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Free <> Freedom Since everything in OSS has to be free, there is no economic model. Eventually things with an economic model supersede or embrace/extend open e

by api 10y ago

Free <> Freedom Since everything in OSS has to be free, there is no economic model. Eventually things with an economic model supersede or embrace/extend open ecosystems because they have the resources to do so. They also have the resources to address user experience, which is the most important thing unless your target audience consists of only hackers. (Even then it still matters.) Good UX is an immense amount of work, and it's the sort of work that devs tend not to find fun and therefore must be paid to do. Until and unless there is an economic model for free-as-in-freedom, surveillance-ware and closed models will continue to dominate.

quadrangle 10y ago
It's a struggle, but some of us are working on one proposal to address the economic model via https://snowdrift.coop https://snowdrift.coop (still not launched, hoping to finally get going soon)
sievebrain 10y ago
It's not only about resources. Things which are not controlled by a company, or at least a foundation of some kind, are essentially a commons. The tragedy of the commons then goes into effect. Who is responsible for upgrading the system? Nobody. Who resolves disputes over technical vision? Nobody. The internet and web 1.0 were an aberration - they came out of government funded research (DoD/CERN/universities). People built decentralised things because their salaries were very safe and accountability against any kind of commercial metrics (like userbase size) were non-existent. But at the same time, beyond salary, they didn't have big budgets to run centralised services. Early internet protocols are a reflection of the funding model used to build them .... NOT what was technically the best approach and NOT even anything privacy related! Which is why despite being decentralised most early internet protocols didn't really think about privacy much: those weren't research topics that interested the government funding sources. In a sense, the early internet was a product of a hard-left entirely state-driven economic model. So we now have a strange kind of rose-tinted glasses effect where people hark back to a better era of cooperation and friendship, a time without dirty dirty things like "profit" and "digital rights" getting in the way. This is a common theme amongst those on the political left: stuff was better when it was run by the state. But the state didn't want to continue funding the internet in perpetuity, so it was opened to commercialisation, and since then virtually all technical progress has been driven by the profit motive and by implication, the ability to make lots of money by getting lots of users on your centralised platform (which are a lot easier to build anyway). Is this worse? Maybe. It's capitalist. Whether that's better or worse than what we had before depends on your political perspective.
thescriptkiddie 10y ago
Redhat et al. have shown us that it is entirely possible to make money off of free software. Google et al. have shown us that free software trumps proprietary, even if there is no money to be made from it. The business model of selling licenses to proprietary software is a relic of a long-gone era at this point. Even Microsoft is giving away Windows 10 for "free".
- api 10y ago
  It's possible to make money off free software in B2B with services, support, SaaS, proprietary value adds, etc. That's how RedHat and many other enterprise vendors with OSS offerings make money. This only works for selling to corporations. End users don't pay for that kind of thing. I am not aware of anyone making money in free software in B2C other than through surveillance, ads, or other ways of "monetizing the user." This is how Google, Facebook, and others who produce free software in B2C areas make money. From a freedom POV, B2C is what matters. I assume that since we're talking about free-as-in-freedom we're interested in getting beyond surveillance as a business model.

by api 10y ago

quadrangle 10y ago

It's a struggle, but some of us are working on one proposal to address the economic model via https://snowdrift.coop https://snowdrift.coop (still not launched, hoping to finally get going soon)

sievebrain 10y ago

It's not only about resources. Things which are not controlled by a company, or at least a foundation of some kind, are essentially a commons. The tragedy of the commons then goes into effect. Who is responsible for upgrading the system? Nobody. Who resolves disputes over technical vision? Nobody. The internet and web 1.0 were an aberration - they came out of government funded research (DoD/CERN/universities). People built decentralised things because their salaries were very safe and accountability against any kind of commercial metrics (like userbase size) were non-existent. But at the same time, beyond salary, they didn't have big budgets to run centralised services. Early internet protocols are a reflection of the funding model used to build them .... NOT what was technically the best approach and NOT even anything privacy related! Which is why despite being decentralised most early internet protocols didn't really think about privacy much: those weren't research topics that interested the government funding sources. In a sense, the early internet was a product of a hard-left entirely state-driven economic model. So we now have a strange kind of rose-tinted glasses effect where people hark back to a better era of cooperation and friendship, a time without dirty dirty things like "profit" and "digital rights" getting in the way. This is a common theme amongst those on the political left: stuff was better when it was run by the state. But the state didn't want to continue funding the internet in perpetuity, so it was opened to commercialisation, and since then virtually all technical progress has been driven by the profit motive and by implication, the ability to make lots of money by getting lots of users on your centralised platform (which are a lot easier to build anyway). Is this worse? Maybe. It's capitalist. Whether that's better or worse than what we had before depends on your political perspective.

thescriptkiddie 10y ago

Redhat et al. have shown us that it is entirely possible to make money off of free software. Google et al. have shown us that free software trumps proprietary, even if there is no money to be made from it. The business model of selling licenses to proprietary software is a relic of a long-gone era at this point. Even Microsoft is giving away Windows 10 for "free".

api 10y ago
It's possible to make money off free software in B2B with services, support, SaaS, proprietary value adds, etc. That's how RedHat and many other enterprise vendors with OSS offerings make money. This only works for selling to corporations. End users don't pay for that kind of thing. I am not aware of anyone making money in free software in B2C other than through surveillance, ads, or other ways of "monetizing the user." This is how Google, Facebook, and others who produce free software in B2C areas make money. From a freedom POV, B2C is what matters. I assume that since we're talking about free-as-in-freedom we're interested in getting beyond surveillance as a business model.