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The "Dangers" of Free
With today's Free Summit broaching the subject of the "dangers" of free, TechDirt has an interesting perusal of why free often can't work without a good business model and why it often gets such a bad reputation. "I tend to wonder if this is really a case of free gone wrong or free done wrong. First, I'm always a bit skeptical of 'free' business models that rely on a 'free' scarcity (such as physical newspapers). While it can work in some cases, it's much more difficult. You're not leveraging an infinite good -- you're putting yourself in a big hole that you have to be able to climb out of. Second, in some ways the model that was set up was a static one where everyone focused on the 'free' part, and no one looked at leapfrogging the others by providing additional value where money could be made. The trick with free is you need to leverage the free part to increase the value of something that is scarce and that you control, which is not easily copied. [...] Still, it's an important point that bears repeating. Free, by itself, is meaningless. Free, with a bad business model, isn't helpful either. The real trick is figuring out how to properly combine free with a good business model, and then you can succeed."
The problem with free (gratis) is that it doesn't pay the bills for the developer. I'm not talking about being greedy, but accessories like kids, spouse and house come in handy in winter :-)
That's why I have been giving more and more thought to a Fair business model, which would combine the best of two worlds: libre, but not gratis.
The distributed revenue sharing part we already solved with FairSoftware.
It would work like this: Corporations and end-user would have to pay for the service or software. But it wouldn't quite be commercial. The proceeds would be shared among the development team. But you could still retain the rights to see the source and modify or tweak it for your environment. Your only constraint is that if you redistribute, you must pay the licensing fee to the original team.
All it takes is to put more libre in the Software Bill of Rights. Volunteers?
Call it sustainable development if you will.
Volume.
That's how you make money on "free."
No, not a land war in Asia. From here:
The Open Source and CopyLeft people are acting as if common sense prevails in US copyright law, and they are, I am told, dead wrong.
Best Slashdot Co
free often can't work without a good business model
Last I checked proprietary suffers from the exact same problem.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
From TFA, the example was an over abundance of free newspapers delivered to people's doors. The problem with such a model is that there is no way to measure the demand for the paper
We have a similar situation where I live. There is a free weekly paper that is available in newspaper boxes. There are two papers that are delivered to your door.
The newspaper box one requires the consumer to actually take one from some "central" location - there is a cost to the "free" paper - the cost of getting a copy is going to one of the newspaper boxes and taking one.
In the other two cases, the papers show up on your doorstep. My brother didn't want one of them, and he fought bitterly with the provider to stop "littering" his door with them. If you go away for a couple of weeks, the piled up papers become a neon sign saying "No One Is Home"... Try as he might, he could not get the door delivered paper to stop showing up.
One person's free is another person's litter.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
No business can succeed without a viable business model, regardless of whether or not it is based on delivering a "free" product. As far as free Danish newspapers, why would anybody pay money to print and deliver information that 99% of your customers could access for free over the internet, with a much lower marginal cost per customer? The Oregonian used to throw free newspapers in my driveway every tuesday and thursday; I had to tell them 3 times to stop because I consider it to be Criminal Trespass and Offensive Littering, both of which are unlawful in Oregon. It is not just a bad business model -- it is one which is actively offensive to potential customers which would rather save trees and know that most of these free newspapers go straight into the trash without even being read.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
It might be a bit simple, but sometimes simple works. There is always a cost for something, "free" give aways are cost justified somehow, be it a one time get you hooked sort of idea, or a recoup losses elsewhere shifting of the burden, but the simple fact is, someone, somewhere is paying for that. Doesn't even have to be money, could be as simple as time or energy, but rest assured, there is always some sort of cost associated with everything.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Yes, people often post useful information anonymously when they don't want to be recognized by their employer or for some other reason. It's part of what has made Slashdot a success, so just get used to it. You might also want to read up on the moderation system.
And, occasionally the trolls are very funny, IMHO.
Breakfast served all day!
This is funny. I create and release everything Ive ever composed for free and have no problems with the success of it or lack of success for that matter. When its free, the creation becomes the greatest reward. Sure I can't control whether you take my music and say you made it but that also happens when you pay for it or before you do anything for that matter.
Knowledge is all regurgitated information from what already exists anyway so....its really about enlightenment.
All these arguments do is make you think that you have to pay for something for it to have value. God forbid someone makes something and gives it to another these days without a whole group of people raining down the "Yeah but I have to feed my family" railroad. Do you think whomever made the wheel thought about how to consistently make money off of it as the years go by? Are tires infringing on the maker of the wheel because someone took that concept and made something else out of it?
