be faster then a stand-alone binary could.

Re:I laugh

[VGPowerlord]

Or Lily Tomlin's Ernestine, the Telephone Operator sketches?

Re:I laugh

[Darkness404]

Just asked him about this--he says part of the reason he avoids FOSS is not the software ... it's the community. He got tired of dealing with the folks who looked down on him because he has certain business functions that he is required to use Windows for.

But for most if not all free software you don't even need to use the community. Take for instance Firefox, it is a browser that is installed on many Windows machines, it is F/OSS, better then IE, and is rather stable. Now how many users of Firefox have ever had to do anything with the community? My guess is very, very few. How many users of the GIMP have ever had to deal with the community, Pidgen, GNOME, KDE??? My guess is very, very few. Most (90-95%) of people using the software don't even go to the project website regularly my guess would be. About the only reason I see for a non-technical user to even need to touch the community of a F/OSS project would be to A) Report bugs or B) Complain to a distro specific forum ie: The Ubuntu Forum that something doesn't work. I don't see how the community would be a major reason to not use at least some F/OSS software, if your boss is scared of Firefox because it is F/OSS the original poster was right, he has become a zealot.

Re:I laugh

[magisterx]

Most free software projects, especially the big ones, have companies that are thrilled to provide support for a fee that is very reasonable compared with the price of the closed-source counterpart. Red hat is one of many prime examples.

Re:I laugh

[tengu1sd]

There are also numerous third party solution providers to the Microsoft experience. This one reviews a reasonable priced consulting group that can provide support in multi vendor environments.

Re:I laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

"You could learn the desired products well enough to provide basic support yourself (assuming your boss will pay you for the time spent doing so)."

Which makes it no longer free. You're going to pay, the question is how much. It's much more variable following that approach.

Re:I laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the GP.

My boss, fool that he is, made the very same argument: there is no one to hold responsible when Linux fails. I asked him what about the liability disclaimer in any Microsoft licence, and he said "But you can still ring them!" Well, when I had an XP Pro box that needed a new licence key, it got trapped in an activate-already activated cycle. Microsoft's rep cheerfully told me (I kid you not) how much I'd enjoy reinstalling XP Pro. My boss's response to that? "Microsoft rang us up, and sent us $3000 of work. No Linux company ever did that." (We regularly contact Microsoft, and we've never once been in touch with Redhat or Novell. Is he expecting them to look us up in the phone book, and randomly offer us work?)

This is the same boss who explicitly puts people off buying/using Macs by telling everybody that they're notoriously hard to use, that you get half the power for twice the price, and that 85% of Windows viruses are written on Macs.

When one customer asked him about Linux, he said that "Linux is for people who like 'free.' You get no support, not much works with it, and you can't really do anything with it."

(I've been here just shy of 6 weeks, and you can probably tell that I've had about enough.)

Re:I laugh

[gnupun]

Exactly, the market for support is tiny. Would you rather spend $3/min to phone support or google for the fix? If you give software for free and rely on support for income, you'll be bankrupt in no time.

Another problem with the "support business" is, the more crappier the software, the more support it needs. Therefore, good software would make far less money than mediocre software. Do you want to live in such an upside down world?

Making money in support is analogous to a surgeon performing operations for free, then part-timing as a janitor cleaning toilets to make income... completely ludicrous. The hardest part of software is solving large number of difficult problems with innovative software. Programming is harder than support and should therefore make primary income.

OSS is turning out to be a complete scam whose goal is to trick developers to work for free. I don't want to live a socialist/communist utopia where programmers work for free and rely on government welfare/2nd jobs for survival.

Re:I laugh

[CastrTroy]

That's great, but in some instances, some fixes just need code access. Only MS can provide that for MS code.

Re:I laugh

[ozmanjusri]

My single experience with MS support was that they spent most of the time verifying that the failure/bug in Office Developer Edition 2002 was not a result of hardware or misconfiguration.

They then advised me to reinstall ODE, and when that failed, to reformat and reinstall Windows and all of my applications. I was on a remote site, having flown there on a light plane with weight limits, so I had none of the install CDs.

That was when I made the decision to move my business and customers away from Microsoft.

Re:I laugh

[RodgerDodger]

You do realise they probably spent the week writing the page, right?

Re:I laugh

[totally bogus dude]

No, his point was that your license agreement for any piece of commercial software largely precludes you from suing for anything. Microsoft have a somewhat nicer one which limits any liability to $5 or something like that, which is absolutely useless for your company but could be nasty for them if there's a class action.

It might be an idea to go through the EULAs for the main packages you use and show your boss the sections where they disclaim any liability. Many of them specifically forbid you from suing them for defects, too.

Re:I laugh

[Stinking Pig]

You're not understanding the code word. He doesn't mean "a call center full of tech support people" when he says support, he means "a cheap replacement for your sorry butt".

In the first corner, Free software supported by a relatively rare and relatively expensive "classic IT guy", AKA BOFH-in-training.

In the second corner, Expensive software which everyone with a pulse and a DeVry certificate knows at least a little about. Every vendor he talks to, every resume across his desk, every consultant in the door knows the basics.

Let's walk through a scenario: What email platform should we use?

Free: Well, there's four serious options, three of which are options in my favorite OS's package management system. I'll be happy to benchmark them all and try out the three different AV solutions and four different mailbox delivery options... yeah, that's a different function, we'll be using IMAP on MAILDIR of course so we can ignore the seven old school solutions. Don't worry, the whole thing will be held together with some Perl and Procmail-fu, I'll understand it completely. Sure Outlook will work, but I'll have to figure out something for calendaring... everything for that is in beta, but a couple of them look really promising (never mind that their pages were last updated in 2004 just before the lead developer graduated).

Expensive: Microsoft Exchange. We'll need AV, would you prefer Symantec or McAfee? I don't know how to do any of this, but here's a VAR who's done it fifty times and can knock it out from bare metal to migrated end users in ten days. That includes (barely) enough training to keep me from screwing the pooch, and a support line I can call.

Re:I laugh

[Opportunist]

Somehow I doubt it, it was a bit outdated...

Re:I laugh

[ultranova]

It might be an idea to go through the EULAs for the main packages you use and show your boss the sections where they disclaim any liability. Many of them specifically forbid you from suing them for defects, too.

It might not be such a good idea to show your boss that he's wrong. While some are professional enough to take the valuable advice and be thankful for it, the chances are that any given one isn't, and will consider it a personal insult and take vengeance instead.

Re:I laugh

[CastrTroy]

That should never be a valid fix. I can understand rebooting, or reinstalling a specific application, but reinstalling Windows and every application is not something you should even consider asking your customers to do.

Re:I laugh

[ynohoo]

Business buyers don't deal in click-thru EULAs. They get their lawyers to negotiate terms with software suppliers. The more seat licenses you are negotiating for, the better the deal you can get, and it will usually include effective support.

Re:I laugh

[Phreakiture]

That's a good one.

Of course, the thing is that the wide distribution of sub-par software has lowered people's expectations of software, and allowed commercial software interests to distribute goods that are clearly sub-par, with no real incentive to fix.

Free software, on the other hand, is often a labour of love, and therefore will get fixed eventually.

As an aside, I moved a non-geek friend from Windows to Linux (Ubuntu Hardy) this past weekend. Thirty minutes into showing her hot to use it, she declared, "I already don't miss Windows."

Re:I laugh

[pikine]

You've never met people who tells you that Windows has no bugs? While this does not mean anything about the quality of Windows software, but the user is a significant factor in perceived software quality. I haven't used Windows for many years, but I think it's fair to say that if that thing between the chair and the keyboard knows what he's doing, he can be using Windows, Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X and not have problems.

However, I'm not blaming the user for software problems at all. Perhaps, instead of measuring software quality by the number of bugs in it, you measure it with user satisfaction? If most users can master the software, then it would be of high quality. Then we can see that Linux has definitely been improving consistently throughout these years, regardless whether the number of bugs have been rising.

Re:I laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

They stop at that point because they relize that the free software is better than the commercial software, and they don't complain about the commercial software.

But doesn't that ignore all the facts? If it's so much better... why are people paying to use the "inferior" stuff?

FOSS has had decades to prove it's point, and still hasn't had a single mainstream success. Perhaps one could stretch and say Firefox is a success, but even that project was based entirely on what had for years been closed source, commercial code (and heavily buggy code, at that)... so even their singular success is tainted. Teh Lunix could possibly have been refered to as a success, but they were just stealing market share away from UNIX, and even that trend is reversing. Meanwhile, the number of Windows servers has just been growing, and growing, and growing.

The fact is, FOSS can't even give away their applications. I'd suggest digging even deeper- maybe you can win over "customers" if you start PAYING them to use the software.

But claiming that FOSS is somehow superior, while really popular and mod-point-winning over here on Slashdot, just doesn't match up with the situation on the ground here in the reality based community.

Re:I laugh

[killjoe]

>ust asked him about this--he says part of the reason he avoids FOSS is not the software ... it's the community. He got tired of dealing with the folks who looked down on him because he has certain business functions that he is required to use Windows for.

Sounds like he is also suffering from paranioa.

1) He thinks it's not possible to get support for open source.

2) He thinks he can successfully sue a proprietary software company and hold them responsible for defects in software.

2a) He has never read a EULA.

2b) He thinks he has the resources to take on MS, Oracle, etc.

3) He thinks the "the oss community" is "looking down on him".

This guy is not playing with a full deck.

Re:I laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I've only called Microsoft for a friend with a Microsoft optical mouse problem, they were what I would call average and relatively unresponsive. Jump the hoops get replacement sent. Their issue number seems excessively long, as I recall.(this was 3-4 years ago)

I've also only called Red Hat once, in 1998, when I was unable to boot with the most up to date release purchased from a local Staples. On my IBM Thinkpad. It was either 4.6 or 5.6, and the newest release was 5 or 6(but not available in the store). There was no phone support for my version, but the phone support person, once he realized that having my only accessible computer(high school senior at the time) unable to move past post inhibits the ability to use the website and email. The quality of the help was good but due to circumstances beyond my control (out of agent's scope of support) the total was unsatisfying. I returned that and when the next version hit the shelves I used that, and it worked perfectly.

It's been said before...

[palegray.net]

Allow me to say it yet again. If you're depending on something like advertising revenue alone to support your free product, you'd better make sure it's licensed appropriately and you understand your target audience. For software projects, it frequently makes a lot more sense to charge for support and feature enhancement. It frequently makes sense to give the software itself away under an OSI license (the approach I usually take).

This means you're placing the value on your time. If people want installation help, custom configuration, or even hosting services for your application/software suite, you charge them. Ongoing maintenance? Charge them. Everything doesn't have to be free, something people seem to frequently forget.

IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

this simple principle:

"Anthing that is available in an infinite quantity should be free."

puts alot of things into perspective.

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[Score Whore]

And what's the value of something that doesn't exist? Until someone comes along and creates the work you consider to be available in infinite quantity, it's only available on zero quantity. Given that that is the extreme end of scarcity no amount of money will allow you to buy it. Does that make the act of creation of infinite value?

Maybe you shouldn't try and hang your economic philosophy on old ideas of supply and demand?

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that make the act of creation of infinite value?

I never stated that "anything that is only available in finite quantity (or that does not even exist) is worth something", although you seem to imply that I did.
Poor logic, maybe?

I was merely suggesting that any product that can be reproduced at negligible cost (including time), with no difference from the original product, should be free.

