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The "Dangers" of Free

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the poor-execution-kills-even-good-business-models dept.

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."

7 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Fair beats Free by alain94040 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Fair beats Free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...accessories like kids, spouse and house come in handy in winter :-)

      Name three things you really shouldn't burn just to keep warm. Sicko.

    2. Re:Fair beats Free by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Fair beats Free by q2k · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Fair beats Free by digitig · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?
    5. Re:Fair beats Free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      And who pays those AP/Reuters reporters?

      Hamas?

    6. Re:Fair beats Free by suggsjc · · Score: 5, Funny

      Only on /. could this comment be moderated "Insightful" which as disturbing as it is, I guess is true...

      --
      When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.