18 ms·

On paying for software

186 points by gbugniot 8y ago

andmarios 8y ago
Most of the “software” mentioned in the post, are actually services (slack, zoom, tidal, etc). For many people, it is easier to accept to pay for a service rather than software. While I do use paid services, I usually “pay” (donate) for free and open source software. Why? It helps me get my work done, support is usually good, I set the price and I know that people who aren't as fortunate as I (being able to afford to buy software) can use it for free and get the same opportunities as me. :)
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  The marginal cost for software is zero, the marginal cost for services is non-zero. This puts a floor under the price. People don't accept that they have to pay, rather they are given no choice.
  - ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
    Right, mentioning Keynote and services like Dropbox (as done in the article) in the same way isn't quite right. Yes the marginal cost for another user on Keynote is zero but certainly not Dropbox or any other software as a service. If 2 people use Dropbox is may cost almost nothing but if thousands use it you either need a business model because costs could be significant or (like some of the big players) have another business group that subsidizes the running cost.
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    Often.. but for a lot of software businesses, the difference between being software or software as service is a choice, and cost is often a minor implication of the choice.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
I see the use of OSS in government services as almost a moral imperative-but the first point seth makes is crippling this "you need money to write the software in the first place" Take voter management software - the preparation of polls, counting of results etc. all this software behind it is afaik propriety but used exclusively by the public sector - which seems mad, and even risky when we look at electronic balloting, but can one persuade any government to kickstart the process of building new? i cannot Edit: thinking of this, what chnage would a kickstarter project stand to build a base of oss government software? (I know things like GDS and 18F exist but they are not covering the full range of services - see http://oss4gov.org/manifesto http://oss4gov.org/manifesto
- mikece 8y ago
  The software might be free, but nobody acquires mission-critical software without a support agreement -- which is certainly not free -- unless they don't value staying employed. We might not like Diebold (or whatever name they go by now) but _someone_ has to be an accountable party for supporting electronic voting systems.
  - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
    free as in beer is irrelevant - free as in speech that i can read, check verify and is what matters - so i would envisage (and encourage) a network of "certified in using votermachine-oss" contractors that can be called upon or paid for, in a retainer fashion, and most importantly some means of priming the pump
ahati 8y ago
I believe corporate red tape one of reasons to not-pay for a software licence. If you download the trial or non commercial edition, works for you, you would never go through chain of approvals to buy a cheap software.Meare player is an example that you can think of. Araxis merge, Visual studio, Visio are some to name a few.
- mikece 8y ago
  Depends on where you work. I've been in shops where developers had a certain amount of money -- $500 or $1000 -- to buy whatever work-related tools they deemed to be helpful in getting their jobs done. Those tools could be software (Beyond Compare and ReSharper being popular ones) or hardware (monitors!) and up to that amount there were essentially no questions asked (the only caveat being if you spent on stuff that was not needed you risked ruining it for everyone else so you ran the risk of a getting a Code Red from the dev team if you wanted to spend wastefully). As much as companies spend on finding and keeping good developers, dropping $1k/each per year for things that make them happy is chump change.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
jarym 8y ago
I have experience selling to companies and I’ve found that even when they realise they need and want to pay for a piece of software they have absolutely no clue how to figure out what it’s worth. Consequently they engage in endless hardball negotiation and invite other suppliers to provide quotes (even when your offering uniquely meets all requirements). In the end the challenge is to get customers comfortable that they’re paying a fair price for what they’re getting. That however is much easier to say than to do.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  This is a great point. No one wants to be ripped off. Software basically can't be objectively priced. You might be selling £50k per seat software that competes with £50, or free. It sucks to be making that decision.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    >Software basically can't be objectively priced. // Can anything be objectively priced, how?
    - RandomCSGeek 8y ago
      I can buy apples at a somewhat objective price by comparing the price provided by other sellers in nearby stores. Also the price will be mostly affected by supply vs demand. OTOH, softwares prices can be affected by too many parameters. Then again, IT industry is a child when compared to say, mechanical or Civil industries.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        Your first method just overprices/wrong-prices the whole market. I'd argue that supply-demand doesn't give fair pricing (which presumably is what's meant [in part] by objective), if you can make something very cheaply does that mean you objectively deserve to be very rich simply because you've got a corner on that market?
- 8y ago
open-source-ux 8y ago