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[morgan_greywolf]

"Anthing that is available in an infinite quantity should be free." No, what he's saying is that anything available in an infinite quantity will be free. That's just basic economics. The trick is to tie the free infinite good to a scarce good. If you get the business model right, the free infinite good will drive demand for the scarce good.

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[morgan_greywolf]

Maybe you shouldn't try and hang your economic philosophy on old ideas of supply and demand? However, we live in the real world. ALL economies, whether 'free market' or 'communist' are, in the end, based on the 'old idea' of supply and demand. Scarcity creates demand. If it weren't for scarcity, we wouldn't need any such thing as an 'economy' or 'money'.

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The value of something that doesn't exist is the same as what does exist - how much can you sell it for? If value < cost, it continues to not exist.

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAB? Businessman? Banker? British?

IANAE[conomist], perhaps?

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[cliffski]

and yet the incentive to create that product is zero.
So in a normal economic market, the product never gets created.

you know many actors, directors, lighting guys, scriptwriters, continuity peoples, make-up artists and costume designers who work for free?

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

and yet the incentive to create that product is zero.

Where did you get that from? The following syllogism?

-How much should one spend to create the product?
-At some point, the product is going to be infinitely available, ie. free.
-Therefore, one should not spend anything.

No. The link between creation and availability is more subtle than that.

you know many actors, directors, lighting guys, scriptwriters, continuity peoples, make-up artists and costume designers who work for free?

You know many people demanding that theatres should be free?

Re:IANAB and I did not RTFA, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

A.K.A. the support contracts. As you give away your product and release more features that the businesses/entrepreneurs rely on, you build a customer base and, viola!, you have a thriving business of your own.

A good example?

[DogDude]

The article makes a plausible argument, but fails to give any real world examples.

Re:A good example?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla, MySQL, (insert linux distro here), and plenty of others offer services and software for free. They also offer "premium" services, but nonetheless, there's a big 'free' portion of their business model. Google is another example of offer many services for free. Nine Inch Nails just made a load of money off an album that was written under the creative commons license, so its absolutely free to distribute if you own it.

Re:A good example?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trent Reznor and Maria Schneider aren't real world examples?

Re:A good example?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trent Reznor only had the funds to make his initial studio albums due to the traditional system of working under a label (who funds the artist) and selling albums the old fashioned way. Sure, once he became famous and a multimillionaire he made money on new music despite offering it for free but isn't worldwide recognition and multimillionaire status a rather lofty prerequisite for success using a "free" model?

Re:A good example?

[Technician]

The article makes a plausible argument, but fails to give any real world examples.

The classic is the free razor. Give away the razor for free. The blades are not cheap.
The new one is free cell phones. Get your free cell phone. The air time is not cheap.

Extended further is provide very inexpensive inkjet printers. There is no bargan on official ink.

An example of the above gone wrong is the free :C bar code scanners.. that were re-purposed instead of being subscribed to the non-free content.
http://www.cexx.org/cuecat.htm
http://www.hackaday.com/2005/06/12/cuecat-hacking/
http://oilcan.org/cuecat/

The inexpensive I-Opener web device
http://www.ghettohardware.com/articles/iopener/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/03/23/netpliance_hobbles_iopener_99_pc/

If you use the free then fee model, be sure the item up for fee is something people will buy.
I-tunes is free.. But it can be used to rip CD's. That's OK. The plan is to sell iPods and maybe a few tracks on the iTunes store.

Re:A good example?

[Rogerborg]

That's because they forgot to multiply by honey.

Re:A good example?

[AceJohnny]

The article makes a plausible argument, but fails to give any real world examples. Then you didn't read the entire article. It specifically mentioned the examples of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails making dough on scarce goods (limited edition deluxe sets of their free music), helped by the popularity of their infinite goods.
Also Maria Schneider, whom I have never heard of before, but who seems to have had this model work for her as well.

Some people have to blame others.

[khasim]

Some people will always blame others for their failures. It's just that right now it is fashionable to bash Free Software.

I believe that this is because more people are trying to make $$MILLIONS$$ personally (remember the old Microsoft millionaires) on software that other people have written.

Essentially, they're trying to put an artificial bottleneck between the consumers and the product so they can extract money from the bottleneck. Lots of money. When they don't get lots of money, they whine. When someone else renders the bottleneck ineffective, they whine.

Re:Some people have to blame others.

[kklein]

I think you are partially right.

I don't actually mind paying for software at all. I know it's infinite, but the demand for it isn't, and I want someone to do all the grunt work of writing it and testing it and supporting it. That's the scarce good I am happy to pay for.

BUT...

Due to the "old Microsoft millionaires" you reference, people seem to think that they should make a million billion dollars off of something that has become insanely common, and whose bottlenecks are utterly destroyed. That doesn't mean that they can't make money; it just means they can't charge an arm and a leg.

Take SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), the best GUI-driven stats package out there. It is a staple of university campuses, and has become the default stats program for most stats users in business and academia. And it's good. And easy. And has phenomenal help files that actually teach the user about when to use this function and when to use that function and why. It's a great product, and I'd be happy to pay for it, IF it weren't $500 US for the first version that's worth a damn, and if it were just an install with a CD key.

But it's not.

It actually has a serial for every bunch of analyses, plus some sort of activation code that is utterly impossible to remember and is printed on a separate piece of paper when you buy it, and this code ties that product forever to your computer and your name. If you want to uninstall it and give it to someone else in your organization, you have to FAX SPSS and let them know.

This is a ridiculous artificial bottleneck that actually hurts the usability of the product. I have actually uninstalled my licensed copy and put on a cracked copy. It does what it's supposed to do, and won't complain if I need to reinstall, etc.

But does this bottleneck need to be there for SPSS to make money? I suspect not. I suspect that if they dropped the price to, say, $100 for educational purchases and $200 for business, they could sell enough to recoup the loss in per-copy revenue. I would have been able to buy my own copy in grad school instead of ripping it off. I could afford to get a copy for everyone on my project at my university. I would have been the originator of a lot of revenue for the company if the product were cheaper and less locked-down.

But as it is, I steal it.

I think this idea that software will automatically make you a millionaire is the problem, as is the idea that if people can get your product for free, they will always go for that option. Basically, if people don't need your scarce good (time and expertise), let 'em have the product for free. But price that scarce good right, and you can get most people to sign on.

...I think...

Re:Some people have to blame others.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, I WINE because of the bottlenext, too. What's the problem?

Ecosystems come in many flavors

[postbigbang]

There's the OS model as manifested by Ubuntu, RH, SUSE, and others. Each has different market motivators and success.

There's the cool-app model, like MySQL, Apache, and others that depend on application support and transparency across a lot of software disciplines.

There's the vertical app model, like Asterisk, that uses hardware/software/extensions to motivate the community, each making a few cents in within sub-markets.

There's the 'fringe' app (not said in a deragotory way) that uses a shareware-like valuing through paypal, donationware, and other 'love of the art'/hacker's bent.

And these are only a sampling of general categories. F/OSS in the Stallman model doesn't have to be a vow of poverty. On the contrary, we're only scratching the surface of how F/OSS makes money.

Re:Ecosystems come in many flavors

[TheRealMindChild]

Personally, I like the Ransomware model. You give away the end result of your work (application, dynamic library, whatever) away for free, and you put a price on your actual work (source code). You let donations come in per project, and when it hits your goal, it gets released with whatever open source license (you probably want to specify which before you start accepting). If you application is good, and your code behind it is potentially useful, I've seen a couple of instances where a larger corp would pay the whole ransom in one throw, just so they could have the code.

Re:Ecosystems come in many flavors

[postbigbang]

As its name implies, ransomware is a rather onerous and potentially litigious method of making money. Extortionware, TeaseWare, and other models are likely to be frown upon in most circles.

Re:Ecosystems come in many flavors

[RiotingPacifist]

By not releasing any code before you complete the project dont you miss out on (some of) the benefits of being open source.

Re:Ecosystems come in many flavors

[Anonymous Coward]

and I see forks spawn off, all the time, that release the features you are too timid with and, at the same time, are fast at absorbing whatever trickles out from you that they find worth poaching

Re:Ecosystems come in many flavors

[Lars512]

The only time I've run into it was Travis Oliphant's manual for numpy (or was it numeric python), and it really bugged me then. I wonder if it worked for him, or whether other people just wrote and released their own supporting material, to the point where the residual value of his work was too low for people to buy it.

I like the spirit of ransomware, but I think it needs some tweaking. For software, authors should acknowledge that the value of their work decreases over time, since someone else will reinvent the wheel or clone your work if you make things too onerous. If you haven't reached your money threshold within say 2 years, chances are you never will. Even that may be generous. Time limits are needed.

It also could use an independent arbiter, perhaps a NPO, which holds the source in escrow and can independently verify that money donated is measured and accounted for. That kind of transparency would make it more satisfying to purchase the product.

Re:Ecosystems come in many flavors

[TheRealMindChild]

I don't necessarily disagree about it not being perfect as how I described it/how it exists. I have no done such myself, but I do want to. I have rarely released any of my work to the public, and even when I have, the source never followed. But when it comes down to it, some of the code I have been working on and refining over and over for... well some projects, a span of 10 or so years. Now, that doesn't mean that it is 10 years worth of work that I would put a ransom on that would equate to 10 years of labored pay, but I will certainly insist that if it becomes free to the world to stand on my shoulders, then I get to set the price. And if it is never met, then I don't have to let something go that could likely be one of my masterpieces.

The details of keeping track of who donated what to where is inconsequential to me. I'd be happy to pick up the most fair system that I can find when I need it. Personally, I want to be open as possible about it. I want people to see how many people have donated, and how much. I want someone to be able to publicly burn me at the stake if I am ripping the whole system off. Ultimately, that has nothing to do with me wishing only to get what I feel my my work is worth.

Re:Ecosystems come in many flavors

[Lars512]

The risk is that your masterpiece sits in a cupboard for the rest of your life. Someone who chooses this model really wants to contribute their work to the community, they want it to be used and they (potentially) want the respect which comes from running a strong project. Supposing you don't get the money you hope for in a small time frame, would you really rather protect your project until it's obsolete (or inflation catches up to your fixed price) rather than releasing it?

How ignorant.

[Score Whore]

I wonder at Techdirt's economic and business background. They make a fundamental error in they're argument that programmers are being paid for their time and not for their code. The problem is that most every programmer who is being paid for their time, doesn't own the code they produce. Those who are contracting aren't being paid for their time, they're being paid for a solution to a problem. The remaining few who are paid for their time but negotiated up front for a free license are so rare that they're basically ignorable.

The fact that they've made such a basic blunder in understanding the actual mechanics of the industry makes me wonder, even in the presence of their semi-sophisticated talk of scarcity, what they actually know about business.

Re:How ignorant.

[palegray.net]

I recently got paid for my time developing a product, negotiated an open license for it, and retained copyright to the code. I think if more programmers were simple aware of these options, and knew how to show their customers the benefits of such arrangements, we'd have a lot adoption of this practice.

Re:How ignorant.

[Score Whore]

Maybe. There are few circumstances where a customer will allow you to keep copyright to the code. Two of them are:

1) It's something that they could buy, but you're selling it to them cheaper. Or
2) It gives them no business advantage over their competitors.

In case 1, you're going to continually fight a battle trying to price your sale lower than the competition. In case 2, you'll find an upper limit on what the customer is willing to pay.

Re:How ignorant.

[Seska]

I don't see how this is relevant. Techdirt's article was all about how real business models need to reflect both the near-zero marginal cost of additional copies of media and (therefore) the need to make money on scarce commodities.

