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> But at some point in the food chain, software developers need to put food on the table and send their kids to school. How does that happen if all software is

by Ace17 9y ago

> But at some point in the food chain, software developers need to put food on the table and send their kids to school. How does that happen if all software is free? Please note "free" has nothing to do with price, but with end-user freedom (to use/study/modify/share). (example answer to your question: custom/internal software).

lloydde 9y ago
It actually does have to do with price. All free software is one user away from the possibility (likelihood) it is free as in beer. The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies.
- tho9Ohx1eo 9y ago
  > The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies. At the same time it empowered those who could not afford to pay or could not pay (legal/geo-restrictions, DRM etc).
  - lloydde 9y ago
    Absolutely! Additionally, if we are able to create more cases where this inherently collaborative delivery leads to better software then it would unlock real economic growth. Unfortunately, these are ultimately hard people problems.
- icebraining 9y ago
  All free software is one user away from the possibility (likelihood) it is free as in beer. And yet, my and others' salaries have been paid for over six years writing free software without it ever being published publicly by its users, despite being GPL licensed.
  - lloydde 9y ago
    That's a fantastic! I don't mean to insult, but the likelihood of the software being shared freely by a user increases with success. Your situation is an exception. And likely contributing factors are the specific field and sophisticated, like minded customers.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Thanks. But actually, no, we write software for many fields and most of our customers are certainly not sophisticated, nor do they care about our philosophy (to most of them, open source means roughly "not as good but cheaper"). It's true that our customer base is not very large, though.
- ebcode 9y ago
  >>The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies. uh... citation needed?
  - lloydde 9y ago
    Citation needed that software industries are dominated by proprietary offerings? It's very hard to measure when there are so few public open source companies. How many open source companies are there? By open source company I mean companies whose each software product is open source. How many are public companies? Maybe, even just compare those to companies who's products are "open core", which seems to include most (all?) of the open source SaaS offerings. Or look just at the largest public software companies and estimate their commoditization through open source and community participation through open source.
11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
I could use a little help. Are 'Free' in the sense that Stallman means and 'Open Source' synonymous? Indeed there are many engineers who earn a living by maintaining an open source code base. To their employer, the software is free to modify and customize and free from licensing, but there is still a cost (the developer's salary, etc.) to maintain it, so not free in the sense of cost. Others develop and distribute software and rely on voluntary payment. But if there were no volunteers, would they still be able to produce and maintain that code? Some would, purely as a hobby, labor of love or mission. They'd still need a day job where they get paid for writing code...
- Ace17 9y ago
  The word "free" has shown to be very confusing, especially to people wanting to discuss funding or business model. Richard Stallman tried to attenuate the confusion with the following slogan: "Think 'free' as in 'free speech', not 'free beer'." When we're talking about software, "Open Source" and "Free Software" are mostly synonymous. However: The Free Software movement concerns itself with preventing software users to be at the mercy of software vendors/providers (on things where it's technically not needed). This requires, amongst other things, (unobfuscated) source code access. The Open Source movement has different goals, mostly non-ethics oriented, about a collaborative model of development. It happens that these different goals meet similar requirements, and that both movements were started by hackers initially wanting source code access.

by Ace17 9y ago

lloydde 9y ago

It actually does have to do with price. All free software is one user away from the possibility (likelihood) it is free as in beer. The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies.

tho9Ohx1eo 9y ago
> The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies. At the same time it empowered those who could not afford to pay or could not pay (legal/geo-restrictions, DRM etc).
- lloydde 9y ago
  Absolutely! Additionally, if we are able to create more cases where this inherently collaborative delivery leads to better software then it would unlock real economic growth. Unfortunately, these are ultimately hard people problems.
icebraining 9y ago
All free software is one user away from the possibility (likelihood) it is free as in beer. And yet, my and others' salaries have been paid for over six years writing free software without it ever being published publicly by its users, despite being GPL licensed.
- lloydde 9y ago
  That's a fantastic! I don't mean to insult, but the likelihood of the software being shared freely by a user increases with success. Your situation is an exception. And likely contributing factors are the specific field and sophisticated, like minded customers.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Thanks. But actually, no, we write software for many fields and most of our customers are certainly not sophisticated, nor do they care about our philosophy (to most of them, open source means roughly "not as good but cheaper"). It's true that our customer base is not very large, though.
ebcode 9y ago
>>The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies. uh... citation needed?
- lloydde 9y ago
  Citation needed that software industries are dominated by proprietary offerings? It's very hard to measure when there are so few public open source companies. How many open source companies are there? By open source company I mean companies whose each software product is open source. How many are public companies? Maybe, even just compare those to companies who's products are "open core", which seems to include most (all?) of the open source SaaS offerings. Or look just at the largest public software companies and estimate their commoditization through open source and community participation through open source.

11thEarlOfMar 9y ago

I could use a little help. Are 'Free' in the sense that Stallman means and 'Open Source' synonymous? Indeed there are many engineers who earn a living by maintaining an open source code base. To their employer, the software is free to modify and customize and free from licensing, but there is still a cost (the developer's salary, etc.) to maintain it, so not free in the sense of cost. Others develop and distribute software and rely on voluntary payment. But if there were no volunteers, would they still be able to produce and maintain that code? Some would, purely as a hobby, labor of love or mission. They'd still need a day job where they get paid for writing code...

Ace17 9y ago
The word "free" has shown to be very confusing, especially to people wanting to discuss funding or business model. Richard Stallman tried to attenuate the confusion with the following slogan: "Think 'free' as in 'free speech', not 'free beer'." When we're talking about software, "Open Source" and "Free Software" are mostly synonymous. However: The Free Software movement concerns itself with preventing software users to be at the mercy of software vendors/providers (on things where it's technically not needed). This requires, amongst other things, (unobfuscated) source code access. The Open Source movement has different goals, mostly non-ethics oriented, about a collaborative model of development. It happens that these different goals meet similar requirements, and that both movements were started by hackers initially wanting source code access.