Software is what it is. Sell it or don't. People will buy it or they wont. Stop trying to control how they use it. If you aren't for free then you probably don't like Taco Tuesdays or BOGO offers. I mean how is Pedro going to feed his family? We all need to pay and pay NOW! I'm converted. Thanks!
Projects using donated labor and equipment don't need a financial business model, other than perhaps one that seeks donations.
A hobbyist who creates music, code, books, or other software in his spare time and uploads them to YouTube, SourceForge, or some other free-to-him repository is only out his time.
The same can be said of a group of creators who have day jobs but give away their intangible work product for free.
As soon as you start getting beyond the available time the people have to donate, then you need some type of business model. This can be anything from seeking grants and donations to sponsorship to a traditional fee-for-product/service business model.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Damn you for making me reference Joel On Software
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
Can you tell me what the f**k has been going on lately with all those "anonymous cowards" posting bogus messages at the top of every story?
Sure but you won't like it. You see, most of the time that they post nigger jokes, frosty piss, GNAA, goatse, and other gibberish, they wonder if somebody like you will get offended and respond. Sure enough, somebody almost always does. When you do, not if you do but when you do, because you can't seem to resist, they feel gratified like they got a rise out of you. Now somebody paid attention to them so now they are encouraged to do the same thing again. Ever heard of "don't feed the trolls"? That's why they tell you not to do that. So good job, while bitching about the problem you are also actively making it worse.
Signed,
A Niggerjoke-Posting AC.
P.S. Of course the other reason why I post niggerjokes is to illustrate the stupidity of getting upset over the things said by random people on the Internet. You're welcome.
Yes. Yes I can. But then I'd have to kill you, because it's a steganographic mechanism to secretly pass messages regarding the oncoming takeover of the coroprate world by rabid fundamentalist Linux enthusiasts operating from secret silos underground (but not deep underground -- usually it's just basement-depth).
Oh, dammit, looks like I'll have to kill you after all -- I let it slip. Me and my big mouth.
Seriously, YMBNH. Or just incredibly slow, to only pick up on the weak AC FP trolling now.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Can you tell me what the f**k has been going on lately with all those "anonymous cowards" posting bogus messages at the top of every story? I think this "post anonymously" checkbox should be removed, and one should always be authenticated to post something on /.
Anyway, have you ever seen one of those chicken bring anything useful to the conversation?
Some of us have applied for an account but our email service keeps eating the emails, or /. is having issues. Take your pick.
I would have you know that I have gotten a couple of +3 interesting posting as an anonymous coward. So yes, I'd say that one of us have brought a couple of useful things to the conversation.
Welcome to slashdot. ACs have been first posting and crapflooding for years now it is hardly something that has only been happening "lately". Unless by "lately" you mean for over a decade.
I had a friend make me up a sign that says "No newspapers please."
Surprisingly it worked.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I have here on slashdot with a box to check off, to disable ad, for my "contributions". Yeah, like, I haven't seen an ad here since when, I don't remember.
But how is that related to the story? I am not sure - mention of "business model" seem to turn off my brain.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
If you give stuff away you need a good plan to make a profit from it.
Yes, I can. I have a five digit id, compared to your seven, and I'm posting AC just to piss you off. Capisce?
Now get off of my lawn.
Before you continue with your article utilizing an ambiguous term to which too much meaning has been attached, please familiarize yourself with this distinction that is a prerequisite to becoming a member of slashdot.
Free, by itself, is meaningless. Free, with a bad business model, isn't helpful either. The real trick is figuring out how to properly combine free with a good business model, and then you can succeed.
No. The author of TFA fails to grasp one major point - Sometimes no "trick" exists, period.
I get so sick of hearing business oriented people bitching about how "free" does or doesn't work, or how to make "free" work for them. They don't need to learn the tricks to making "free" work, they just need to learn that "free" means free, and none of us give the least bit of damn if they can make a profit or not.
I use (and create, though can't claim credit for any well-known projects) Free-with-a-capital-"F" software because I believe in it. I use free (lower-case) software because in my experience, it works just as well as non-free software, without all the artificial restrictions imposed to convince me to pay for "value added" BS ("Oh, you can't use critical-widget-X unless you buy the All-Things-X add on pack!"). I read free news because I don't care to pay for the opinionated rantings of various journalists (hint - Your job description involves reporting, not "change", quit pretending you can or should make a difference); when a tenth of the human population can reach the whole world with coverage of local events, reporters have very little role left to play. I even eat free fruits and berries while out hiking, because they taste a hell of a lot better than giant-but-tasteless garbage the industrial-ag market has tried to pass off as "food".