For example, programmers generally charge for scarce commodities (time or solutions), and don't attempt to trade for the free stuff (additional (marginal) copies of their completed software).

They then point out how the blogger blew it (trying to get paid for near-zero marginal cost items) and how Radiohead didn't. Similarly, Google gives away searches (near-zero marginal cost) and sells the scarce stuff (ad space on often-viewed and topically related web pages).

Re:How ignorant.

[dwandy]

They make a fundamental error in they're argument that programmers are being paid for their time and not for their code.

Please explain.

I don't know of any coders who get paid by the line: they get paid by some measure of time. Sure there are instances where the deliverable takes more time than was budgeted and you end up working unpaid overtime, but that's an estimation and contract problem. (though if coders got paid by the line, it sure would explain bloat-ware!)

The problem is that most every programmer who is being paid for their time, doesn't own the code they produce.

Precisely, because they are being paid for their time, much like a plumber doesn't own your pipes when he's done installing your sink. It's the service of coding that's being charged for. In the end, with a few exceptions, we all bill for our time. Activities like "provide solution" might be why one contractor bills more than another, but in general they don't itemise "solutions" on their invoice, but "hours" or "days".
There are two broad categories: "Goods" and "Services" and writing software falls in the "service" category.

...and I'm sure people will point to a few exceptions to all this, which is why I stated "generally" and "with some exception"...

Re:How ignorant.

[Score Whore]

Please explain. ... Precisely, because they are being paid for their time, much like a plumber doesn't own your pipes when he's done installing your sink. It's the service of coding that's being charged for.

From the perspective of the programmer who is selling his time, at the end of the day they (almost always) have nothing to give away. So where is the argument for giving away the non-scarce item? If you have something to give away, then you probably haven't been paid for your development time. That's what I mean when I say that Techdirt has a problem with their argument.

Re:How ignorant.

[shmlco]

Or come up with new distribution methods. Look at how Apple will be doing applications for the iPhone. Users will browse the "app" store directly from the phone, purchase from the phone, and they will be digitally signed and downloaded directly to the phone.

Re:How ignorant.

[Bodrius]

Perhaps you are the one making a basic blunder: when people outside of Slashdot talk about "Free", they mean the dictionary "Free" as abscribed to a product, not the "RMS definition of Free".

There is nothing in the article related to open source licenses, etc. They're completely irrelevant to the economic argument - and frankly, to the common mechanics of the industries that the article describes.

That's the problem with arbitrarily redefining perfectly good words in common use.
Don't expect the rest of the world to suddenly adopt your new meanings for their own words - most of them don't know (or give a rat's derriere) about such terminology.

Re:How ignorant.

[cduffy]

I've been the employer allowing a contractor to keep copyright to his code. Why? The contractor was the maintainer of HylaFAX+, and was offering to do custom work for us at a very reasonable price provided we made that policy exception; otherwise, his rates were much, much higher. In addition to fixing bugs on a timeframe that matched with our release schedule (rather than the as-time-permits bugfix schedule for regular OSS users), he added integration points and hooks where we could connect to our custom, proprietary code. Everyone -- including our competition -- has access to those hooks, but we were the folks with the code (both in our product and in the glue) to take immediate and best advantage of them.

We even released some of our less proprietary related bits upstream to the community -- such as scriptage for using Inkscape as a just-in-time SVG renderer for much fancier cover pages than HylaFAX was able to handle on its own. Why? Because I wrote them in-house, and I wasn't going to be there (or working on faxing) forever; having those bits (which weren't exactly "secret sauce", just a little bit of extra flare) in the public consciousness meant that whoever ends up taking over the fax subsystem (of our much, much larger product) now that I'm gone will be able to pick up any third-party enhancements to that code which have been made upstream -- and maybe, just maybe, having that example available of what the enhancements we paid to add to HylaFAX+ can do will result in the HylaFAX.org branch deciding to pick them up, meaning that customers owning fax hardware only the iFax commercial variant of HylaFAX.org can interoperate with would be able to use that hardware with our product.

Re:How ignorant.

[pipatron]

Oh. I always thought the word Free in the movie title Free Willy actually meant to free something from its bonds, not that someone gave away a whale.

Re:How ignorant.

[DaveV1.0]

Of course, you could have hired someone in hyperbad or bangladesh to write your custom code at half of the price.

Re:How ignorant.

[cduffy]

That someone probably wouldn't have written code up to the standards of the project's maintainer, thus it wouldn't have gotten accepted upstream, thus we would have had to keep paying that someone to update their code every time we wanted to port to a newer version of the upstream product. Sure, it might save some money in the short term (but then it might not -- communications problems can throw off a release schedule pretty easily, and a slipped release date costs more money than any fax subsystem enhancements are worth)... but getting code upstream is well worth it.

We'll see how that goes; outsourcing everything is the approach that company is taking right now. As a shareholder, I wish them the best... but I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Re:How ignorant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats right.

All the tea.

Re:How ignorant.

[dwandy]

I guess not everything is looking for a solution. Programmers get paid by charging for their (scarce) time. So in general this already follows the first half of what the techdirt guys say: charge for what you don't have a lot of, and give away stuff that has a negligible cost (to you) but (hopefully!) generates a greater premium for your (scarce) time. Since it's a service that you get paid for, you're correct that there may be nothing for this specific example to give away in order to increase your per-diem.

However, still with software, the guys that are doing this are (one example) redhat. They give away the source code for free, but charge for the support. The more people that accept the free source-code download (or derivative thereof eg. centos, fedora) the more valuable the support redhat is offering becomes.

Does this mean that everyone needs a lesson in "free" ? no, just those (most notably the recording industry and their ilk) who believe that you can't make money with free.

I read techdirt daily, and the way I read them isn't that everyone needs to add "free" to their business model. Adding free needs to be thought out and the decision to include free has to make sense for your business. And most importantly that it can make sense. This is important because there are a lot of people who either genuinely believe you can't make money with free, or who have a vested interest in keeping things that way.
Like the dot-com bubble showed that adding ".com" to your business plan didn't generate revenue, adding "free" to your business plan has to generate revenue. After that, it's simply logical that you give away things that cost you nothing in order to increase the value of the stuff you don't have a lot of (which is most commonly your time) which maximizes your overall profit.

Re:How ignorant.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was a guide for gay guys to get laid.

Man that was a disappointing two hours.

Re:How ignorant.

[RiotingPacifist]

shhh fanboy the real men are talking here. WTF does the iphone have to do with free software/music/web service?

Re:How ignorant.

[RiotingPacifist]

free adj (freer , freest)
1. allowed to move as one pleases; not shut in.
2. not tied or fastened.
3. allowed to do as one pleases; not restricted, controlled or enslaved.
4. said of a country: independent.
5. costing nothing.
6. open or available to all.
7. not working, busy, engaged or having another appointment.
8. not occupied; not being used.
9. said of a translation: not precisely literal.
10. smooth and easy â free and relaxed body movement.
11. without obstruction â given free passage.
12. derog said of a person's manner: disrespectful, over-familiar or presumptuous.
13. chem not combined with another chemical element.
14. in compounds a not containing the specified ingredient, substance, factor, etc definition of free [from chambers]
you'll notice that definitions 1,2,3,4,6 are more along the lines of RMS and only 5 supports your definition of the word.

That's the problem with arbitrarily picking one definition, dictionaries.

interestingly the word free comes from freo

1. free, at liberty; exempt
                    Beo he freo: he shall be free. (Alfredâ(TM)s Laws)
      2. (poetic) noble, glad
                    Ãa wearþ worn afeded freora bearna: then a number of noble children were brought forth. (Cædmonâ(TM)s Metrical Paraphrase) which is pretty much free as in libre.

Re:How ignorant.

[Bodrius]

Definitions 1, 2, 3, and 4 are literally opposite to the lines of a contract/license (such as the GPL) - which by its very definition is a set of restrictions. All of those freedoms are compromised in the RMS-Free meaning, by design, in order to guarantee a specific case of Definition 6.

The very term "violates the terms of a Free Software License" shows the oxymoron we are talking about here. If all of the definitions you mentioned apply per dictionary meaning, the very term 'free software license' is patently absurd.

'Free Software' in the FSF sense only has meaning with a novel and context-specific new meaning for 'free', which they conveniently define and publish in the FSF website precisely because it goes against the grain of normal language usage.

All of which is perfectly fine - if you consider that mixture of freedoms and restrictions a worthy compromise, and you need to define a legal framework for that, you may need to define some specific terminology.

But let's not pretend that it should replace common language, or worse, pretend the meanings are no different. A red quark is not really "red" in the normal sense of the word, and the "free software" concept is not that different.

Incidentally, as a latin american, I find the 'free as in libre' argument is no better (perhaps much worse).

Libertad is not something you get from signing a contract or getting a license for - it is your fundamental right as a human being to be free of imposed restrictions.

We surrender to reasonable restrictions of this liberty in law and fact for the sake of peace, security and prosperity. But you don't suddenly start calling the restrictions themselves "verdadera libertad" without opening the door for new restrictions based on new redefinitions.

History has set really bad precedents for that kind of sophistry - some disturbingly recent.

Re:How ignorant.

[shmlco]

The question you should be asking yourself, bright boy, is WTF the iphone have to do with PAID software/music/web services? Apple is building a direct-to-device software distribution system where, if you want the software, you buy it from the App Store and THEN it's downloaded to your phone. It's also signed, so you can't just copy it off and distribute it as "free".

So in response to the comment "Techdirt's article was all about how real business models need to reflect both the near-zero marginal cost of additional copies of media...", I pointed out that Apple apparently has a "real" business model that doesn't "need" to reflect near-zero marginal costs. You want a $5 game from the App Store, you pay $5 to the App Store. Apple controls both ends of the equation.

And as Apple's third-party software developers ALSO have access to the same model, they too can write software with some expectation of being paid for their work and don't need to sell t-shirts or beg for donations.

In short, there are plenty of "real" business models for digital content, and "free" isn't the only one...

Re:How ignorant.

[mortonda]

"as ascribed to a product" ... How many people buy whales?

Re:How ignorant.

[Risen888]

They make a fundamental error in they're argument

And you seem to have made a fundamental error in you're grammar.

Re:How ignorant.

[Stradivarius]

Libertad is not something you get from signing a contract or getting a license for - it is your fundamental right as a human being to be free of imposed restrictions. One man's freedom is another's imposed restriction. Society deters me from swinging my arms in certain ways such that my fists do not contact someone else's face. That is a loss of my freedom to do as I please with my body. But is simultaneously the freedom of everyone else to be free of assault. Similarly, I cannot be simultaneously free to speak my mind and also free from the possibility others might slander or libel me. The same goes for kidnapping laws and a whole list of restrictions that guarantee our freedoms.

Fundamentally, different freedoms cannot always coexist in their absolute form. But they're still freedoms - it's not sophistry to label them as such. We simply need to realize that it is not possible to have all freedoms at all times; instead we prioritize and make tradeoffs based on the situation. So we have laws protecting most speech but forbidding libel. We have contracts like the GPL that limit certain developer freedoms to protect other developer and user freedoms.

And unlike laws, free software licenses themselves are not imposed upon anyone. You are free to write your own software to do whatever you want it to do. You are also free to agree to use the work of others on their terms - whether it's a "free" license or otherwise. The law does constrain your choices to these two options - but that's property law, not the license. The license is simply the terms on which others agree that you can use their property.

Re:How ignorant.

[Stradivarius]

The Techdirt article is explicitly premised on the idea that you are in a competitive market. It is in a competitive market that the price gets driven to the marginal cost.