Why is it so hard for developers to make a full-time living selling their open-source software? Are the available options stacked against them? Thousands of developers make money building products or services for clients using open source software. But what if you don't want to be a consultant and simply want to charge a business for using your open source product? The Free Software Foundation (FSF) says that you can sell your free software by charging for distribution (for example via CD-ROMs). Physical media made sense in an era of dial-up modems and low-bandwidth connections, but no-one can realistically charge for distribution today - not least when so many projects are hosted for free on GitHub. See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html So what are the alternatives? - There's the dual-licencing approach e.g. Red Hat. (Naturally doesn't work with permissive licences. Requires a strong copyleft licence like the GPL). - The open core approach e.g. GitLab. - There's also the option of charging for support only - I'm guessing this is an unattractive and unappealing option for many developers who'd much rather be building their product. - Or there's the Kickstarter or Patreon approach which simply isn't a stable, sustainable long-term solution. There have been some alternative licence approaches such as the Fair Source licence (fair.io). This is neither open source or closed source but allows developers to charge for their software. The large market for Wordpress plugins is an interesting case study. Wordpress is published under the GPL v2, but many Wordpress plugins are not open source. No one polices this, but those plugin developers are selling their software to businesses who are willing to pay for the features of those plugins. So who here in 2018 has made a success selling their open source software? Did you follow one of the models above? And who has struggled to make it work?
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Why is it so hard for developers to make a full-time living selling their open-source software? Do you really expect people to pay for something when they can get it for free? Making software open source means you are either selling something complementary (hardware, other software, services) or else begging for crumbs.
  - mcny 8y ago
    I don't know much about these things and I'm making this up as we go but I wonder if we can use AGPL or a stronger version of AGPL. Basically, you pay for a subscription or everything on your servers that touches this software must be free and open source. Should work for researchers and students and there is a continued revenue stream. For example, require any software that talks to a rest API also be foss. With more people paying, the subscription can slowly become cheaper and more accessible. Thoughts?
mherrmann 8y ago
As an indie dev of desktop software, I have grown tired of complaints that my products aren't free as in speech and beer. I now reply to such criticism by linking to this post: https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/ https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Interesting that you got downvotes for a statement like this on a forum supposedly rooted in the business of software.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Because most want to get paid, not to pay for the tools they use.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      Exactly, there is some cognitive dissonance going on.
      - jacobush 8y ago
        It's because obviously the shit I need to get my shit done should be open source or free by now, sheesh it's 2018 not in the dark ages however of course the serious business need I am fulfilling is novel and very deserving of a good chunk of cash.
        teddyh 8y ago
        To put it more concisely: Everybody wants to commoditize their complements.
  - gkya 8y ago
    The content of the link is FUD. He portrays FOSS as if it was like the exploitation schemes the ad supported free stuff, saying: "But in a world where everything is free, we are the product." I did downvote him, although I'd not disagree with him (or anyone else) preferring to produce closed-source software. He could've justified himself w/o telling lies about the other side.
nebulous1 8y ago
Even Stallman doesn't have anything against paying for software. Seth's point 1 is reasonable. Point 2 is about paying for support, not paying for the software itself. Point 3 is no point at all, it's just rephrasing point 1 (ie marketing is about the business, not the software).
tehabe 8y ago
I think I have never read a piece in which the word "single-minded" is used in a positive way. Mostly people refer to it as a bad thing. Also I don't think that single-mindness really helps developing good software people want to use. Because you already have to think about two things here.
- justinclift 8y ago
  Hmmm, people can be "single minded" on delivering a good experience for end users. Our project (DB Browser for SQLite) definitely has developers that are. :)
xstartup 8y ago
There are many areas where you can create opensource projects, for example, SaaS subscription management platform with plenty of payment, tax, fraud detection plugins. Last time I heard there are so many SaaS indie developers forced to add WHMCS, amember pro or Woocomerce/Shopify for collecting payments using crypto, stripe, and PayPal. I mean, these platforms aren't for SaaS! Then offer a hosted version which implements high availability, load balancing, robust failproof backups. Most developers start their projects in areas which are unlikely to pay off, I don't blame them for this as it's something they find interesting but we shouldn't expect the market to pay for our interest.
paulcole 8y ago
> I like being the customer (as opposed to a social network, where I’m the product). Interesting concept. Can anyone expound on what he means by this?
- IncRnd 8y ago
  In a "free service" the service company often makes money by selling ad space to third parties for displaying to users or by selling user information to third parties. In each of these models, the user of the service, who isn't paying money, is actually the product not the customer. Yet, many users believe that these free services are being run for their benefit free-of-charge, which is clearly a bad assumption to make.
afarrell 8y ago
