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Elementary OS: Why We Make You Type "$0"
jones_supa writes Open source software can always be acquired without charge, but can still incur significant development costs. Elementary OS wants to make people aware of this, and have changed their website to suggest donating when downloading, and make users explicitly enter "$0" if they want a free download. This is the same strategy Canonical has used when offering Ubuntu. The Elementary OS blog explains: "Developing software has a huge cost. Some companies offset that cost by charging hundreds of dollars for their software, making manufacturers pay them to license the software, or selling expensive hardware with the OS included. Others offset it by mining user data and charging companies to target ads to their users. [...] If we want to see the world of open source software grow, we should encourage users to pay for its development; otherwise it'll be underfunded or developers will have to resort to backdoor deals and advertising. And nobody wants that future." Currently the only people who have received money for working on Elementary OS have been community members through their bounty program.
Call it what it is - guilting people into donating by making them more conscious of the fact that they're not donating by making them type $0 into a box so they feel like a piece of crap.
It's not about awareness.
I get this all the time at the checkout. Would you like to donate $1 to save needy children, to save a cat in need,
to promote clean water, etc... I once asked a cashier who actually got the money on a "clean water" campaign
and they couldn't even tell me. I always say no as a matter of course even for organizations that I regularly
donate to. I don't want to encourage them to use that venue.
You can say this about every product available on every market on earth. Look at the baker- he didn't grind the flour; the miller didn't grow the wheat and sugar cane; the farmer didn't find the seeds growing wild; all of this is the combined efforts of thousands of human generations. Somebody else mined the coal and somebody else turned it into electricity. Somebody else filtered the water. The baker combines all of these things, some that he acquired at cost, and maybe some that are freely given, and makes his final product and sells it. 99+% of the work was done by others, going back in history for thousands of years to reach this current stage. We call it civilization.
We ALL stand on the shoulders of giants, in every profession, in every walk of life. Why are they not allowed to charge for their work when the baker can?
An analysis of the 2.8 million lines of code that were contributed to the Linux kernel between December 24, 2008 and January 10, 2010, reveals 75 percent of Linux code is now written by paid developers. The three biggest Linux code contributors are Red Hat, Intel and IBM.
The most striking aspect of the analysis, however, was where those lines of code originated from. 18% of contributions to the kernel were made without a specific corporate affiliation, suggesting true volunteer efforts. An additional 7% weren't classified. The remainder were from people working for specific companies in roles where developing that code was a major requirement. "75% of the code comes from people paid to do it," Corbet said.
Within that field, Red Hat topped that chart with 12%, followed by Intel with 8%, IBM and Novell with 6% each, and Oracle 3%. Despite the clear commercial rivalry between those players, central kernel development worked well, Corbet noted.
More info at APC.
The Coal Miner was paid to mine coal (by RedHat)
The Hydro-Electric generated electricity because it was built by IBM for the US government.
The water was gathered by Intel to sell more computer chips.
The farmer planted the wheat in a public field because it was cheaper to help plant seeds and pick what he needed than it was to buy flour from a commercial farm and was compensated in reduced price flour.
The baker baked the bread for a restaurant and then gave away the extra for free since in computer world infinite bread is as easy to bake as 1 loaf.
Finally the waiter expects a goddamn tip because they deserve to be compensated for their efforts somehow.
Your analogy breaks down because the majority of Linux development is done by people being paid to develop linux. Those developers expect to be paid. The people who pay them reap compensation for their investment in Linux in various fashions (support contracts, hardware sales etc.) So no it's not outrageous that a consumer product company would use a sales model that works for their business: selling things to people in order to also be compensated.
Linux is not a big volunteer effort, it's mostly a corporate collaboration to cut costs and boost sales.