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Why Making Money From Free Software Matters
Glyn Moody sends in what could be a watershed article, if the recording and movie industries are paying attention. "People have been making money from free software ever since Richard Stallman started selling GNU Emacs on tapes for $150 a pop. That's been good for hackers, who have often managed to make a living from their coding by working for one of the startups based around free software. And as companies like Red Hat and Google have grown in size and profitability, so have the credibility and clout of free software. But there is another reason why the success of these new kinds of businesses is so crucial: in many respects they offer a glimpse of coming shifts in other industries that need to grapple with the conundrum of how to make money from goods that are freely available. In particular, they offer the music and film industries an example of an alternative to fighting people's natural instinct to share digital abundance, by making money from new scarcities."
It is human nature to dig in one's ideological heels against change, especially when money is involved. Substantial changes or the oft-cited paradigm shift often have to wait for an older generation to die off.
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You can't really equate software and music/movies. Music and Movies are consumable products. You get it, you consume it. Maybe you watch it or listen to it more than once, but it's the rare consumer that uses the media as the means to an end.
Software is typically a means to an end. You don't install Linux just to have Linux. You install it because you want to do something with it. Same with web browsers, office suites, and just about any other software. The exception would be games which are meant to be consumed similarly to movies and music. But on the whole, most software is meant to help you create something else. Whether it be a resume, a presentation, a spreadsheet, even more software, the software exists as a tool, not a thing to be enjoyed in and of itself.
That's why it doesn't make sense to compare the music/movie industry to the general free software industry. The media industry is involved in making consumables, and that means they provide a finished product to the customer. The software industry provides tools which have ample room for customization and service work. The two industries start from different premises, so that's why software can be free whereas media cannot.
If you want to compare the industries, it makes sense to compare the media industry to the niche game software industry. But here you'll find very similar actions. Anti-piracy is the norm. Expensive packaged software (or downloadable paid software) and expensive CDs/DVDs are analogous. Even the antagonistic attitude between the customers and the producers is similar. It's just inherent in any industry that needs to protect its IP because that is precisely what it is selling.
Google is a search engine that uses FOSS for it's company - it makes its money from advertising and selling non FOSS software.As a matter of fact, Google is actually a shitty FOSS company - see Sketchup and Sketchup Pro. Where's the source for those things? Hmmmm? And Sketchup Pro is pretty expensive, btw, and it's closed and proprietary program.
All the software written by Google, how much of it is really open? Honestly.
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July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Thus far engineers are the only ones to directly profit from open source businesses.
The single biggest mistake open source advocates make when envisioning a future is the assumption that successful engineering practices will be successful artist practices. You don't sample a Britney Spears song to make a longer, better Britney Spears song; you sample it for reference. Whereas when you patch emacs, you aren't referencing emacs, you are adding functionality.
Even if an artist subscribes to the free->fame startup model, eventually the steps to monetization involve controlling the distribution of copies. For example, first Danger Mouse released the Grey Album to great acclaim, then formed Gnarls Barkley and released music in traditional commercial channels.
While copyright is bad for engineers, it is a 300 year old legal framework designed to compensate artists. Discarding it for nothing is short sighted at best, and at worst exploitive of artists.
I think a large part of the "cognitive dissonance" stems from the fact that you get no guaranties whatsoever that said software will work. I can only talk for myself but i have a very hard time persuading myself pony up for something that may or may not work and where the seller takes no responsibility of the goods.
The industry put themselves in this situation when they used copyrights to protect their goods (software is traded as photos, movies or books, not real products). The upside, no guaranties, is offset by the backside, nobody thinks your product is worth the money.
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There isn't any. The more accurate statement is 'software should be free' but if 'you want me to work on it consistently for larger periods of time you'll have to pay me.'
It's not hard for people to find a half hour here and there to work on a project, but it becomes really difficult to find hours every week to do so without being paid. There are exceptions, but not many, and certainly not enough to support the ecosystem.
The software is free, the developer's time is not.