One of the reasons that I switched from Linx to OSX was so that I could pay for more of my software. Why? Because then I more of the software I used could be maintained by someone who had the time to dig into bugs and UI problems and to fix them. But in Linux, couldn't I just edit the source myself? Realistically, no. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to source-dive in a totally new project in a language I never use, especially without someone willing to give me a walkthrough of the architecture and fundamental models of the program. It is waaaay more efficient for these to be fixed by an engineer working not in their spare time, but as their full-time job. A developer targeting OSX knows they have an audience of people willing to pay him money so he can spend his whole day doing usability tests and his evening watching a little league game. I do miss strace though.
- wazoox 8y ago
  I use Linux and most free software projects allow donations. I even donated to projects I don't actually use, like FreeBSD. I donated money to many free software projects, Ardour, Mozilla, LibreOffice, OpenBSD, etc. This is clearly a false dichotomy.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Try to pay for a mortgage with donations.
    - wazoox 8y ago
      99% of paid apps developers can't make end meet anyway. Another false dichotomy. Creating an app and sticking a price on it isn't a business model any more than creating an app and asking for donations. Both are almost certain failure. But people constantly hear about this guy or that company that made some huge success and became rich; nobody talks about the millions who failed and whose apps were simply forgotten. Oh, and BTW, the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Greenpeace and many other NGOs live, AFAIK, mostly on donations. So that definitely can pay the bills, but the same reasoning applies: it's only true for a small minority, and you can't count on it.
mAEStro-paNDa 8y ago
Although the author failed to mention, the comments here pointed out the distinction between software from a little guy innovator and a huge corporation. That content was glossed over in the article, but it seems to be a very important part of the conversation about free/paid software. Not only that, but there's an underlying assumption here that some person or company has to receive a wage or profit for a software to be maintained or repaired, which is simply not true.
- afarrell 8y ago
  > there's an underlying assumption here that some person or company has to receive a wage or profit for a software to be maintained or repaired, which is simply not true. Indeed, one can have unpaid maintainers. But it is more difficult to keep a healthy team running when none of them can focus full-time on the thing because all of them have to support themselves with other jobs.
jensv 8y ago
Bruce Eckel had some ideas about a better model to fund open source projects. https://bruceeckel.github.io/2016/06/20/a-model-to-fund-open-source-projects/ https://bruceeckel.github.io/2016/06/20/a-model-to-fund-open...
shawnfratis 8y ago
I would not have a problem paying for software if what I was paying for didn't suck. Case in point: I have never been very happy with Win 10 since I got it, but in recent weeks it has become completely unusable, mostly because of their constant upgrades and behind-the-scenes processes that slow my machine down to a crawl. Out of frustration I wiped my drive and installed Ubuntu. Granted, Linux has it's share of problems but still works much better for my uses. So, one OS is paid and one isn't. Guess which? :/ My personal gripe is that it seems to me, when it comes to basic customer service, we the customers are on the bottom of the totem pole. Software companies spend more time worrying about how to reassure their shareholders than they do about making sure we have a usable, hassle-free product, and I've been seeing this trend getting worse in recent years. So until that thought-process changes these people will not get my money. As far as I'm concerned, at this point anyway, FOSS is the lesser of two evils.
- josteink 8y ago
  Ubuntu gives you a very clear option to pay for it when you download it. If it works for you and you want it to keep working, making a donation/payment may not be the worst idea.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Exactly, I always paid in some form to the distributions I had on my computers.
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago
  > So, one OS is paid and one isn't. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_(company): Canonical achieved a small operating profit of $281,000 in 2009, however until 2017 it struggled to maintain financial solvency and took a major financial hit from the development of Unity and Ubuntu Touch, leading to an operating loss of $21.6 Million for the fiscal year 2013.[19] The company reported an operating profit of $2 Million in 2017 after shutting down the Unity development team and laying off nearly 200 employees. The company now plans to focus on its server and professional support solutions, which have proved to be most profitable. By shifting resources away from Ubuntu Desktop and cutting less profitable products and services, Canonical plans to maintain solvency and achieve long-term profitability. "one isn't" (your words) to the extent that they had to switch focus away from the desktop OS to stay afloat. Much as people would like to pretend otherwise, the almighty dollar/euro/yen/etc. is still what matters most.
carapace 8y ago
I've always felt that charging money for software is dumb. I, as a programmer, think about saying to other people that they cannot use a piece of software that is already written unless they give me money, is a damn ridiculous idea. Software is wealth. If I had a gold coin that had the property that I could give it to you and still have it, and that both coins would increase in value when I did, and that you and I both can repeat the process endlessly, then there is no good reason not to give out the coin copies freely. One model of a computer is a set of automatic functions that each solve some human problem or need. We should all be working together to expand that library of functions as rapidly as responsibly possible. Attempting to extract value from the economy per-copy is retarding the whole system. It's a selfish local optimization. My basic argument is that we should use computers and software to globally maximize human happiness and contentment, and