If you don't have a competitive market - say you have locked customers into your walled garden like Apple's trying to do - then sure, there is nothing to require you to price at marginal cost. That is a tried-and-true business model (though bad for consumers), especially when you have long service contracts and the like to prevent customers from going elsewhere easily.

There are still factors that could force Apple to reflect at least some of their near-zero marginal cost in their pricing. If other phone platforms (maybe Android) start to give them stiff competition, that would have an impact. If you can get applications much cheaper elsewhere, that could be sufficient incentive for folks to switch out of Apple's walled garden.

It's also possible that applications from non-Apple sources may not tie their software licenses to the phone platform - so if you switch from an iPhone to a Motorola device, your license key for Killer App 2007 could still work when you download a copy of the (probably Java) program onto the new phone. That would similarly mean Apple would have to work harder to retain people in their ecosystem, which would imply lower prices. Though this scenario assumes that your new device/carrier is open to such application downloads, rather than just being a different walled garden. While par for the course in the PC software industry, that would be quite a switch for the cellular industry.

Re:How ignorant.

[Bodrius]

Fundamentally, different freedoms cannot always coexist in their absolute form. But they're still freedoms - it's not sophistry to label them as such.

The point is it is a VERY dangerous sophistry to confuse the restrictions from Law with Freedom. Even if one preserves the other.

If you read my post, you'll realize I fully agree with you in everything but that point.
We accept the restrictions from the Law, to protect our liberty and its fruits from interference - that's the social contract, and civilization.

In the case of the license, you are Free (in the original meaning of the word) to enter the "free license" contract (or not) as either party. The contract does not give you the freedom itself - it only defines the binds that you accept.

But it is very dangerous to label the restrictions we accept voluntarily as "Freedoms" - because it opens the door to unilateral changes to the contract.

When you have governments shutting down opposing newspapers, websites and TV stations to "protect real freedom of expression" (usually under your 'freedom from libel' argument) - it is a sharp reminder of the dangers of redefining some words.
We need to be very aware of what we have (freedom), and the binds we accept (the law) - so that we know when something gets taken away unilaterally.

Anyway, back to the minor problem of "free software".

"Free" in the GPL is a context specific code-word, which is common enough in contracts and legalese - and the FSF is clear enough about that in its documents, even if the community often is not.

Using it as a code-word is fine, as long as we're all aware it is a code-word and what it means, and do not expect the rest of the planet to magically start using it because some geeks used it in a software license.

Confusing it with the normal meaning of the word in normal conversation at best makes it sound absurd (e.g.: original post) - at worst dillutes the very thing it claims to protect.

Re:How ignorant.

[shmlco]

"It is in a competitive market that the price gets driven to the marginal cost."

It's long been an axiom when discussing these things that a "competitive market" is doublespeak for "free" or pirated content. Hence the constant "necessity" of being forced to compete with free. Eliminate piracy, however...

Re:How ignorant.

[Stradivarius]

I think we agree - restrictions are not freedoms, they are tools used to protect certain freedoms.

I agree it would be dangerous (and yes, sophistry) to start saying things like "real freedom of expression" in the libel example. What's being protected by libel laws is not freedom of expression, it's a freedom from defamation, at a (IMO fairly limited) cost to our freedom of expression. The way to avoid the sophistry is to be accurate in what freedom is being protected, and at the expense of what others.

Re:How ignorant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this idiot marked "Insightful"? This is Slashdot. Anyone who is not familiar with the usage of 'free' in 'Free Speech' is nothing more than flamebait.

There are heaps of way to make money from "free"

[apathy maybe]

Here's one off the top of my head, you have your software, you release it.
You charge for installing it (if people want that), for adding extra bits (releasing them for free again), customizing, localizing etc.

I can think of at least one company that does exactly this (though I forget the name at the moment... I believe it might have been Cygwin). Free Software, that was constantly developed through people wanting it to work just right for them. Of course, other companies tried the same trick with the same software, but people kept going back to the source.

Meh, I can't be bothered wasting any more time on this, but needless to say, the article has it right.

TANSTAAFL

[symbolset]

No human effort is free. All human efforts require time and energy, overhead and maintenance. This is more so true when the efforts are subsidized by a company. When a contributor gives effort to the improvement of software that is to be made freely available to all he (or she) is engaged in a contract wherein he can expect a benefit called "progress."

Such a contributor may offer this up for the benefit of all, but that point is not important to the contract. As long as there are two contributors in the world so involved that their efforts benefit each other the terms of the contract are kept and the benefit is achieved. That there are many, many contributors so engaged amplifies the benefit for all.

Progress benefits us everyone. Perhaps "free" isn't the right word after all.

Paying for your time

[Anonymous Coward]

So, since the software itself is free, and all revenue is generated from service contracts and tech support, who pays for the time that went into the original software?

If the software was perfect, ie the original programmers had put enough time into it to completely debug the code, the user interface was simple and intuitive, no conflicts with other programs arose, etc...
    there would be no need for tech-support
    there would be no income from the software

So by giving away the software free, does that encourage buggy programming?

ABIL

Re:Paying for your time

[HappySmileMan]

One of the key points of FOSS from what I remember is that the users ARE the developers, that's incentive enough for them not to produce crap.

Of course MS programmers are users of Windows mostly, but I suppose when they're given deadlines and told exactly what to do by marketers who care more about looks and advertising than features they start to slip

Re:Paying for your time

[Anonymous Coward]

Works great for hobbyists, not so well as a buisness model

ABIL

Re:Paying for your time

[Warll]

In some parallel perfect world, yes. But this world is far from perfect, likewise there is no such thing as a perfect program. All programs will break or be broken by another program. If what I just said was true then any business would be taking a risk by going unsupported, a risk which over the life time of the product may very well come back to bite them. So if the programmer/developer already has the support contract/money it is in their best interest to make the most bug free program possible. Thereby reducing their costs to support their client and increasing their profit margin.

Re:Paying for your time

[chord.wav]

Users will always need upgrades and demand more features, those can be addressed offering bounties.

Re:Paying for your time

[init100]

Support does not only mean a help desk and bug fixes, but also include customization and integration with the customers' existing systems. Even if you would write perfect bug-free software, those two demands wouldn't magically vanish.

Re:Paying for your time

[Polski Radon]

You could also release new features once a quota of donations was reached (there was a story on /., I can't remember the name of the prominent writer who did the same with one of his novels). Or you could collaborate with companies to customise your software for their needs.

Re:Paying for your time

[coldtone]

I think the response might be that you should only get paid for writing new software. So in the above example you build a perfect product give it away for free then people will pay you to build a custom version (or something else) for them.

But if the original is perfect would they need a custom version? Also would they not choke on the cost of custom development (Lets say $200 a hour) vs just using a free product?

The argument does not make a ton of sense to me. How can a programmer make money if everything is under the GPL?

Re:Paying for your time

[jimicus]

If the software was perfect, ie the original programmers had put enough time into it to completely debug the code, the user interface was simple and intuitive, no conflicts with other programs arose, etc...

    there would be no need for tech-support

    there would be no income from the software

So by giving away the software free, does that encourage buggy programming? Interesting argument, but the amount of time (and therefore money) involved in producing code which has demonstrably zero bugs is such that only a very few are prepared to pay it (think heavily regulated industries such as aerospace).

Hence, most commercial software is just as full of bugs as its free counterpart. The biggest difference is that commercial software houses work most of these bugs out inhouse before showing any of their work to the world, so they can present the illusion that they churn out code with relatively few bugs.

Re:Paying for your time

[westlake]

One of the key points of FOSS from what I remember is that the users ARE the developers, that's incentive enough for them not to produce crap.

That is incentive enough to produce something that doesn't look like complete crap to your fellow geeks. It doesn't mean that you can deliver a damn thing that is usable by anyone else.

Re:Paying for your time

[urcreepyneighbor]

users ARE the developers, orly? muh bff jill dun kno c++!

Re:Paying for your time

[HappySmileMan]

users ARE the developers, orly? muh bff jill dun kno c++! Probably should have said that the other way around... The developers are users

yes it does (communism)

[Deanalator]

A good business model is simple and robust enough that it's hard to screw up. If a company is brave enough to try a "free" business model, and it fails, it was probably explained to them in poor and simplistic terms.

Once you start tacking on conditionals and making the model more complex, it is no longer a good business model. Blaming companies that can't figure it out helps no one.

Just because you have an idea that works well in a theoretical context, and there have been a few success stories, does not mean that it's a good model.

Another big point...

[argent]

It's not that things ought to be free because they can be free -- but that things will be free because that's just basic economics. Price gets driven to marginal cost in a competitive market, and the reason it happens is because others do learn to put in place business models that work, and then if you're the lone holdout, people start to ignore you.

This is just the limiting case of the market. This is what destroyed DEC and other big hardware companies that tried to avoid producing cheap computers that would outcompete their high margin ones. People didn't buy the VAX instead of their desktop PDP-11s running stripped down RSX (P/OS, what a perfect name for an OS that was), people bought desktop micros that had processors that might have sucked compared to the LSI-11... but they cost so much less that there was no demand for something in the middle.

So now one of the things that's hurting traditionally marketed music sales is nontraditionally marketed music. The marginal cost of production of music is now nearly zero, therefore if you can make enough money to make it worthwhile to keep selling a small number of CDs at CDBABY based on the free samples you give away at LAST.FM, why wouldn't you? If you can get your music onto iTunes and Amazon for nothing, and get modest sales and the possibility of better sales (look at how Jonathan Coulton's doing, eh?), you're going to do that as well as playing gigs and trying to get the attention of the big labels and all the other stuff that musicians have been doing for years.

And so people like me get our music from last.fm and 3hive.com and Amazon and iTunes and don't bother going to the record store or listening to the radio (which is all the same Clear Channel approved pulp anyway)... because it's getting easier and easier to find out about the people who are making free work for them... mostly free, just enough that's not free to keep the people making the free stuff to keep people like me going "hey, that's good, I'll get their album" now and then...

Re:Another big point...

[Anonymous Coward]

(look at how Jonathan Coulton's doing, eh?)

Jonathan Coulton's total sales are probably less than the catering bill at a single U2 concert. I also get all my new music from CDBaby and musicians' own sites after finding them on Live365 or Pandora, but the music industry's losses are to file sharing and general lack of interest, not to Creative Commons songs about bacteria.

Re:Another big point...

[argent]

Jonathan Coulton's total sales are probably less than the catering bill at a single U2 concert.

But are they less than what most "signed" acts get in royalties?

Hint: the latter number is zero.

Re:Another big point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: go back and read his original point to which I responded.

Re:Another big point...

[argent]

Hint: pay attention to attributions of comments.

Glad people are discussing scarcity

[sayfawa]

It's easy to see this in the logical (and hopefully soon, prevalent) way when one talks about the scarce vs non-scarce goods.

I've given up thinking or caring or trying to explain to others whether or not illegal downloading hurts authors. Now I just point out how stupid it is to trade a scarce good, like money or food, for a non-scarce one, like a digital reproduction. It just doesn't make any kind of mathematical or economical sense.

If a person wants to give their favourite author some money, fine. But call it what it is: a donation, not a trade.

Re:Glad people are discussing scarcity

[Torvaun]

I prefer paper, so I do get extra value from the non-digital reproductions which have a non-zero cost of replication. Trade. Not donation.

Re:Glad people are discussing scarcity

[samkass]

So what are you proposing, state sponsorship of all creative works? Everyone contribute what they can and take what they need?