Put simply, I, and most people, like "free" precisely because of its standard definition - It doesn't cost us anything! As soon as you try to twist that, you haven't added a "trick", you've pissed us off.
So the "trick" to free? Don't call your product that unless you expect nothing in return. If you come crying with your hand out after-the-fact, don't worry, I won't laugh with you, I'll laugh at you.
I work on free software projects because my job promotion means I dont do enough really geeky stuff and more middle management crap. I dont watch sports on TV but listen to tons of podcasts while I debug stuff so this is how I use my spare time.
Your model offers hobbyists and students like I have working with me anything we dont have.
I work on 3 different projects and the majority of developers are in the same boat. You seem to have more paid developers working on stuff like the kernel, OO and others and less people on some KDE widget.
You are offering basically another license in a sea swimming full of them. Put it on top of the others and Ill give it a look sometimes.
But I work on these projects BECAUSE of the GPL, its what attracted me to it in the first place.
It's not a big deal to register a troll account, many cowards have done so.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For example, take the act of downloading and installing a piece of "free" software from the 'net. You spend time to download it. Time to work out how to install it and even time (hopefully beforehand) to read through it's features, bugs and abilities to find out if it will solve the problem you have.
If you get as far as trying it out, then discover there is a reason why you cannot use it, you have lost the time you spent getting that far. If you have had to buy something else (such as a memory upgrade, new disk or printer, etc.) to use with this free software - that tangible cost has been lost: to some extent.
Now, if playing with software is merely a hobby, then you're probably willing to spend time messing about - with no expectation of getting a usable result at the end. Afterall, with hobbies half the fun is getting there, rather than exploiting whatever it is you have made. When it comes down to it, a large amount of free software is simply "hobby" quality and should be approached with no expectation of support, bug-fixes or updates. In the long term, this is probably the most expensive form of free software.
However, if you're running a business, or intend to use this free software for work, there is a very real loss involved in having to junk an installation and go find an alternative. Spend a day getting an email server running for your business, without success and a $500 commercial product could well work out cheaper than the "free" version you downloaded, just in the cost of your lost time. Similarly, for a home user, it may well be worth spending $100 on a package you can just drop in, with the certainty it will work than to waste your sunday off trying to find accurate and up-to-date documentation for a piece of OSS.
In my experience, the biggest thing that "free" software has going for it in business, is tha ability to avoid the onerous paperwork/approvals required to spend money to buy a product. Free stuff doesn't need any of this and can be downloaded, installed and tested without having to involve any authority. Others however, would argue that this is also it's biggest weakness.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I am already accepting donations for my collected wisdom posted to Slashdot.
The sum total of donations prove that my contributions are indeed priceless.
"Work for free" works great for people who have passion for something they do in their spare time or if they are wealthy enough to not require a source of income. It doesn't work so well when the person isn't passionate or when the work IS the day job.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If only there were a way for the community to identify comments that don't contribute to the conversation and mark them as such. Then we could give users a mechanism by which to filter out comments marked in this way...
I will read the rest, maybe it will clean up. But: "I'm always a bit skeptical of 'free' business models that rely on a 'free' scarcity (such as physical newspapers)."
Where did this person grow up, in the Congo? That he doesn't know the history of newspapers?
Nearly all newspapers started out as "free". But of course, they were "free" in the sense of Google and certain other Web businesses: either they had a sponsor (with an agenda), or were paid via advertising. So of course they weren't absolutely "free"... you had to consent to be exposed to the advertising.
Ah, Techdirt: Free is good! Non-Free will die! Now, if it doesn't work out for you, your business model sucks. Every time you read "business model" on Techdirt, pretend it says "Plan $X for Getting Money." And we don't know what $X is. Neither do they.
Aside from variations on the hostage model, they have yet to suggest a business model that does not succumb to the things they propose in the first place. Example: Discs will be pirated. Solution: Make additional content available to people who buy your discs. Problem: additional content gets pirated ...
Basically, you have to tour if you're a musician. Don't count on T-shirts, because anyone can replicate your T-shirts, cheaper. Sign books if you're an author.
Puke.