avoid local optima. tl;dr: "Don't be greedy." So how do you make money? First, if you want a lot of money, open a bank. Let's narrow the question: How do I make a living? House, picket fence, family, doge and qat, gotta have a car, etc... Let's put a ceiling on it, even if it's high. Let's also avoid discussion of financial meta-games, you save and invest, so if you avoid misfortune you're more or less going to be okay, right? So, how are programmers supposed to make enough money to live the dream if we don't charge per copy? First of all, the best way to do it since the dawn of the internet is simple: Get 10,000 fans who love you and sell them stuff. (Or just ask them to support you, like the Zig creator is doing.) This is a simple, easy, universally accessible method that's pretty much guaranteed to work. Second best way: get paid to solve new problems (one thing I am not saying is that you shouldn't charge people to work on a problem you otherwise wouldn't work on, that's fine. Charging people to use your solution after it's been developed is the stupid thing to do, IMO.) Third(-ish, this list isn't precise nor prescriptive) teach people. I think that learning the Turing Machine trick makes people think better, and learning to program obviously empowers them. (I remember the first time I used an iPad, I thought "this isn't a computer, it's a mall in your hand") The information revolution is still happening, and people need your help to navigate it and reap the full benefits. Fourth, here's the meta-most: You should be living in a very-low-overhead way right now anyway. We have to learn to live in harmony with Nature or we are about to tank our whole civilization. Go outside, it's June, where are all the bugs?
- decebalus1 8y ago
shawnfratis 8y ago
>Ubuntu gives you a very clear option to pay for it when you download it. If it works for you and you want it to keep working, making a donation/payment may not be the worst idea. Yes, agreed. However, one of the points I think I'm trying to make is that that paying for a piece of software doesn't automatically make it better quality. I think that a lot of people in the free software world do try and put as much effort into making a good product as the ones in the paid world. Even under the pressure of not knowing how they're going to pay their mortgage. :/
rolandas 8y ago
Great post. On the same note, paying for software has psychological benefits for the person as well, which I wrote about recently https://rolandas.blog/posts/id-rather-pay-for-software-than-get-it-for-free https://rolandas.blog/posts/id-rather-pay-for-software-than-...
microcolonel 8y ago
If more of the developers who work on the software I use had Patreons or similar, I would pay monthly. Until that day I'm happier with a lot of the free software that I can't even pay for, than I am with a lot of the software I could pay for.
Animats 8y ago
To name a few, I’m glad to use and pay for: Overcast, Feedblitz, Discourse, Zapier, Dropbox, Roon, WavePad, Bench, Nisus, Zoom, Slack, SuperDuper, Mailchimp, Hover, TypeExpander, Tidal. Those are services, not standalone software. (Tidal may be standalone, but it's from 1979.) It's not like people are still buying Walter Bright's C++ compiler.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  At least 3 of those are desktop software.
vslira 8y ago
Is there any license that makes software free (as in beer) for contributors/maintainers and paid for everyone else? This way it would be possible to alleviate the free riding problem while providing a mechanism to use software free of charge. Maybe this could work with networks of projects, so contributing to numpy would let you use scipy for free. Add exceptions to personal/non commercial use if necessary. Something like that
- arcturus17 8y ago
  At this point you're operating a propietary software company that offers a "contribute and get the software for free" perk. You need to manage access to your closed source code and decide what is a viable contribution, etc. Sounds to me like this would have the potential to be a PR and legal nightmare.
js8 8y ago
I was thinking about this recently, maybe FOSS isn't quite ideal for the developers. As long as nobody is compensated, it is very fair system. But if somebody gets compensated for their work, then if their work depends on other people's work for free, the other people not being compensated is not fair. For example, consider somebody producing Youtube videos using FOSS. They are compensated, yet the authors of the tools they use are not (necessarily). FOSS basically started as a radical revolt against copyright system, which is somewhat dysfunctional, but its purpose was to make compensation fair. But maybe a better copyright system would actually help. Say limit copyright to 5-10 years. The short term would remove the huge gap between doing copyrighted work and doing work for free, and make them more compatible with each other.
- ghaff 8y ago
  >FOSS basically started as a radical revolt against copyright system FOSS depends on the copyright system in order to operate. If you don't have rights to created works you have no rights to impose reciprocal obligations on downstream users.
  - js8 8y ago
    It kinda does, but it's an open question whether it's a requirement. In recent years, many programs became BSD-like licensed and it didn't impede the availability of their source code. Similarly, in the world of Minecraft, many mods started closed-source but free, and eventually became open-sourced, because it turned out to be beneficial on its own. I actually like the free software philosophy, but it might be that the copyleft clause is not required if there is enough rational self-interest. However, in the current copyright system (where the copyright lasts effectively forever), this self-interest commands to hoard the source code (for the duration of the copyright).
    - ghaff 8y ago
      There's a good argument that, given the success of the open source development model, permissive licenses are better because they put fewer roadblocks in the way of participation. And I tend to be in that camp. No argument about the problems of copyright terms though I'm not sure how relevant that is to software relative to software copyrightability generally.

