6 ms·

Why doesn't anyone try to simply sell free software? You want me to give you a copy of the software? Pay for it. And here's a gratis sample to see what could g

Why doesn't anyone try to simply sell free software? You want me to give you a copy of the software? Pay for it. And here's a gratis sample to see what could get, but it doesn't have all of the features I wrote for it. You want access to login to the web platform? Pay for it. You want the source code for it, so you can modify it and/or redistribute it? Also pay for it. The GPL has explicit provisions for allowing access to the source code only if you pay, for example. Surely some money is to be made this way. Maybe not enough to create a giant monopoly that completely dominates the market, but enough to make a living. Not everything has to be a winner-takes-all unicorn. If we are to believe that the copying of non-free software that happens right now happens and companies are still profitable, surely explicitly allowing that copying wouldn't make it any less profitable?

TylerE 8y ago
It's been tried. From scams (https://proflightsimulator.com/ https://proflightsimulator.com/ - rebranding of OSS FlightGear) to just people compiling and released the source (RHEL -> CentOS).
- jordigh 8y ago
  But why is that a scam? Redistributing for profit is a right explicitly granted by all FOSS licenses. This is like when people were selling Firefox CDs: https://web.archive.org/web/20060511105535/http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2051196,00.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060511105535/http://business.t...
  - TylerE 8y ago
    Because they are misrepresenting what you're getting, promising features that aren't there, even showing screenshots from OTHER simulators and claiming them as their own. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/09/dont-buy-proflightsimulator/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/09/dont-buy-proflig...
  - avinium 8y ago
    I've come across a couple of websites selling LibreOffice rebranded. While I know it's permissible, it does leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I sort of feel like there should be a banner on the frontpage acknowledging it.
  - mindslight 8y ago
    It's not that it's against the license, but that the price clearly does not reflect the value that has been added. If the purchaser were slightly better informed, the sale would never happen. If you're selling a Firefox CD for $5, then the price ostensibly covers the duplication/distribution/convenience. If you're selling that CD for $60, then the buyer likely believes they're paying for the software itself. And while markets rely on some level of arbitrage, the magnitude is what makes it a "scam".
nordsieck 8y ago
> Why doesn't anyone try to simply sell free software? One word. Centos. It's easy to devalue most of the engineering work put into a premium distro. Businesses might still pay for it for mission critical stuff, but that's not enough volume to run a business on. > You want the source code for it, so you can modify it and/or redistribute it? Also pay for it. The GPL has explicit provisions for allowing access to the source code only if you pay, for example. This isn't going to work. 1. You aren't going to get much money. From the GPL (3.b): > for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution 2. Only one person has to pay for the source. Once the source is out, other people can just get a copy of the copy.
- jordigh 8y ago
  And how is this economically different from piracy, which mostly goes unprosecuted? Also, you've cherry-picked the GPL. It talks about "equivalent access", i.e. you can charge as much for the source as what you charged for the binary. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDow...
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >And how is this economically different from piracy, which mostly goes unprotected? That this is not even illegal at all. And piracy in business settings is much more seriously and effectively prosecuted. Pirating at an enterprise is nothing like the free-for-all of pirating music or movies at home.
- fuller00 8y ago
  Haha you stole the words from my mouth. The fact that CentOS exists undermines all of Redhat's business model. Honestly, the future of Open source software is probably going to be like Sqlite, in the best case scenario: 1. The core of the software is open source 2. Useful extras like unit tests and documentation from developer might only be available to paying customers. There is no other way to make money from OSS otherwise and please don't bring up consulting. It doesn't scaleup and to make money you're incentivized to keep making your software more complex, see a nearby comment on Elastic admitting that.
coldtea 8y ago
>Why doesn't anyone try to simply sell free software? Because free software licenses mean anybody that buys the software and code, gets to redistribute it for free if they want to.
- lotyrin 8y ago
  You're cornered into a kickstarter-esque model of selling one big expensive copy to "everyone" -- and maybe cathedral style development where you do the same thing over and over again on some release cycle.
MertsA 8y ago
>The GPL has explicit provisions for allowing access to the source code only if you pay, for example. This is plainly untrue. The GPL allows you to charge a nominal fee for distributing the source code, so you could charge $5 for the costs of burning a CD and mailing it. It doesn't let you restrict that source code afterwards though. All it takes is a single customer paying $5 for a CD and now they can freely distribute that source code as much as they want to. The provision in the GPL is not there to allow people to profit from selling the source code, it's there to compensate for just the costs associated with sending them a copy. Those costs are never going to be anything substantial.
- jordigh 8y ago
  Yes, if you choose to distribute by CDs (lol who does that anymore) but it also allows for "equivalent access". You're allowed to charge for downloading the source code as much as you originally charged for the binary: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDow...
  - MertsA 8y ago