The output of creative folks is NOT a non-scarce good... it's actually extremely scarce. And if there isn't a better model than Copyright (and no one seems to have implemented one yet), then when you pay for the reproductions you're funding the original work.

Re:Glad people are discussing scarcity

[lena_10326]

Now I just point out how stupid it is to trade a scarce good, like money or food, for a non-scarce one, like a digital reproduction.

Making a electronic copy does not require much in resources, true, but distributing that copy in volume requires resources which is scarce. It also requires expensive advertising to get their name out there. Advertising is also scarce. When you pay for an electronic copy, you're paying to author to recoup their distribution and advertising costs, not the cost of copying.

If an author wanted to be an idealist, he could house his wares on a free site, offer free downloads, or offer the work as a torrent, and not have to pay a thing (outside of basic ISP service); however, he's not earning anything so that transaction is a wash--an exchange of 0 distribution cost with 0 profit. In that scenario, the cost of writing or developing the product is never recouped so the artist loses on that venture. Negative profit. Thus an incentive not to create a work. I don't think we're better off with artists and developers not creating.

Re:Glad people are discussing scarcity

[sayfawa]

I'm not claiming that the creativity, the creation of the original work, is a non-scarce good. Just that subsequent copies of it are.

As for proposals. State sponsorship is one possible method. In my country (Canada) government grants are available for artists. I'm a scientist and the final result of my work is a publication. I don't get paid every time someone buys the journal my articles show up in, I get paid (mostly through government grants) for doing the research and writing about it in the first place. Which is why all my articles are available for free on arxiv.org.

But the government isn't the only way. If my favourite artist stated that they weren't going to make their next book/album until they got a certain amount of money to do it, it's likely that I would give them some. Thus paying them to actually do the work, not paying them for a valueless copy. I'm sure there are other ways to do it.

Someone will probably come in and point out what's wrong with these, and all other alternative proposals out there. But it doesn't matter. Just because someone has done something creative does not give them the power to attach a value to an infinitely reproducible copy that has no trade value.

And I admit that "paying" for a copy of a work is also a way to get artists money in exchange for their creative output after the fact, I just wouldn't consider it trading money for a product, I'd call it donating money to support an artist.

Re:Glad people are discussing scarcity

[RodgerDodger]

Except that's not what Copyright was originally about. Copyright was a right granted to publishers - they were granted the exclusive right to copy (from the old model where everyone could copy). The reason they were granted the right was to compensate them for the act of preparing the "copy" - doing the physical typesetting, etc. This was highly expensive, and not all published products made money, so the publishers would subsidise their risk from the ones that did make money.

The problem arose when competitors (particularly American publishing houses, in one of those ironic twists of fate) would see "oh, there's a successful book, I'll typeset that and publish it, and have much less risk". Copyright was implemented to stop that. Nowhere was copyright meant to reward the creative source. As a matter of fact, publishers would abuse copyright at times - if a manuscript got leaked and a rival publisher got in first, the original publisher was screwed (as well as the author).

This is essentially the same argument made by the RIAA today - that finding good talent is expensive & risky, and they need to amortise the risk around by making lots of money off the (relatively rare) successes.

The problems of intellectual property are not solved by copyright, as copyright was never intended to protect _intellectual_ property.

Re:Glad people are discussing scarcity

[slim]

So what are you proposing, state sponsorship of all creative works? Everyone contribute what they can and take what they need? I don't think it's necessary to prescribe a 'solution'. If society needs these creative works, then it will find a way to make them continue to be produced. In a very broad sense, 'the market' will solve the problem. My instinct is that it'll become even harder to make a living as an artist than it is now, but that art (literature, etc.) will still get produced because creating is fun.

The output of creative folks is NOT a non-scarce good... it's actually extremely scarce. I would argue that it's increasingly non-scarce, and that the cheapness of distribution and production tools are contributing to this. There is more freely downloadable music of acceptable quality than I could possibly download in a lifetime. The way that music is funded varies, but in many cases it's funded by the musicians' day jobs.

Now, Steven Poole's 'Trigger Happy' is a scarce resource (if you disregard piracy), because there's only one Steven Poole, he owns the copyright, he only wrote it once. He controls its distribution and price.

But 'competently written prose about video games' is by no means scarce. It's a lot less scarce now that it was 8 years ago when the book was written (and I bought it). And hence the market drives the price of competently written prose about video games towards zero.

In 2008, what's a consumer more likely to do? Pay $10 for Poole's book, or read The Escapist magazine for free online? Even if The Escapist were only half as good as Trigger Happy, I bet the gratis read wins in the free market.

Before digital distribution, we needed publishers because they were the only way to link creators to consumers. And we paid for that service. That's increasingly unnecessary. Along the way, publishers controlled what they released, to cause artificial scarcity. If 20 Steven Poole-alikes pitched an intelligent book about videogames in the same quarter, no way would all 20 get published.

Books, for a while to come, have an advantage in that people prefer the form factor. Sooner or later someone will solve that, and they'll lose that small foothold. It'll be really interesting.

Re:Getting the "Free" Business Model Wrong Doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

"because of it's very nature in economics"

Really, people, how hard is it to use its and it's properly?

not infinite

[Anonymous Coward]

Software is not infinite. It's nonexclusive and nonrivalrous.

Let's answer Poole's question...

[argent]

But if there's been a comparable success by a band that hasn't already gained its cultural capital and name-recognition through the evils of copyright and corporate promotion, I'd like to know about it.

Jonathan Coulton?

Re:Let's answer Poole's question...

[caller9]

First: Who?
Second FTA: he is "making a comfortable living"

While that sounds nice and all. To say that Radiohead "makes a comfortable living" would be ridiculous.

Not saying anything about his music or FOSS type distribution, but I don't know a single non-geek that listens to that guy. Never heard of him, he doesn't own a jet, and you need a better example.

OTOH: Huge commercial success without any talent other than a listenable voice once ran through the "studio magic" box: Brittany, Justin Timberlake...everything on the top 10 for the past 10 years, and others. All of the household names and all (if they were smart) could retire after one album followed up with a tour.

The real problem with most FOSS is the same with good music. Most people are stupid, look at a bell curve. You want broad appeal you need a product that appeals to idiots and a heavy-duty marketing machine.

Without those you just have to suck it up and prove yourself over several years of underground word of mouth.

Re:Let's answer Poole's question...

[argent]

Huge commercial success without any talent other than a listenable voice once ran through the "studio magic" box [...]

If you think that making a small number of people "without any talent other than a listenable voice" into "huge commercial successes" is how the music business should operate, then I'm not sure we have any common ground for communication. I don't think Poole expected to make Radiohead levels of income from his donation jar, and if he'd made a comfortable living from it he'd have been over the moon.

Re:Let's answer Poole's question...

[Risen888]

Never heard of him. Try again.

Re:Let's answer Poole's question...

[caller9]

I get what you're saying. But you are arguing how the world should work vs how it does work. Ideally all musical artists have a ton of talent and the public has a finely tuned appreciation of art in music. Some people prefer specific genres but all in all it is generally talented work enriching the world culture. None of which is true, especially the part about people appreciating art.

The argument for commercial success of FOSS is a bit ridiculous itself as that is not really the goal. The goal is high quality software liberated to the masses. If the goal were commercial success then free would have little place in it. There isn't a knock-out business model for FOSS and the moderately successful ones don't apply to all subsections of the market.

I was arguing from the commercial success standpoint. I neither enjoy nor tolerate music that typically rates top 20, but those guys are freaking rich.

Re:Let's answer Poole's question...

[argent]

But you are arguing how the world should work vs how it does work.

No, I'm arguing that for most musicians "making a decent living" is a better deal than they're likely to get from the labels. A few exceptions become stars and make a lot of money, but most don't make back their advances and the advances aren't all that hot.

THAT is how the world works. The big names are like lottery winners, they're bait to keep the bulk of musicians buying lottery tickets.

Re:Let's answer Poole's question...

[argent]

I never heard of Radiohead until I read about them here.

The plural of "anecdote" isn't "proof".

There's no such thing...

[MRe_nl]

as infinite.

Re:There's no such thing...

[BobNET]

There's no such thing as infinite.

What about stupidity?

Re:There's no such thing...

[PalmerEldritch42]

Ironically enough, there is an infinite amount of stupidity.

Re:There's no such thing...

[RockDoctor]

They're using "infinity" to represent something that is so abundant that it's worthless. This is just economics terminology. A commodity that is "infinite" is like oxygen. Sure, there is actually a limited supply, but when is the last time you bought air (assuming you're not 80 years old with a respiratory disease)?

Poor example.

They're not charging for it YET but given half a chance, they would. And not just in the SF settings of MoonBase etc. Scuba divers have paid for air for decades (actually, they're paying for running the compressors, but the bill is there nonetheless) ; medical patients have paid for oxygen (not air, as you say) for almost as long as industry have paid for LOX and LN2, and that's probably in excess of a century ; but in the last couple of years people have started marketing "canned air" to the general public, largely on the back of hysteria about air pollution. So, someone is establishing a market price for such air, and I'd expect more people to get into the market. After all, we live in a world where people will buy bottled water to drink "because it's safer than tap water", and most of that bottled water is either taken direct from the tap water supply, or from springs which have lower quality than is allowed into the taps.

Entreprenuer Barbie: "Business is hard!"

[argent]

A good business model is simple and robust enough that it's hard to screw up.

All business models are easy to screw up. Most new companies fail within a very few years.

This isn't a matter of blaming companies, it's a matter of recognizing reality.

Just because you have an idea that works well in a theoretical context, and there have been a few success stories, does not mean that it's a good model.

The article wasn't about a business model, it was about why some business models work and others don't. There are many business models that involve giving away one good to promote the sales of other goods that you can sell at a higher margin. "Give away the razor and sell the blades" is a business model, and obviously a successful one, but do you expect to get into that business today, without a lot of effort and luck?

The first lesson this article is trying to impart is that when you have a good that has a high marginal cost of production, and one that has a low marginal cost of production, you are probably not going to succeed if you give away a lot of the ones that cost you a lot to produce, but you may be able to succeed if you can give away the ones that don't cost much to produce to drive the sales of the higher cost one.

The second is that there are many business models that can be based on the fact that some goods have a zero marginal cost of production. If you are going to make a living that way, you need to come up with one of them. But just noticing that a good has a zero marginal cost of production isn't a business model.

Using the FREE model with music

[politicsapocalypse]

Last month I released Politics Apocalypse, a full length album using the creative commons licence attribution 3.0. This allows you to use the music however you please (including in commercial projects) so long as you give credit. Since last month we have had over 3000 album downloads. We accept donations, and we have a name-your-own-price CD; which is a unique concept where you can name your own price (starting at cost price) for a CD. We have had some orders and heaps of positive feedback. We have just added a new members area of the website. The members area contains new songs as they are finished, available to members long before they are released in album form to the rest of the world. Anyone who supports us by donating, ordering a CD (name-your-own-price) or submitting creative feedback are given an account. Hopefully this new addition will encourage donations, as so far the number of donations and CD orders are much lower than the number of album downloads and positive feedback. I realise that the created music is an infinite good, but it would be nice to get some support for the amount of time it takes to create. The statistics of downloads/orders etc are on the website. http://www.politicsapocalypse.com/

Re:Using the FREE model with music

[mgblst]

Where are the statistics of downloads/orders hidden on your website??

Re:Using the FREE model with music

[politicsapocalypse]

On the front page.