186 points by gbugniot 8y ago

Most of the “software” mentioned in the post, are actually services (slack, zoom, tidal, etc). For many people, it is easier to accept to pay for a service rather than software. While I do use paid services, I usually “pay” (donate) for free and open source software. Why? It helps me get my work done, support is usually good, I set the price and I know that people who aren't as fortunate as I (being able to afford to buy software) can use it for free and get the same opportunities as me. :)

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
The marginal cost for software is zero, the marginal cost for services is non-zero. This puts a floor under the price. People don't accept that they have to pay, rather they are given no choice.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
  Right, mentioning Keynote and services like Dropbox (as done in the article) in the same way isn't quite right. Yes the marginal cost for another user on Keynote is zero but certainly not Dropbox or any other software as a service. If 2 people use Dropbox is may cost almost nothing but if thousands use it you either need a business model because costs could be significant or (like some of the big players) have another business group that subsidizes the running cost.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  Often.. but for a lot of software businesses, the difference between being software or software as service is a choice, and cost is often a minor implication of the choice.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

I see the use of OSS in government services as almost a moral imperative-but the first point seth makes is crippling this "you need money to write the software in the first place" Take voter management software - the preparation of polls, counting of results etc. all this software behind it is afaik propriety but used exclusively by the public sector - which seems mad, and even risky when we look at electronic balloting, but can one persuade any government to kickstart the process of building new? i cannot Edit: thinking of this, what chnage would a kickstarter project stand to build a base of oss government software? (I know things like GDS and 18F exist but they are not covering the full range of services - see http://oss4gov.org/manifesto http://oss4gov.org/manifesto

mikece 8y ago
The software might be free, but nobody acquires mission-critical software without a support agreement -- which is certainly not free -- unless they don't value staying employed. We might not like Diebold (or whatever name they go by now) but _someone_ has to be an accountable party for supporting electronic voting systems.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  free as in beer is irrelevant - free as in speech that i can read, check verify and is what matters - so i would envisage (and encourage) a network of "certified in using votermachine-oss" contractors that can be called upon or paid for, in a retainer fashion, and most importantly some means of priming the pump

ahati 8y ago

I believe corporate red tape one of reasons to not-pay for a software licence. If you download the trial or non commercial edition, works for you, you would never go through chain of approvals to buy a cheap software.Meare player is an example that you can think of. Araxis merge, Visual studio, Visio are some to name a few.

mikece 8y ago
Depends on where you work. I've been in shops where developers had a certain amount of money -- $500 or $1000 -- to buy whatever work-related tools they deemed to be helpful in getting their jobs done. Those tools could be software (Beyond Compare and ReSharper being popular ones) or hardware (monitors!) and up to that amount there were essentially no questions asked (the only caveat being if you spent on stuff that was not needed you risked ruining it for everyone else so you ran the risk of a getting a Code Red from the dev team if you wanted to spend wastefully). As much as companies spend on finding and keeping good developers, dropping $1k/each per year for things that make them happy is chump change.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

jarym 8y ago

I have experience selling to companies and I’ve found that even when they realise they need and want to pay for a piece of software they have absolutely no clue how to figure out what it’s worth. Consequently they engage in endless hardball negotiation and invite other suppliers to provide quotes (even when your offering uniquely meets all requirements). In the end the challenge is to get customers comfortable that they’re paying a fair price for what they’re getting. That however is much easier to say than to do.

dalbasal 8y ago
This is a great point. No one wants to be ripped off. Software basically can't be objectively priced. You might be selling £50k per seat software that competes with £50, or free. It sucks to be making that decision.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  >Software basically can't be objectively priced. // Can anything be objectively priced, how?
  - RandomCSGeek 8y ago
    I can buy apples at a somewhat objective price by comparing the price provided by other sellers in nearby stores. Also the price will be mostly affected by supply vs demand. OTOH, softwares prices can be affected by too many parameters. Then again, IT industry is a child when compared to say, mechanical or Civil industries.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Your first method just overprices/wrong-prices the whole market. I'd argue that supply-demand doesn't give fair pricing (which presumably is what's meant [in part] by objective), if you can make something very cheaply does that mean you objectively deserve to be very rich simply because you've got a corner on that market?
8y ago

