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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."
Your only constraint is that if you redistribute, you must pay the licensing fee to the original team.
I guess that's part of the problem right there: what constitutes the "original team". I assume the project can't be forked, or else you'd have to continue to pay the original team? And how much payment is warranted in that case? As you phase out the original code with your own, can you pay less? What If I just want to grab some small part of code for a totally different project, do I have to negotiate separate licenses for each piece, or do I have to pay a blanket fee as though I'm going to distribute the entire project?
Maybe "FairSoftware" has all the solutions to these questions, but it seems like these are lots of potentially complicated issues. I would guess that, the more complicated the licensing issues, the less readily people will be to contribute.
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.
The problem (with newspapers specifically) is that newspapers are not in the news business. They are in the advertising business. News was an excuse to sell eyeballs to advertisers. There are more efficient ways today to match up buyers and sellers, so newspapers are suffering.
Nothing should be done about it. It's a dead business model. It's called economic advancement, and it raises the standard of living of everyone in the long run. Yes, in the short run people lose their jobs and have to retool. But currently they are in a position where they create things of little value, and they should be moved into something that creates more value.
I have noticed that most "free, gratis, and open source software" is crap, is written by students or people in their spare time, and once the writer (because most of it certainly isn't engineered) has to actually make a living, the software stagnates.
If you don't believe me, head over to source forge or fresh meat and see for yourself.
Yeah, right. There is a difference between staying power and "hanging around like an ugly lamp no one has bothered to get rid of"
Apparently, you don't understand the words you are using.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
No, he does grasp one essential point: the bills have to be paid. Whatever you're producing, there's costs that you've got to have the money to cover. Utility bills, payroll, taxes, cost of materials, it all takes money and you need to come up with that money from somewhere. Either you're funding the whole thing out of your savings, or you need to find a way to earn revenue from the project. And if you intend to give away your product for free, then you'd better know what other source you're going to get revenue from or you'll be finding your bank account emptied at an alarming rate and when it hits zero the bank won't let you write any more checks no matter how many you've still got in your checkbook.
Yes, we as consumers of the free product don't care about any of that. But the guy producing the product had better care, because the bills still need to be paid.
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.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Then you're not developing free (gratis) software. You are developing paid-for software that has one paying customer (your boss) who decided others can also have it (gratis).
That's a meaninglessly stupid distinction. All work is paid for in some way, whether it be by selling it or having it sponsored by an employer or even done for free on a PC donated by a charity. At some level, someone is investing the resources (i.e. paying) for the work to get done.
I can't name a single piece of gratis software by your standard. Linux sure isn't, and neither is any major program I run on it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
No, there isn't. There is a minuscule amount of good free software. Especially when compared to the total amount of free software. The good/bad software ratio is heavily in favor of commercial software.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
That may be a purpose, but it's not what the business was.
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