There's Scarce and then there's Too Scarce

[NetSettler]

you give away the infinite goods, not the scarce goods. Your time is a scarce good.

This works well if you are a consulting house. But the danger is that you are so scarce that you cannot replicate yourself fast enough for support, so you will not support what you do either. Someone else will, and you'll risk having nothing because you've given away the only thing that you truly owned, which was the part you contributed.

This also takes a dim view of what you are contributing, as if the only part of coding was implementation. Good design is, alas, not copyrightable, and so is difficult to protect. But that doesn't mean it wasn't scarce. It just means there isn't good protection for that kind of scarcity. And since many participants in the discussion are predisposed to think that protection of any kind of intellectual property is bad just because they've seen some things in intellectual property that it was demonstrably bad to protect, the possibility of adding intellectual property protection of one kind or another doesn't occur.

I actually think a lot of the problems of IP protection are due to the duration of the protection and not the fact of it (though I do agree there are also things that are protected foolishly). My point is that if they expired quickly, it wouldn't matter much if there were mistakes made favoring creators, but it would give the creator time to negotiate before the fact that he created something was irrelevant because everyone else had it and was exploiting it to their advantage, not to his.

Thank you for bringing this.

[Zombie Ryushu]

Keep in mind that I am a supporter of the Free software movement and its ideals. I just think that in some ways, the F/OSS model and software in general could use a modified lesson from Edward Demming (too bad he is worm food.)

I speak strictly to the Linux economy when I say this, and this is one reason why Linux isn't as popular an OS with commercial development as it is.

First:

Do not write your applications with a blatant double standard. Examnple:

Windows version: Nice GUI interface.
Linux Version of same App: CLI if lucky with text file configuration.

That is really really really disrepectful. I'm looking at you: synergy

Second. There are established methods of installing appication software. e.g. RPMs, Debs. I hate to say it. Disregaurd the other package formats. make an RPM or a DEB and you have 95% of the Linux market covered. RPM and DEB are availible on EVERY distro.

Don't leave your software full of memory leaks, integer overflows, and other things that can make a system crash.

If you are a closed source vendor, provide an x86_64 and x86_32 package.

If you are an Open Source Vendor: Do NOT package your source as a RAR. Package using BZ2.

Do NOT package your own hacked versions of SDL, OpenAL, or OpenGL. This is likely to break things. (I'm looking at you d2x-xl.)

Have a good support model. Don't be fly-by-night. Don't be a scam artist, don't be a con artist. Don't do a half ass job on your Linux port. Simply stated don't be a total imbecile.

Re:Thank you for bringing this.

[Anne Thwacks]

Don't leave your software full of memory leaks, integer overflows, and other things that can make a system crash.

Please supply 1 off only, pig, flying, Mk1.

(a major reason for free software is that people who can't do it right, make a start, give it away, and let others who can, fix it)

Re:Thank you for bringing this.

[Zombie Ryushu]

About a month ago. I joined Karx Erx's D2X-XL mailing list. Well, Here is the thing. I actually own original DOS Descent 1 and Descent 2 Install media and wanted to use Karx Erx's D2X-XL Engine for Linux which was pretty good actually. Except for one thing. Sometimes it was prone to freezing between levels. This was easily reproducible, and I had backtraces to prove it. I actually FOUND the offending line and sent it in to my distributor.

Only then did I realize this: Karx had modified SDL_mixer. This freeze was a result of me using stock SDL Mixer with his application, and he informed Linux users: Use our SDL_Mixer not the stock one that comes with your distribution.

Karx didn't have that great an opinion of Linux. Windows users never had any problem because Windows users have no dependancy at all On SDL, but in Linux, SDL is a cornerstone technology and installing his SDL Mixer would have unknown and devistating impacts on Linux systems. So I reported him to the SDL Mixer Maintainer. Who said that while his modifications did not violate any liscenes, he would have to review the changes to see if they could be included upstream as patches. He agreed with me however, Karx's modified SDL Libs would have probably crashed any Linux machine they were installed on.

Re:Thank you for bringing this.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron. You basically just told free software authors the following:

First, replicate the multi-million dollar result of a large company's development effort by using two people that are doing this in their spare time without bugs. Don't consider writing one-off hacks or small programs to make your life easier, and if you do, certainly don't share them with the community because that just makes us look like amateurs. Never mind that some of the current open-source darlings (Samba, parts of Apache) started this way and then attracted a community of developers to polish and work on them. To release your software to the community at no charge and to actually have it adopted by my distro is not enough if it personally offends my sensibilities. Never mind that I could learn to program and help and make things better. This is personally insulting and your fault, not mine.

Second, only my distro and Ubuntu matter. Period. Don't make a generic install tarball that will work in most cases, and certainly don't upload contributed packages for other architectures, distributions, or build dependencies. Just try and shoehorn your program though a backdoor way if another distro does something different, even though this can cause missing dependencies, random segfaults, overwriting of installed libraries with bad versions/earlier versions/buggier versions. Just make it install my way, dammit!

Third, only my architecture and a closely related architecture matter. PowerPC, SPARC, Alpha, ARM, and MIPS processors don't matter, even if there are more of these processors on the market than my architecture. I don't care that more platform testing might uncover subtle bugs and security problems. If you're a business, I love you. Don't produce packages for the second-class citizens. This takes time and effort away from me!

Fourthly, don't bother fixing bugs in packages that aren't your own. Certainly don't package those changes with your program so that in the interim, the program that you wrote, designed, and spent time on works properly while upstream is considering to accept those packages. You should delay your update until upstream adds those changes (if they ever do), hold a shotgun to upstream's head to add the patches (which they won't do), or release more because I found a bug dammit! Besides, you're supposed to be working on your package and giving it to me, not helping other people with their software. Give me more updates!

You are a prime example of two groups of people: Greedy Linuxer and Open Source Trust-Fund Baby. The Greedy Linuxer demands that all things be for his platform (generally x86) and in his way in his package format. Other platforms don't interest him, and if it's not in a package, he's normally lost and will bitch until things are his way. Free Software Trust-Fund Baby wants to set terms on how others give away their software, and if the authors don't agree to those terms, they'll complain to daddy about it and never come around here again! And forget getting help or donations from them because, frankly, unless you're willing to bend over backwards for them, there are trophy wives and blow waiting for them in Aspen.

You make me sick. Learn to code, offer help in other ways, donate to a developer, help triage bugs, help integrate fixes, or do anything other than unproductively bitch. If you care as much as you say you do, you have a lot to offer. If you're just whining that you'll go back to Windows, well, then you're the kind that we do not need and do not want.

Re:Thank you for bringing this.

[Risen888]

Regardless of whether you're right or wrong in any or all of your points, if I had mod points I'd give you -1 Offtopic. None of what you just said had fuck-all to do with any business model that I can see.

Re:Thank you for bringing this.

[Anonymous Coward]

LD_PRELOAD, do you use it motherfucker?!

Straw man argument

[Seska]

Score, you know better than that and you shouldn't be trying to use inflammatory rhetoric. The fact that a price/demand curve tends to a 0 price in no way implies that it goes infinite price.

In some cases there is no pre-creation demand, because no-one knows they want it. Examples include music from unknown artists, fiction from unknown authors, etc. In other cases the demand is better (though not perfectly) known: a new Radiohead album, an Indiana Jones movie, or spaceflight for tourists.

"Free" vs "Unlimited" - how Craigslist is losing

[Animats]

The "free" model is breaking down for Craigslist. I just wrote an article about this on Techdirt. Craigslist allows free ads, but not unlimited free ads. The intent is to allow individuals to post a few ads a week. But for some advertisers, that's not enough.

Craigslist has all the usual defenses. They have limits on how much each account can post. They have a CAPTCHA. They have E-mail account validation. They check for excessive posting from one IP address. And they have a flagging system to catch any remaining spam.

All those defenses have been breached. There are power tools for Craiglist spammers. Commercially available power tools. Multiple accounts are created for ad spamming. OCR is used to break the CAPTCHA. Jiffy Gmail Creator ("Who Else Wants to Create Unlimited Gmail Accounts in Seconds Flat Without Breaking a Sweat?") is used to create vast numbers of GMail accounts to receive the account validation replies. IP proxies are used to get around per-IP limitations. Postings flagged off are automatically reposted.

Against these industrial strength automated posting tools, Craigslist is losing. Major areas of the site are over 90% spam, and angry users are deserting the site. Craigslist is trying phone verification, but even that has been broken. (Read the Techdirt article and the Black Hat SEO forums for how that's done.)

Craigslist is being hit because it's the biggest free ad site, but attack tools are available for other ad and social networking sites. You can read about it on the "Black Hat SEO" forums.

Re:Getting the "Free" Business Model Wrong Doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent++

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[account_deleted]

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Re:"Free" vs "Unlimited" - how Craigslist is losin

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't be that hard...

1) Have rate limiting so you can only post ads from one IP every 10 minutes.
2) Have a group of people working for craigslist (2 or 3)
3) When something is submitted, it automatically pulls 10 posts that are the most similar (most full-text search engines have this feature, such as Lucene).
4) Person checks it, and declines the post if it's duplicated.
5) Too many declines, and the system bans the IP for X amount of time and the account for X*50 amount of time, and removes all posts by that account (or all the accounts which contributed to the duplicate posts).

Just my $0.02 They're loosing because they're trying to do it without the human element.

I still don't get it.

[CohibaVancouver]

[flame suit on]

I still don't get it.

My brother writes books and magazine articles. He gets paid for his books and articles. He also publishes some stuff 'for free' on his blog (there's a free e/audio-book on there right now for instance). However, his core, major work isn't free. This way he can afford to feed and clothe his children. If he gave his stuff away, or asked for contributions he wouldn't make any money (he knows this because he's tried unsuccessfully).

How does an author who writes 8 hours a day make a living if he gives his stuff away?

Or does he become a carpenter and write for fun an hour or two a week because writing is not a 'career path', but being a mechanic or carpenter is?

Please explain.

[/flame]

Re:I still don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy, your brother doesn't have to. The techdirt guys aren't saying everyone _should_ give their stuff away, they're just saying it's a valid option for some people, such as musicians.

Besides, by posting interesting writings on a website, getting a lot of viewers, and showing adds on those pages, he could still make money by giving away his writings for free. The key point there is giving away the non-scarce good (the digital website with the writing, that doesn't cost him a thing), and get money for the scarce good (the readers attention towards the adds). He just wouldn't get paid by the readers but by the advertisers.
Now off course I'm not saying that this is how your brother _should_ work, it's just an option. If he prefers to get paid for books and articles, or he thinks he couldn't make enough money to feed his family, hat way, that's his choice, no problem.

Re:I still don't get it.

[CohibaVancouver]

Besides, by posting interesting writings on a website, getting a lot of viewers, and showing adds on those pages, he could still make money by giving away his writings for free.

I guess I understand that, but the other /. mantra seems to be 'block all ads on all sites by whatever means possible' - So if /. says 1) Information wants to be free and 2) Block all ads using all plugins possible, then it still doesn't work...?

Re:I still don't get it.

[Plaid Phantom]

If he's popular enough that his work alone could support him, then start a blog and throw a few ads on it. Come up with T-shirts or mugs or something. Perhaps best-of print collections. As far as books (as in novels), people are making a living posting their work online while selling print copies.

That's how online cartoonists do it. See Penny Arcade. Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary has been supporting a family for a few years now.

Re:I still don't get it.