There are of course, many uses of the word "free" when associated with software. From what I can see, TFA is referring to the situation where some entrepreneur somehow believes that he can make massive amounts of money by getting others to do his work for free. Obviously, his plan is destined to fail and then our intripid entrepreneur gets all pissey about how the model broken because it sure couldn't have been anything he did wrong.
He looks at us like we are so many lab rats. He fully believes that all he has to do is figure out where to place the cheese and we will all go crazy to make his software for him so he can reap great profit while all he is out is some stinking cheese.
We're not lab rats. We are volunteers. We volunteer for many of the same reasons that people donate to charities, spend time with youth groups or work a few hours each week at a soup kitchen. Why have we not been subjected to articles about someone setting up a soup kitchen, attracting volunteers and then getting all pissey because he wasn't able to properly monetize the situation? Because expecting to do so would be really fucking stupid.
Quit thinking you're going to get rich quick off our backs; embrace volunteerism for what it is, an act of altruism.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
A friend of mine always says about free software that it's free, as in "free puppy" as opposed to "free beer". This isn't a put-down of 'open source', just a good way to give those who know nothing about it a sense of perspective as they start to wade those waters.
Why do people write software to give away free (gratis & libre), even very good quality software? Well, there are a range of answers, but I am always most impressed by that given by the Stone Soup Group:
"Don't want money. Got money. Want admiration."
The Stone Soup Group in the late 1980s to early 1990s created Fractint, which was computationally a very efficient fractal generator and which could exploit irregular tweaks on all sorts of graphic cards.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
They're in both the advertising business and the news business. They have to sell newspapers to news readers and they have to sell advertising to advertisers.
Free software is essentially an Experiment in the post scarcity economy.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I have noticed that most "free, gratis, and open source software" is crap
So is most non-free, non-gratis and closed source software. You just don't notice it so much, because you tend to do more research to find the good stuff before handing over your hard-earned, whereas just a click to try something out seems so easy and tempting.
90% of everything is crud.
-- Sturgeon's Revelation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law
My father wrote some software for a company.
They paid for it.
That was that.
I felt that others might want to use it.
Against most others advice we let it go free.
He is no poorer as he really wasnt going to advertise it and therefore sell it.
There is a new version that he wants to start to sell. Now he has a user base because we gave it away for free.
I think that free software helps small businesess to get software and grow and allows developers to prove that their software works.
I know I will get flamed for this post (due to being flamed in person by others) but it was the right thing to do under the circumstances.
free opticians software
Because you always need a smart fox!
Wow, suddenly I feel really really old.\177! I'd complain more, but I'm out of punch cards.\012
We have a business model. It involves payment in kind rather than the exchange of cash. Perhaps that's why the MBAs and other parasitic classes don't understand it. Or, they understand it, but they don't like it very much because they can't figure out how to take their percentage off the top.
Have gnu, will travel.
No, not a land war in Asia. From here
Ah, you read Jerry Pournelle? His "Chaos Manor" in "Byte Magazine" was one of my favorite columns in the print edition. My other one was Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar", which now an independent magazine.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The term "commercial" has no meaning when it pertains open source. Selling support on top of open source or closed source makes very little different. Most companies would claim that they are commercial.
If a business sales software it's commercial, whether it's code is propriety or FOOS.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There goes my fair software idea down the drain.
They even want to "distribute profits to motivate". Talk about not understanding principles...
Forget it, RMS.
My bad not to check first... hmmm, maybe their site is recent, so my post of one month ago would be prior art or something?
Those old phone books are occasionally useful. It's sometimes hard to find low-tech, small, local businesses (e.g., plumbers) online.
I've never used it but Angie's list helps here. It has reviews of plumbers as well as other pros from people who hired them. What I didn't know though, I've never been to the site, was that users have to join and pay a membership fee.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I even eat free fruits and berries while out hiking, because they taste a hell of a lot better than giant-but-tasteless garbage the industrial-ag market has tried to pass off as "food".
Put simply, I, and most people, like "free" precisely because of its standard definition - It doesn't cost us anything! As soon as you try to twist that, you haven't added a "trick", you've pissed us off.
I used to do the same but those berries aren't free either. You may not pay money for them but you then pay with your labor when picking them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
AC, humanity's stupidity doesn't need to be illustrated, and even if it did, 4chan and it's ilk demonstrate it far more effectivly. Feel free to write the nigger/goatse posts here, I don't care, but I must say your second rationale is very stupid.