    I'm not as familiar with the GPLv3 but for v2 it's very clear that you're only allowed to charge what it cost you to provide the source code redistribution. Section 3 subsection b makes this very clear. > Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; I believe that "equivalent access" is intended to mean the more restrictive interpretation that you're not allowed to charge a fee for downloading the source code without also charging an additional fee for providing the binary to customers that already have a license. I.E. If you provide binaries for free on your website you can't pull a Mikrotik and demand that any requests for the source must be mailed in to an address in Latvia along with $50 (or something like that) for them to mail you a CD a month later while at the same time have binaries available on your website for free. The spirit of that clause has always been that the distributor should not put some onerous burden on anyone requesting access to the source code. They can charge what it takes them to provide the service for GPLv2 and from what I can tell for GPLv3 it's limited to what they charge for binaries.
pjmlp 8y ago
It just plain doesn't work. Our startup tried a bit to explore this idea during the .COM wave, but it just doesn't work out as most business look at open source as a legal way of doing piracy. I know it isn't the same, I am just oversimplifying here, given how many companies leech FOSS projects. So the solution ends up being dual licenses, hiding the key features behind server walls, or just go commercial and forget the whole FOSS ideals. This is specially bad in the consumer software, as this is a domain where no one is willing to pay for services, trainings or books. And the few that are willing to do so, don't do it in a sustainable volume.
- jordigh 8y ago
  What about selling to consumers, not to businesses? Couldn't you do gamedev this way? Given the big indie market as well as the modding community, I'm surprised it's not done more often.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Consumers even less, as noted on my last paragraph.
  - jungler 8y ago
    In the consumer space it touches a number of fronts. When you have a game people want to mod, you end up with a dev/community line of interaction where someone ends up with the most popular mod/tool/forum/etc. and suddenly gains the power to wield mobs of players who will be upset if "their" mod breaks. It can quickly become a politicized scenario - who really "owns" the game? Does the modmaker get money? If the modmakers were making money, can the dev claim benefit? And so on. Even if the terms and agreements say one thing, the court of public opinion will say something else. Association with random third parties is risky and can damage a brand. Basically, the more you make ongoing support and "community leadership" part of your business model, the more room there is for the community to interfere with business goals and push for self-governance. This leads most game devs down the path of controlling everything and dictating terms: their game, their codebase, their servers, their account system, their official tournaments, etc. They often do things that make for a worse experience overall in the process, but it lets them set their own targets. With smaller developers there's more of an issue of not having the resources to support a community properly, and often stepping into success with no preparation for adopting any kind of collaborative governance. In those cases the community just generally overwhelms the dev and does whatever they want, fragmenting the game and creating various secondary power struggles in the process. It's all fairly vicious stuff. When you have something popular, everyone will look for an angle of personal profit, and while in other media the rules around derivative work are mostly known and straightforward, there are many original ways to create derivatives of games that have had little legal testing. Open sourcing is just a way of leaning toward a derivatives-encouraged stance, but it only describes part of the whole work(assets and any "live data" also count).
ryacko 8y ago
Never noticed that provision in the GPL. If that was advertised more, a lot more companies would use it, although it would be counteracted by crowdfunding campaigns to distribute source code. It’s difficult to get by, what with rising rents and prices. The only way to get around the bottleneck of needing investors would be to live a quasi-monastic life with as little as possible until a minimum viable product is developed.
mikekchar 8y ago
I've posted this before, but this game is completely free software (in fact it's in the public domain!): http://onehouronelife.com/ http://onehouronelife.com/ The author does just as you say (and even charges a pretty hefty $20 per copy). Admittedly it's a multi-player game and you can't get access to the main servers without paying, but you can easily run your own server. I think the reality is that most people are perfectly fine with paying for software if you actually ask for money. The people that won't pay, often won't pay anyway. They only real downside to this is that you can't control competition who may decide to undercut you. For example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wereviz.evolution https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wereviz.ev... In this case, the undercutting group have the complete support of the original author (who is uninteresting in building a mobile version). However, there is also nothing stopping someone from competing directly in his target market except that most people are decent. Eventually it is bound to happen, though, if it were popular/lucrative enough. I think the main thing that the success of Red Hat shows is that you can still build a business with that kind of competition. The key, though, is that your business needs to be better than your competition. If you charge more, then there needs to be some value that drives people to your business rather than your competitors (or just getting it for free). How you find that value is how you build the viable business. I've found that most business people are uninteresting in this kind of work. They would rather be sales oriented rather than solution oriented. They have a product. Nobody else has that product. They try to make sure you want the product and since they have complete control, they can get you to pay for it. Giving up that control gives up their most powerful tool and transforms their job into something they don't actually want to do.
- profalseidol 8y ago
  The goal however is: enough to make a living I wonder if the author of the game will still get a decent living despite the freeloaders. Seems to me, setting up some kind of in-game cosmetic shop (and make it like Fortnite[0]) will surely get loyal fans put in the support. [0] http://www.wisecrack.co/shows/wisecrackedition/fortnite/ http://www.wisecrack.co/shows/wisecrackedition/fortnite/ But looking at the website, it looks like it's gotten popular enough to support a decent living for years to come.