[AlecLyons]

Does he find that giving away content raises his profile and the value of his paid for content? I think different people derive value from FOSS in a bunch of ways; perhaps some of them can be transposed to be relevant to your brothers work: 1> For an individual contributing to FOSS projects simply improves employability. 2> As a company or startup, being willing to ship under a GPL licence opens up a vast library of existing software and tools. This can lead to huge cuts in development costs, so much so that your business idea might not be feasible otherwise. Say you're a Business Intelligence guru and want to deploy custom BI solutions to SME's. Using an open source platform like Pentaho could well be the best choice. 3> For large companies, being a major contributor to FOSS projects can mark you out as the go to people for consultancy work. 4> For some developers working on FOSS is about being part of a community, improving their understanding of their craft by liaising with there peers and enjoying it. Certainly this won't put food on the table but it does go some way to explaining how FOSS can exist even if there is little money in it for most people on the project. 5> Offering a limited functionality version of the software for free (or even a crippled version( could be used to try and whet peoples appetite, and get them to pay for increased functionality. This is a very rough and ready list, you'll probably find lots more examples, counter examples and random musings strewn about this page. It makes more sense if you don't thinking of "Free Software" as a business model. Just think of it as a type of product that some people have built successful business models around and that some have failed to.

Re:I still don't get it.

[AlecLyons]

Speaking of FOSS...anyone know of a "you forget to select Plain Old Text" extension for Firefox?

Does he find that giving away content raises his profile and the value of his paid for content?

I think different people derive value from FOSS in a bunch of ways; perhaps some of them can be transposed to be relevant to your brothers work:

1> For an individual contributing to FOSS projects simply improves employability.

2> As a company or statup, being willing to ship under a GPL licence opens up a vast library of existing software and tools. This can lead to huge cuts in development costs, so much so that your business idea might not be feasible otherwise. Say you're a Business Intelligence guru and want to deploy custom BI solutions to SME's. Using an open source platform like Pentaho could well be the best choice.

3> For large companies, being a major contributor to FOSS projects can mark you out as the go to people for consultancy work.

4> For some developers working on FOSS is about being part of a community, improving their understanding of their craft by liasing with there peers and enjoying it. Certainly this won't put food on the table but it does go some way to explaining how FOSS can exist even if there is no money behind it.

This is a very rough and ready list, you'll probably find lots more examples, counter examples and random musings strewn about this page.

Re:I still don't get it.

[pbhj]

How does an author who writes 8 hours a day make a living if he gives his stuff away? Writing magazine articles is different to writing software. RedHat, Apache et al. make their money from support contracts (AFAI can tell) whilst Mozilla makes a heap from ad revenues from Google. Some make money from associated hardware sales. Further models have been explained here already (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=564293&cid=23546957).

Magazines, as opposed to article writers, can even give away content (possibly the content they paid your brother for) as it's a hook to snare subscribers / buyers.

Article writers, bloggers even, can make money by writing propaganda or promoting particular businesses but things are getting a bit thin at this end of things and will depend on the subject matter to a huge degree.

Free fiction is unlikely to lead to co-sales unless it's so good people want to buy the rest-of-the / the-second book. Free reference material can have discrete ads and lead to sales.

I agree if you present "mere" information and then ask people to pay (if they want) then they won't. They'll still want more from you too. That's capitalism - find the lowest price that doesn't kill your workforce then pay slightly less.

Re:I still don't get it.

[johnpipe]

How does an author who writes 8 hours a day make a living if he gives his stuff away?

I can only comment on the above, with one example; someone else may have others. A well-known author wrote about one experience he had, in which he posted one of his works online for free, after the normally expected decline in print sales over time.

What was unexpected was that the result of the free publication was a re-surge in popularity of the work, with the resulting new demand for print copies.

The article was explicit about the need for a business model to go with "free", not just giving away anything and everything.

Re:I still don't get it.

[slim]

No need for a flame suit, it's a fair enough question, and the answer's probably a bit harsh:

How does an author who writes 8 hours a day make a living if he gives his stuff away?

Or does he become a carpenter and write for fun an hour or two a week because writing is not a 'career path', but being a mechanic or carpenter is? Maybe he does. Nobody (sane) is saying 'you have to give away your writing'. What's being said is that economic forces driven by the availability of digital distribution are driving the price you can realistically charge for a written work towards zero. When this comes true, it's likely that the only way your brother will be able to get anyone to read his writing, is to give it away.

But we have to be very careful about what we say has lost its value. The prediction is that you'll no longer be able to strike a deal with a consumer that says 'You give me $10, and I'll give you 300 pages of good quality fiction' (because the consumer can get 300 pages of good quality fiction elsewhere for free).

That leaves all sorts of other business transactions available related to the written word:
- '10,000 people read my books. I'll sell you ad space.'
- '$x gets you a limited edition printed copy of my next book, and your name in the front matter of all editions' (price high - get sugar daddies)
- 'Give me money - if I get $x by [date] then I'll publish the next chapter. If not you get your money back.
- Publish ebooks as a loss-leader for other work (newspaper/magazine work etc.)

and so on.

And if none of these work out? Sorry. Then there are too many writers and not enough demand. Do something else for a living.

Re:I still don't get it.

[slim]

You make the (common) mistake of treating Slashdot as a homogeneous blob of opinion.

We don't all agree on everything, and the people who believe in ad-supported content as a business model are probably not the same people who block ads indiscriminately.

Besides, just because I skip ads on TiVo, doesn't mean that ad-supported TV broadcasts aren't profitable.

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[account_deleted]

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Infinite resource is irrelevant

[SpinyNorman]

In the real world:

1) Software costs a lot of money to design, write, document and support, and little money to reproduce, and the latter therefore plays little role in determining price, regardless of how much potential customers want to whine "but it costs you nothing to reproduce - it's an infinite resource"

2) Software is basically ideas encoded as 1's and 0's. The 1's and 0's may be an infinite resource, but the ideas are not. Some ideas are scarcer than others, or more expensive to turn into 1's and 0's, and you may expect to pay more for them according to this scarcity and conversion cost.

Re:Infinite resource is irrelevant

[gnupun]

All humans are not altruists by nature, so you can request, but never demand they work for free. Software is the "hardest" and therefore most valuable part of any commodity, not just computer software.

• The creation verilog/VHDL code used in the manufacture of computer CPUs is the hardest and most expensive. Next time you spend hundreds of dollars on a CPU realize that the actual manufacturing cost is only around $10 to $50. The remaining is paid for the "software" and company profit.
• Honda and Ford use the same physical materials (metals, plastics, cloth) to build their cars. Hondas are better because their "design" (or software) is superior
• A hypothetical business A makes more money than business B because A has better processes, cheaper suppliers, bigger customer lists, etc. All of these assets are non-tangible like software
• The lyrics and sheet music of a song are more valuable than who plays it

Slashdotters should have at least a basic idea of "supply and demand" economics. A typical business will charge the highest price for its product such that $unit_cost x $units_sold = maximum revenue. If demand is high relative to supply, $unit_cost will increase. Before calling this "greedy", realize that this system has existed for tens of thousands of years, and is generally fair (maximum profit to hard workers and clever people). Unfortunately, society is moving towards a direction where earning a fair share for products is considered greedy.

The free model is completely unbalanced and unfair: the people doing the hardest work (programmers) are compensated the least and end users basically get a free ride off slave labor. With OSS, big capitalists and government can hire a few cheap monkeys to combine interesting and relevant parts of OSS to build a space station or a large spaceship for 1/1000th the cost compared to paying programmer salaries. The end result is unfair: users profit, while creators suffer loss.

Re:Getting the "Free" Business Model Wrong Doesn't

[maxwell demon]

"because of it's very nature in economics"

Really, people, how hard is it to use its and it's properly? Its not that hard. If you pay me for it, I'll redo this post with it's errors corrected. What, you want error-free posts for free? Its obvious then that you are just a free-rider.

If I got any "its" or "it's" right in this posting, its obviously an error. :-)

free, ad-based

[amaupin]

I've found the "free software + ad on web site" model to work really well. I released a quirky freeware Boulder Dash clone a year ago and it's now making me an average of $5.17 per day just based on one affiliate ad I placed on the download page.

Re:free, ad-based

[palegray.net]

That's really great to hear; glad you're seeing success with your model :). This is a good example of properly targeting your visitors; a lot of webmasters seem to wonder why their site is blanketed with ads but still generates almost no revenue. Good work!

Re:"Free" vs "Unlimited" - how Craigslist is losin

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Use zombies to get around IP address limits
2. Double or triple the spam.
3. Spam x 10
4. You're going to be busy
5. Until you've banned all those "customers" of yours on zombied Windows machines and you have no more eyeballs.

Congratulations, your solution just wrecked Craigslist.

Business models for open source software

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open_source_software

Need to look at overall compensation

[scamper_22]

The best way to view media is in terms of overall compensation. Otherwise, you will just drive yourself insane.

If we take say music.
You take all of your costs (artists, editing, promotion...)
You take all your revenue streams (live performance, ads, mp3 sales, cd sales...)

Then if you're making a good living...the business model works.

What I'm seeing now is 'free' for 90% of personal users. Pay for the other 10%.
Checkout sites like zoho.com or freshbooks... They're all basically free for the individual. But for any business, you'd want to pay for the extra features (ssl, more space...).

In terms of media specifically...well that's all disposable income anyways. People only spend money on movie/music when have spare change to spend on entertainment. So you have to make it as convenient as possible for them to spend it on movies/music. Yes, it is 'morally' wrong to 'pirate' music, but you're in business. You deal with your customers as they are. Make it easier and cheaper to access music online than to sit there and torrent and go on shady sites and people will do it. Remember...it's disposable income. We know we're wasting it on sh**t.

As to making money on support contracts...who cares. If Novell/Red hat can do it...wonderful. If MS can 'sell' the software itself...equally wonderfull. 50 bucks on a new pc that costs in the hundreds of dollars...that's worth it for most people when buying a new computer.

Last I checked, both MS and Kanye West are still doing very well financially. Neither gives things away for free.

Re:Need to look at overall compensation

[westlake]

In terms of media specifically...well that's all disposable income anyways. People only spend money on movie/music when have spare change to spend on entertainment.

In the Depression of the 1930s and throughout World War Two about the only relief you had from work and worry was radio and the movies. Travel restrictions. Rationing of every kind.

Entertainment becomes more important not less when people are under stress.

Re:Need to look at overall compensation

[altinos.com]

Last I checked, both MS and Kanye West are still doing very well financially. Neither gives things away for free. SQL Server Express 2005/2008? Visual Basic Express? Visual Web Developer Express? Visual C# Express? .NET?

Re:Getting the "Free" Business Model Wrong Doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

"because of it's very nature in economics"

Really, people, how hard is it to use its and it's properly? it's very hard because it's counter the nomative use of the apostrophe. If I were talking about a dog to express ownership it would be the dog's or to talk about many dogs no apostrophe.... when I talk about it things are upside-down and backwards. For ownership it is "its" but for a contraction it is "it's" for it and is joined together. Which are totally counter the normal rules for "s" and apostrophes.

That's why even native English speakers who make a living writing can't keep "its" and "it's" straight. It's confusing and normal rules don't help its cause. It feels like a rule that was bodged in because someone wanted a rule to distinguish between the two phonetically identical cases in print.

No, there's being paid to produce

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like me, my employer pays me to have produced the software and then I see no further renumeration. From my POV, the software is free.

So if you want something in apache, you either do it yourself or pay someone to produce it. Or wait to see if it gets done for someone else.

The software is still free, but the time is paid by creating the software from someone's requirements or from personal need.