(This is a copy of a response I made to the original article at TechDirt - posted here because SlashDots forum is a much better place to continue an actual debate on the subject)
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Hi Mike. As a Danish citizen familiar with some of the aspects you mention in the article, and as a software engineer working with both commercial and "free" (as in "beer") software, I have a few things to add.
I think "free" can both GO wrong and be DONE wrong. The case about the free newspapers in Denmark (which really started in Sweden) is probably a bit of both.
First of all it is important to remember that "free" for the end-consumers is not necessarily "free" for everyone else. Nothing is truely free except perhaps love and kindness. A free newspaper is extremely expensive to a LOT of people - as I am sure is also true for a lot of other "free" products. Why? Because free newspapers not only caused pain and financial agony for the established "traditional" newspapers. They also introduced very heavy costs to local recycling stations who suddenly had to process tons of old newspapers - as well as the public transportation grid in greater Copenhagen where MANY resources had to spent on cleaning up the tons of "newspaper-litter" created by sloppy readers in the trains and busses. At its peek the "free" newspapers cost the public transportation grid several extra MILLIONS for cleanup and disposal of the approx 730 tons of newspaper-waste (a whopping 80% of the total waste generated by passengers) for an urban area which by comparison is similar to about one fifth of Washington DC (a total of approx 1,1 million people).
The "free" newspapers translated into a heavy extra cost for others - in this case the public transportation company and the municipal recycling stations. And this is just one example - I am sure that "free" really introduces heavy costs for other players in EVERY scenario you can think of. It would be interesting to see some genius (you perhaps?) invent a "total cost of free" (or perhaps "actual cost of free") calculation. I am not being sarcastic - please consider this a serious proposal.
In your article you also state that: "Everyone just copied each other, rather than trying to offer something different and better."
That is actually incorrect.
Each free newspaper developed its own identity and some of them spawned a lot of new concepts and ideas for the media industry. They each had a different approach to generating their content and attracting readers. Some of them were delivered to your doorstep as a morning paper. Others were distributed by a horde of "paperboys" on the streets handing out newspapers to everybody who wanted one (at train stations, squares, rows of cars waiting for a green light in the morning traffic, etc). Some newspapers had virtually NO journalists employed - they simply copy-pasted all the telegrams from various news agencies and printed them. Others had real journalists who focused on generating their own stories and interviews, profiling themselves as a more "serious" free newspaper because they SEEKED out the news rather than just copy-pasting them from a news terminal. And some of them created homepages with a lot of 2-way communication with their readers, where readers could contribute to the newspaper contnt by writing and submitting their own articles or creating a blog about various issues (the best blog-posts would then be printed in next days physical paper).
In the end, consumers wanted only one thing: free newspapers with absolutely no regard for the quality of the content. For that reason the obvious winner were the papers who had the smallest staff, cheapest distribution costs and simplest/cheapest homepages. The most innovative papers had to close because the heavy competition could not finance their initiatives. The few remaining papers consolidated them selves, merged, and today only two of them remains - both nearly identical in concept and content: no journalists, only news directly copy-pasted from news agencies, and a l
Free, open source, proprietary, no need to pick, 90% of everything is crap ;-)
It's forced its own standards onto the web by being free, and leveraged a number of unfree products.
"Anyway, have you ever seen one of those chicken bring anything useful to the conversation?" - by courteaudotbiz (1191083) on Monday May 11, @02:42PM (#27910775) Homepage
Try this list below, you sanctimonious, off-topic loser!
(Because until you can show me YOU as an "almighty registered user" here, has done the same, or more? You really should "look before you leap" & open that pie-hole of yours here):
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+5 'modded up' posts by "yours truly":
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170545&cid=14210206 [slashdot.org]
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175774&cid=14610147 [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1139485&cid=26975021 [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1139485&cid=26974507 [slashdot.org]
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+4 'modded up' posts by "yours truly":
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&cid=13531817 [slashdot.org]
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167071&cid=13931198 [slashdot.org]
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+3 'modded up' posts by "yours truly":
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155172&cid=13007974 [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166850&cid=13914137 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175857&cid=14615222 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=273931&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20291847 [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1021873&cid=25681261 [slashdot.org]
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+2 'modded up' posts by "yours truly":
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158231&cid=13257227 [slashdot.org]
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158310&cid=13263898 [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158231&cid=13257227 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=290711&cid=20506147 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=245971&cid=19760473 [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=416702&cid=22026982 [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174759&cid=14538593 [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=233779&cid=19020329 [slashdot.org]
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=970939&cid=25093275 [slashdot.org]
h