open-source-ux 8y ago

Why is it so hard for developers to make a full-time living selling their open-source software? Are the available options stacked against them? Thousands of developers make money building products or services for clients using open source software. But what if you don't want to be a consultant and simply want to charge a business for using your open source product? The Free Software Foundation (FSF) says that you can sell your free software by charging for distribution (for example via CD-ROMs). Physical media made sense in an era of dial-up modems and low-bandwidth connections, but no-one can realistically charge for distribution today - not least when so many projects are hosted for free on GitHub. See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html So what are the alternatives? - There's the dual-licencing approach e.g. Red Hat. (Naturally doesn't work with permissive licences. Requires a strong copyleft licence like the GPL). - The open core approach e.g. GitLab. - There's also the option of charging for support only - I'm guessing this is an unattractive and unappealing option for many developers who'd much rather be building their product. - Or there's the Kickstarter or Patreon approach which simply isn't a stable, sustainable long-term solution. There have been some alternative licence approaches such as the Fair Source licence (fair.io). This is neither open source or closed source but allows developers to charge for their software. The large market for Wordpress plugins is an interesting case study. Wordpress is published under the GPL v2, but many Wordpress plugins are not open source. No one polices this, but those plugin developers are selling their software to businesses who are willing to pay for the features of those plugins. So who here in 2018 has made a success selling their open source software? Did you follow one of the models above? And who has struggled to make it work?

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Why is it so hard for developers to make a full-time living selling their open-source software? Do you really expect people to pay for something when they can get it for free? Making software open source means you are either selling something complementary (hardware, other software, services) or else begging for crumbs.
- mcny 8y ago
  I don't know much about these things and I'm making this up as we go but I wonder if we can use AGPL or a stronger version of AGPL. Basically, you pay for a subscription or everything on your servers that touches this software must be free and open source. Should work for researchers and students and there is a continued revenue stream. For example, require any software that talks to a rest API also be foss. With more people paying, the subscription can slowly become cheaper and more accessible. Thoughts?

mherrmann 8y ago

As an indie dev of desktop software, I have grown tired of complaints that my products aren't free as in speech and beer. I now reply to such criticism by linking to this post: https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/ https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Interesting that you got downvotes for a statement like this on a forum supposedly rooted in the business of software.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Because most want to get paid, not to pay for the tools they use.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Exactly, there is some cognitive dissonance going on.
    - jacobush 8y ago
      It's because obviously the shit I need to get my shit done should be open source or free by now, sheesh it's 2018 not in the dark ages however of course the serious business need I am fulfilling is novel and very deserving of a good chunk of cash.
      - teddyh 8y ago
        To put it more concisely: Everybody wants to commoditize their complements.
- gkya 8y ago
  The content of the link is FUD. He portrays FOSS as if it was like the exploitation schemes the ad supported free stuff, saying: "But in a world where everything is free, we are the product." I did downvote him, although I'd not disagree with him (or anyone else) preferring to produce closed-source software. He could've justified himself w/o telling lies about the other side.

nebulous1 8y ago

Even Stallman doesn't have anything against paying for software. Seth's point 1 is reasonable. Point 2 is about paying for support, not paying for the software itself. Point 3 is no point at all, it's just rephrasing point 1 (ie marketing is about the business, not the software).

tehabe 8y ago

I think I have never read a piece in which the word "single-minded" is used in a positive way. Mostly people refer to it as a bad thing. Also I don't think that single-mindness really helps developing good software people want to use. Because you already have to think about two things here.

justinclift 8y ago
Hmmm, people can be "single minded" on delivering a good experience for end users. Our project (DB Browser for SQLite) definitely has developers that are. :)

xstartup 8y ago

There are many areas where you can create opensource projects, for example, SaaS subscription management platform with plenty of payment, tax, fraud detection plugins. Last time I heard there are so many SaaS indie developers forced to add WHMCS, amember pro or Woocomerce/Shopify for collecting payments using crypto, stripe, and PayPal. I mean, these platforms aren't for SaaS! Then offer a hosted version which implements high availability, load balancing, robust failproof backups. Most developers start their projects in areas which are unlikely to pay off, I don't blame them for this as it's something they find interesting but we shouldn't expect the market to pay for our interest.

paulcole 8y ago

> I like being the customer (as opposed to a social network, where I’m the product). Interesting concept. Can anyone expound on what he means by this?

IncRnd 8y ago
In a "free service" the service company often makes money by selling ad space to third parties for displaying to users or by selling user information to third parties. In each of these models, the user of the service, who isn't paying money, is actually the product not the customer. Yet, many users believe that these free services are being run for their benefit free-of-charge, which is clearly a bad assumption to make.

afarrell 8y ago

One of the reasons that I switched from Linx to OSX was so that I could pay for more of my software. Why? Because then I more of the software I used could be maintained by someone who had the time to dig into bugs and UI problems and to fix them. But in Linux, couldn't I just edit the source myself? Realistically, no. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to source-dive in a totally new project in a language I never use, especially without someone willing to give me a walkthrough of the architecture and fundamental models of the program. It is waaaay more efficient for these to be fixed by an engineer working not in their spare time, but as their full-time job. A developer targeting OSX knows they have an audience of people willing to pay him money so he can spend his whole day doing usability tests and his evening watching a little league game. I do miss strace though.