Re:No, there's being paid to produce

[NetSettler]

Just like me, my employer pays me to have produced the software and then I see no further renumeration. From my POV, the software is free.

Well, if I understand your situation correctly, I suspect the reason your employer can pay you is that the software is not free, and so that's why they have money to pay you. My guess is that you'd notice it if your employer had no money coming in from that software. From your "POV", that could look like unemployment.

So if you want something in apache, you either do it yourself or pay someone to produce it. Or wait to see if it gets done for someone else. The software is still free, but the time is paid by creating the software from someone's requirements or from personal need.

If that's all you (and probably others) aspire to in terms of design, that explains why I don't like this paradigm and you don't see the problem. To me, anything that involves adding a widget or module to Apache is not program design, it's program maintenance. To have programming reduced to this is like telling an would-be orchestral composer there's plenty of work available writing advertising jingles.

Re:"Free" vs "Unlimited" - how Craigslist is losin

[Anonymous Coward]

But there are not unlimited number of machines out there. Using a botnet for this would make them really busy for a few days, and then would be back to normal after all the IP's are blocked.

Not to mention doing spam x10 makes it *easier* to filter automatically. I'm not saying make all posts have to be human-verified, just the ones that make it past the spam filters.

"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"

[Rob Simpson]

For many years. Things changed.

Re:"Free" vs "Unlimited" - how Craigslist is losin

[xant]

I think you're being a bit harsh about his solution--after all, multiplying the spam by 30x is not free to the spammer, although it may well be lower than the cost of the proposed countermeasures.

What this really points to is craigslist and others with similar business modles should be funding research into killing botnets.

Slashdot moderation: Flawed?

[milatchi]

But the Slashdot moderation system on the other hand, "is Flawed."

Car Analogy

[gnupun]

Honda, Ford, Toyota etc. should give their cars away for free and make money by charging for oil changes and maintenance.

Information was always free, that's not the point

[Eskarel]

Copyright is a social contract, the entire principle behind it is to add an artificial value to something which in the free market is essentially valueless. It does this on the basis that while the replication of a creative idea is free, the creation of it is not and while creative people can always make a living in other ways and even continue their art, it'd be better for society if the ones who created good works could have a revenue stream to continue creating them.

The problem in the modern era is not that the marginal cost has come down(it was never all that high), but that the copyright holders have breached their side of the contract. The length of copyright is such that a copyright holder can sometimes ensure that one or two pieces of work can provide an income not only for themselves but for their descendants. While wise investment of the profits from a successful creative work has always had this capability, it is only fairly recently that the creative work itself could do this.

This not only means that creative individuals(and the children of creative individuals who might have otherwise been creative themselves) are, contrary to the intention of the social contract not encouraged to create, but that their works do not reenter the public domain and provide value to society in general.

Copyright law cannot be enforced because the majority of people do not believe they are doing anything wrong when they break it. The reason(IMO) for this is that they feel consciously or not, that the other side broke the deal first. Unless copyright returns to it's original intent, or the social contract is successfully redefined(a difficult proposition for all those reeducation classes they want to give students since it's hard to convince someone that they shouldn't want a fair deal), copyright will die. If copyright dies, a great number of ideas and creations that might otherwise benefit society may never be created and industries and creative individuals will be forced to conceal their ideas in order to protect their value.

This would not be a good thing, so for the good of society hopefully we can find a compromise where artists and inventors get to make a living(though not forever) and society gets free access to creativity(though not right away).

Rick Roll on /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away, troll.

Re:Getting the "Free" Business Model Wrong Doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

"He's in his room". "It's in its box". I don't see the uses being very different.

Are these the same people who don't see why "she and I thought about her and me" is correct and "her and me thought about she and I" is not?

Re:Information was always free, that's not the poi

[cdrguru]

For the most part, I agree with you. Unfortunately we are currently educating people that violating copyright is OK. Every student going through school today gets this from other students and gets nothing in the way of information opposing this view. I would claim that it makes no difference whether or not "getting a fair deal" has anything to do with it. If people are conditioned to believe that murder is good under the right circumstances, they will happily participate in murder. Just check out the Aztec society for an example of this.

I don't care what your belief is on copyright, right or wrong. We are creating a society in which all digital materials have a value of zero. This isn't a good idea.

Finally, on the subject of entering the public domain I have to seriously question the benefit of most things entering the public domain. Today we have companies which have at the core only a relatively few valuable properties like this. You can perhaps argue if this is a good thing overall for society in general but I believe the value is demonstrated each and every day that the company derives revenue from sale of these properties. In other words, if Mickey Mouse has any value at all it is because this value is being actively exploited by the Disney company. Without Disney, there would be no value for Mickey Mouse. I would also say that without Microsoft the Windows trademark has no value. I don't think there is any way around it.

You can try to destroy the value of these and other properties but all you are going to end up doing is removing the revenue stream and devaluing the property. In isolation, these properties have no value. This differs considerably from a relatively few works that exist. I contend that the Mona Lisa has value quite apart from any licensing or copyright. At the same time I contend that the drawing I made as a six year old child can be copyrighted but has no value apart from whatever might be derived from licensing it - hopefully zero.

Re:Information was always free, that's not the poi

[base3]

. . . and gets nothing in the way of information opposing this view.

I beg to differ. Colleges and K-12, documented in part from stories here, have been co-opted into putting out the MAFIAA's side of the intellectual "property" story using myriad propaganda techniques (anyone remember "Don't copy that floppy" and the attempt to seriously introduce "softlifting" ito the lexicon from the BSA?),

Re:There are heaps of way to make money from "free

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one off the top of my head, you have your software, you release it.
You charge for installing it (if people want that), for adding extra bits (releasing them for free again), customizing, localizing etc. So you can make money from free software by gimping it? Localization is not an extra bit - at least not in the game industry.

Also, are you going to give up on the concept of an understandable installer? Most software *shouldn't* need someone to help them install it since it *should* come with an installer. I guess we can drop that however - gotta make money off your *free* software.

Also - beyond large scale server systems and OS's - how much software actually *needs* customizing - or are you going to design it to *need* it.

You business model is a slippery slope, it depends far too much on the honesty of everyone involved. While there are scenarios where your model might work - for the majority of applications honest, well designed software won't make money and crappy software sold to the gullible folks will make tons. Of course maybe that's economic darwinism, in action.

Integration and liabilty, finacial accountability

[CexpTretical]

If money is to be made in open source software then it is in integrating that software with a customers systems or customizing it to meet their needs,and only then can "some" money be made in supporting the integration as well as the actual open source software. Beyond that, most organizations want some kind of liability coverage from the provider, someone to hold financially accountable, like when I hire a plumber to fix something that I "might" be able to fix myself, just so I can have someone to hold financially responsible for errors besides myself.

Re:Information was always free, that's not the poi

[Eskarel]

The Mona Lisa does indeed have value, as does all art, it has value as art. That's why we have copyright in the first place, not to guarantee some schmuck an income but because art and in more general terms creativity has value in and of itself.

The more people who see a painting they love, or listen to music they love, or see a play/movie that moves them, or see how things work and can build off that work to create something new the better off we are as a society. This is what they mean by information wanting to be free.

Copyright is a compromise/social contract between the needs of society to have more and more beautiful things and the needs of artists to be able to create beautiful things without starving to death. Society knows that information has no intrinsic monetary value because it has an infinite supply, but it also realizes that information has an incredible non monetary value and so it's production needs to be encouraged.

I agree with you that the fact that the youth of today are becoming more and more anti-copyright is a tragedy. I've already said that I believe a world without the creative works that are possible because of copyright would be a poorer place to live.

On the other hand I believe that today's youth being anti-copyright comes more from the fact that the copyright holders have abused their side of the deal than from anything else. They take as much value as they can and give nothing back.

Your issues with Mickey Mouse and the Windows Logo are more issues of trademark than copyright which is a different sort of situation(and particularly complex in situations like Mickey Mouse where copyright and trademark overlap), but even on that grounds I think that it would be better to have everyone who wants to watch Steam Boat Willy or Snow White or even some of the more recent Disney productions than for Disney to be able to control and profit from them after all these years.

Listen! If you GIVE it away you are not a business

[Anonymous Coward]

If you give it away you are a hobbyist, at best. Even not-for-profits SELL, pay employees, taxes, etc. If you spend your nights and weekends cobbling up some stuff that no one would pay at dollar for, you are not a business, no matter how call it.

And he killed his mother

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think this would have happened if you were your typical rap "artitst"? No it wouldn't His mother would be alive and kicking today. He killed his mother. That's what money does so for your mother's sake, do not make money on your day's work, but instead make it on ... on ... well dammit just do not make money on your day's work !!

Re:Information was always free, that's not the poi

[Tim C]

On the other hand I believe that today's youth being anti-copyright comes more from the fact that the copyright holders have abused their side of the deal than from anything else.

I disagree that today's youth has become anti-copyright. I think that it's just become a lot easier to violate copyright. When I was a kid people were copying software, music and videos tape-to-tape. They no more cared about copyright then than they do now I think. The only difference I see today is that you don't have to know someone with the stuff you want to copy, you can generally find it online.

Re:Listen! If you GIVE it away you are not a busin

[Anonymous Coward]

One word, Apache server. OK, it's 1 in a 100,000 but it is a business, or so I would presume.

Want more? RMS has been laid. I know this 'cause I paid for him.

More still? Linus secretly uses Windows. It's true, man!

Won't you leave already? OK, one more then you gotta go. CmdrTaco goes as a transvestite every Halloween.

Not $ per hour

[kcdoodle]

While I might get a salary based on dollars per hour, my company doesn't.

The software I make earns my company money on a "per transaction" basis.

When a program breaks, the network goes down, the database chokes, we STOP MAKING MONEY.
So, of course, I fix things right away.

This is a great business model. The customer wants the programs to do work, so they are very cooperative with providing information. They do not get charged for programming, so if it takes longer than expected, they do not pay more. Each program's "transactions" save our client many man-hours, so they really like results.

This is probably the best client/programmer setup possible. Believe me, in the past, I worked on some projects where the client's contact personnel worked actively to make the project fail.

The asians have all my money

[Aphoxema]

This makes me think of all the Korean/Japanese/Eastern whatever MMO's I've gotten into. It's wonderful how they're all free to play (though the software is locked up tighter than a... uhh... something really tight), and all they want you to pay for is pretties and occasionally the big boomies that make you pwn.

I've spent a Hell of a lot more money on these donation based MMO's than I ever have on EVE or CoH because it's a business model I can agree with better. I don't have the money to pay one month or I only play once in a while, I have nothing to worry about.

Now if only it was F+OSS!

Aaah yes, like communism.

[wattrlz]

I kid, I kid!

Why should economics be a required course ??

[RockDoctor]

from the economics-should-be-a-required-course dept.

Why?

Who, apart from the tiny proportion who want to set up their own businesses, needs to even know of the existence of courses in economics, let alone their contents?

Seriously - there seems to be this bizarre assumption on Slashdot that everyone wants the stress and shit that goes with being your own boss. Which, in a world where the indians outnumber the chiefs, is simply not going to happen.

Some people are in need of doses of reality.

Re:Information was always free, that's not the poi

[Eskarel]

And the abuse of the social contract began way before you were a kid. Likely well before anyone alive was a kid, but certainly before anyone who grew up with recordable media was.

Yes it being easier to copy means more copying is going on, but if prices were lower and copyright was more fair a lot of the people would stop copying. True there'd still be a few "I download it because I"m cheap" deadbeats, but those people wouldn't pay for it anyway and so are outside the equation.