You're free to use the software however you choose, but if you want the developer to spend his time working to your schedule, then you may have to make it worth his while.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
the differences you cite aren't really differences. everything is a means to an end, including music and movies: pleasure. "You install it because you want to do something with it" applies to linux. it also applies to "iron man" and beyonce
put it this way: a hammer is not a screwdriver. but in terms of how they are acquired: bought in a store or ripped off from woodshop class, they are the same
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and it isn't really that revolutionary: its the same business model as broadcast television or radio
content is free, and money is made via ancillary revenue streams. you give your music or movies away for free on the internet and you make cash from the people who show up at concert gigs (because they like your music: your mp3 files are merely advertising) or in the cinema house (the internet, like television and the vcr before it, despite all the panic, is not going to kill the cinema house)
furthermore, this "radical" future is not the death of capitalism, it is the ultimate expression of capitalism: the marketplace, the internet, is a great equalizer. quality and quality alone becomes the dominant determinant about who triumphs and who has to keep their day job. the only people who suffer are the old media companies from the previous, now dead, era of vinyl and cellulose: they aren't needed anymore
and don't believe their lies: when such dying distributors whine about capitalism, they actually are talking about corporatism. corporatism is a greater enemy of capitalism than communism or socialism ever can be, and this is also historically true: oligopolies and monopolies using their size and influence over legislators to warp and destroy the free market to their advantage. so if you are interested in a free market, a marketplace of competing equals, you are interested in strong government regulations which curtail the influence of the dominant players
but this simple truth is unfortunately contrary to so much libertarian and tea party rhetoric
on the topic of foss, and also on many other topical issues, too many people confuse the idea of capitalism and corporatism
too many people unfortunately buy the self-serving rhetoric and the propaganda and the alligator tears of the 800 pound gorillas in the room who say they are on the side of capitalism, but who are not interested in true capitalism at all, they are in corporatism. they are interested in destroying the free market to their advantage by doing away with regulations or flat out rewriting the regulations to grandfather themselves into dominant positions in the marketplace
are you a libertarian? are you a free market fundamentalist? are you a tea party member? then recognize this: your greatest enemy is not the government, it is large corporations. they will destroy the free market UNLESS the government is strong enough to check their power so the little guys can compete equally. the government is the enemy ONLY to the extent that large corporations have corrupted it. so fight to CHANGE the government, not destroy it, for that is far worse in the name of YOUR ideals. IN THE NAME OF THE FREE MARKET, you want and need a strong regulatory government. this really is 100% the truth. a truly free market functions only amongst equals. and since in a marketplace no one stays equal very long, you must have strong regulations to make sure the larger players don't take advantage of the smaller players. there's simply no way around that
so in the name of true capitalism, defy the mpaa and riaa. monopolies and oligopolies are the greatest threat to capitalism, ever
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think a large part of the "cognitive dissonance" stems from the fact that you get no guaranties whatsoever that said software will work.
1. If I pay someone to modify an open source package for me, I can secure a guarantee from that person that it will do what I paid him to make it do. Legally, all that needs to happen is that there's a separate agreement above and beyond the requirements of the open source license that includes that guarantee. So, for instance, if the package was GPL, if someone modifies it for me, we can have an agreement that says that he's giving me the modifications with source code (as he's required to under the terms of the GPL), but also guarantees that it will do what I want it to. And this isn't a hypothetical: I've worked on projects that involved paying an outside contractor to do precisely that.
2. Proprietary software licenses universally disavow any and all warranties including the implied warranty of merchantability and warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. You have no guarantee whatsoever that Microsoft Windows will not set your computer on fire rather than be a functioning computer operating system.
I am officially gone from
Wrong. It creates an incentive for creating software that seemingly requires support, but doesn't require that support in reality. In other words, it creates an incentive to build software that is better than it looks.
Software is not scarce, developer time is. I'll never understand the cognitive dissonance that makes people think a non-scarce resource should be treated like a scarce one.
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Several possibilities.
1. The software author was contributing to a project that he/she saw their own benefits from, and therefore were compensated by the resulting product. In a few smaller projects, a single person writes code entirely for their own benefit, then releases the code because someone else might want to use it, too. In this case, their time was "free" in terms of money, they compensated themselves with the results of their own work then offered out a copy of it for others to benefit from as well.
This, by the way, is why FOSS is often compared to "communism" (not the totalitarian kind as we've seen practiced, but the purer Marxian kind of "from each according to ability, to each according to need"). Everyone in a project like this is free to contribute whatever they can or want to, and everyone benefits from all of the contributions. Of course, where communism in the real world breaks down is in simple resource limitations - a lot of people want to take according to need, but not give according to ability. In the world of software development, you can have a very low number of givers and a very high number of takers and the model still works as long as you have some givers. And if the givers are benefiting themselves by creating what they themselves need, then they are building their own compensation.
2. The software was written under contract for a specific company to solve a specific problem and that company is not using the software for competitive advantage, so they release the code for others to use. It can also mean that software they use themselves can be improved by others at no cost to them, so symbiotic relationships can form.
3. The software was available in crude form and a company didn't want to reinvent the wheel, so they started with what was out there, improved it, and released the improved version as a way of "paying back" for the fact that the codebase saved them a crapload of development time. Or, in the case of a lot of projects, the company wants to sell you some hardware and they are OK with you doing other things with it once you've bought it (ie. what is now known as the Linksys WRT54GL series), so providing the source code moves more cheap generic-parts units off the shelf because the modding community wants to turn them into all sorts of crazy stuff.
In reality, most free software is the result of multiple of the above scenarios happening.
The fact is that while an author's time is not free, they can still give away the software under circumstances where enough people will give them small amounts of money (advertising on their download site, voluntary donations, or even kudos and appreciation to feed the ego for a spare-time project). They can also write software that benefits themselves and send it out, but if you want them to change it to suit your own needs you can offer them some money to make the changes, and the improved version can be released for all to enjoy.
I've seen projects where the original author makes the source code available, then uses "paypal voting" for new features. "Many people have asked me for feature 'x'. It's going to take me about 8 hours to write it, and I'm out of beer and nachos. If you want me to add feature 'x', send money and tell me it's for feature 'x' - when my donations for feature 'x' hit $400, I'll write it and release it for all to enjoy."
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