wazoox 8y ago
I use Linux and most free software projects allow donations. I even donated to projects I don't actually use, like FreeBSD. I donated money to many free software projects, Ardour, Mozilla, LibreOffice, OpenBSD, etc. This is clearly a false dichotomy.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Try to pay for a mortgage with donations.
  - wazoox 8y ago
    99% of paid apps developers can't make end meet anyway. Another false dichotomy. Creating an app and sticking a price on it isn't a business model any more than creating an app and asking for donations. Both are almost certain failure. But people constantly hear about this guy or that company that made some huge success and became rich; nobody talks about the millions who failed and whose apps were simply forgotten. Oh, and BTW, the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Greenpeace and many other NGOs live, AFAIK, mostly on donations. So that definitely can pay the bills, but the same reasoning applies: it's only true for a small minority, and you can't count on it.

mAEStro-paNDa 8y ago

Although the author failed to mention, the comments here pointed out the distinction between software from a little guy innovator and a huge corporation. That content was glossed over in the article, but it seems to be a very important part of the conversation about free/paid software. Not only that, but there's an underlying assumption here that some person or company has to receive a wage or profit for a software to be maintained or repaired, which is simply not true.

afarrell 8y ago
> there's an underlying assumption here that some person or company has to receive a wage or profit for a software to be maintained or repaired, which is simply not true. Indeed, one can have unpaid maintainers. But it is more difficult to keep a healthy team running when none of them can focus full-time on the thing because all of them have to support themselves with other jobs.

jensv 8y ago

Bruce Eckel had some ideas about a better model to fund open source projects. https://bruceeckel.github.io/2016/06/20/a-model-to-fund-open-source-projects/ https://bruceeckel.github.io/2016/06/20/a-model-to-fund-open...

shawnfratis 8y ago

I would not have a problem paying for software if what I was paying for didn't suck. Case in point: I have never been very happy with Win 10 since I got it, but in recent weeks it has become completely unusable, mostly because of their constant upgrades and behind-the-scenes processes that slow my machine down to a crawl. Out of frustration I wiped my drive and installed Ubuntu. Granted, Linux has it's share of problems but still works much better for my uses. So, one OS is paid and one isn't. Guess which? :/ My personal gripe is that it seems to me, when it comes to basic customer service, we the customers are on the bottom of the totem pole. Software companies spend more time worrying about how to reassure their shareholders than they do about making sure we have a usable, hassle-free product, and I've been seeing this trend getting worse in recent years. So until that thought-process changes these people will not get my money. As far as I'm concerned, at this point anyway, FOSS is the lesser of two evils.

josteink 8y ago
Ubuntu gives you a very clear option to pay for it when you download it. If it works for you and you want it to keep working, making a donation/payment may not be the worst idea.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Exactly, I always paid in some form to the distributions I had on my computers.
ThrowawayR2 8y ago
> So, one OS is paid and one isn't. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_(company): Canonical achieved a small operating profit of $281,000 in 2009, however until 2017 it struggled to maintain financial solvency and took a major financial hit from the development of Unity and Ubuntu Touch, leading to an operating loss of $21.6 Million for the fiscal year 2013.[19] The company reported an operating profit of $2 Million in 2017 after shutting down the Unity development team and laying off nearly 200 employees. The company now plans to focus on its server and professional support solutions, which have proved to be most profitable. By shifting resources away from Ubuntu Desktop and cutting less profitable products and services, Canonical plans to maintain solvency and achieve long-term profitability. "one isn't" (your words) to the extent that they had to switch focus away from the desktop OS to stay afloat. Much as people would like to pretend otherwise, the almighty dollar/euro/yen/etc. is still what matters most.

carapace 8y ago

I've always felt that charging money for software is dumb. I, as a programmer, think about saying to other people that they cannot use a piece of software that is already written unless they give me money, is a damn ridiculous idea. Software is wealth. If I had a gold coin that had the property that I could give it to you and still have it, and that both coins would increase in value when I did, and that you and I both can repeat the process endlessly, then there is no good reason not to give out the coin copies freely. One model of a computer is a set of automatic functions that each solve some human problem or need. We should all be working together to expand that library of functions as rapidly as responsibly possible. Attempting to extract value from the economy per-copy is retarding the whole system. It's a selfish local optimization. My basic argument is that we should use computers and software to globally maximize human happiness and contentment, and avoid local optima. tl;dr: "Don't be greedy." So how do you make money? First, if you want a lot of money, open a bank. Let's narrow the question: How do I make a living? House, picket fence, family, doge and qat, gotta have a car, etc... Let's put a ceiling on it, even if it's high. Let's also avoid discussion of financial meta-games, you save and invest, so if you avoid misfortune you're more or less going to be okay, right? So, how are programmers supposed to make enough money to live the dream if we don't charge per copy? First of all, the best way to do it since the dawn of the internet is simple: Get 10,000 fans who love you and sell them stuff. (Or just ask them to support you, like the Zig creator is doing.) This is a simple, easy, universally accessible method that's pretty much guaranteed to work. Second best way: get paid to solve new problems (one thing I am not saying is that you shouldn't charge people to work on a problem you otherwise wouldn't work on, that's fine. Charging people to use your solution after it's been developed is the stupid thing to do, IMO.) Third(-ish, this list isn't precise nor prescriptive) teach people. I think that learning the Turing Machine trick makes people think better, and learning to program obviously empowers them. (I remember the first time I used an iPad, I thought "this isn't a computer, it's a mall in your hand") The information revolution is still happening, and people need your help to navigate it and reap the full benefits. Fourth, here's the meta-most: You should be living in a very-low-overhead way right now anyway. We have to learn to live in harmony with Nature or we are about to tank our whole civilization. Go outside, it's June, where are all the bugs?

decebalus1 8y ago

shawnfratis 8y ago

>Ubuntu gives you a very clear option to pay for it when you download it. If it works for you and you want it to keep working, making a donation/payment may not be the worst idea. Yes, agreed. However, one of the points I think I'm trying to make is that that paying for a piece of software doesn't automatically make it better quality. I think that a lot of people in the free software world do try and put as much effort into making a good product as the ones in the paid world. Even under the pressure of not knowing how they're going to pay their mortgage. :/

rolandas 8y ago

Great post. On the same note, paying for software has psychological benefits for the person as well, which I wrote about recently https://rolandas.blog/posts/id-rather-pay-for-software-than-get-it-for-free https://rolandas.blog/posts/id-rather-pay-for-software-than-...

microcolonel 8y ago

If more of the developers who work on the software I use had Patreons or similar, I would pay monthly. Until that day I'm happier with a lot of the free software that I can't even pay for, than I am with a lot of the software I could pay for.

Animats 8y ago

To name a few, I’m glad to use and pay for: Overcast, Feedblitz, Discourse, Zapier, Dropbox, Roon, WavePad, Bench, Nisus, Zoom, Slack, SuperDuper, Mailchimp, Hover, TypeExpander, Tidal. Those are services, not standalone software. (Tidal may be standalone, but it's from 1979.) It's not like people are still buying Walter Bright's C++ compiler.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago
At least 3 of those are desktop software.

vslira 8y ago

Is there any license that makes software free (as in beer) for contributors/maintainers and paid for everyone else? This way it would be possible to alleviate the free riding problem while providing a mechanism to use software free of charge. Maybe this could work with networks of projects, so contributing to numpy would let you use scipy for free. Add exceptions to personal/non commercial use if necessary. Something like that

arcturus17 8y ago
At this point you're operating a propietary software company that offers a "contribute and get the software for free" perk. You need to manage access to your closed source code and decide what is a viable contribution, etc. Sounds to me like this would have the potential to be a PR and legal nightmare.

js8 8y ago

I was thinking about this recently, maybe FOSS isn't quite ideal for the developers. As long as nobody is compensated, it is very fair system. But if somebody gets compensated for their work, then if their work depends on other people's work for free, the other people not being compensated is not fair. For example, consider somebody producing Youtube videos using FOSS. They are compensated, yet the authors of the tools they use are not (necessarily). FOSS basically started as a radical revolt against copyright system, which is somewhat dysfunctional, but its purpose was to make compensation fair. But maybe a better copyright system would actually help. Say limit copyright to 5-10 years. The short term would remove the huge gap between doing copyrighted work and doing work for free, and make them more compatible with each other.

ghaff 8y ago
>FOSS basically started as a radical revolt against copyright system FOSS depends on the copyright system in order to operate. If you don't have rights to created works you have no rights to impose reciprocal obligations on downstream users.
- js8 8y ago
  It kinda does, but it's an open question whether it's a requirement. In recent years, many programs became BSD-like licensed and it didn't impede the availability of their source code. Similarly, in the world of Minecraft, many mods started closed-source but free, and eventually became open-sourced, because it turned out to be beneficial on its own. I actually like the free software philosophy, but it might be that the copyleft clause is not required if there is enough rational self-interest. However, in the current copyright system (where the copyright lasts effectively forever), this self-interest commands to hoard the source code (for the duration of the copyright).
  - ghaff 8y ago
    There's a good argument that, given the success of the open source development model, permissive licenses are better because they put fewer roadblocks in the way of participation. And I tend to be in that camp. No argument about the problems of copyright terms though I'm not sure how relevant that is to software relative to software copyrightability generally.