TylerE 8y ago

It's been tried. From scams (https://proflightsimulator.com/ https://proflightsimulator.com/ - rebranding of OSS FlightGear) to just people compiling and released the source (RHEL -> CentOS).

jordigh 8y ago
But why is that a scam? Redistributing for profit is a right explicitly granted by all FOSS licenses. This is like when people were selling Firefox CDs: https://web.archive.org/web/20060511105535/http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2051196,00.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060511105535/http://business.t...
- TylerE 8y ago
  Because they are misrepresenting what you're getting, promising features that aren't there, even showing screenshots from OTHER simulators and claiming them as their own. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/09/dont-buy-proflightsimulator/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/09/dont-buy-proflig...
- avinium 8y ago
  I've come across a couple of websites selling LibreOffice rebranded. While I know it's permissible, it does leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I sort of feel like there should be a banner on the frontpage acknowledging it.
- mindslight 8y ago
  It's not that it's against the license, but that the price clearly does not reflect the value that has been added. If the purchaser were slightly better informed, the sale would never happen. If you're selling a Firefox CD for $5, then the price ostensibly covers the duplication/distribution/convenience. If you're selling that CD for $60, then the buyer likely believes they're paying for the software itself. And while markets rely on some level of arbitrage, the magnitude is what makes it a "scam".

nordsieck 8y ago

> Why doesn't anyone try to simply sell free software? One word. Centos. It's easy to devalue most of the engineering work put into a premium distro. Businesses might still pay for it for mission critical stuff, but that's not enough volume to run a business on. > You want the source code for it, so you can modify it and/or redistribute it? Also pay for it. The GPL has explicit provisions for allowing access to the source code only if you pay, for example. This isn't going to work. 1. You aren't going to get much money. From the GPL (3.b): > for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution 2. Only one person has to pay for the source. Once the source is out, other people can just get a copy of the copy.

jordigh 8y ago
And how is this economically different from piracy, which mostly goes unprosecuted? Also, you've cherry-picked the GPL. It talks about "equivalent access", i.e. you can charge as much for the source as what you charged for the binary. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDow...
- coldtea 8y ago
  >And how is this economically different from piracy, which mostly goes unprotected? That this is not even illegal at all. And piracy in business settings is much more seriously and effectively prosecuted. Pirating at an enterprise is nothing like the free-for-all of pirating music or movies at home.
fuller00 8y ago
Haha you stole the words from my mouth. The fact that CentOS exists undermines all of Redhat's business model. Honestly, the future of Open source software is probably going to be like Sqlite, in the best case scenario: 1. The core of the software is open source 2. Useful extras like unit tests and documentation from developer might only be available to paying customers. There is no other way to make money from OSS otherwise and please don't bring up consulting. It doesn't scaleup and to make money you're incentivized to keep making your software more complex, see a nearby comment on Elastic admitting that.

coldtea 8y ago

>Why doesn't anyone try to simply sell free software? Because free software licenses mean anybody that buys the software and code, gets to redistribute it for free if they want to.

lotyrin 8y ago
You're cornered into a kickstarter-esque model of selling one big expensive copy to "everyone" -- and maybe cathedral style development where you do the same thing over and over again on some release cycle.

MertsA 8y ago

>The GPL has explicit provisions for allowing access to the source code only if you pay, for example. This is plainly untrue. The GPL allows you to charge a nominal fee for distributing the source code, so you could charge $5 for the costs of burning a CD and mailing it. It doesn't let you restrict that source code afterwards though. All it takes is a single customer paying $5 for a CD and now they can freely distribute that source code as much as they want to. The provision in the GPL is not there to allow people to profit from selling the source code, it's there to compensate for just the costs associated with sending them a copy. Those costs are never going to be anything substantial.

jordigh 8y ago
Yes, if you choose to distribute by CDs (lol who does that anymore) but it also allows for "equivalent access". You're allowed to charge for downloading the source code as much as you originally charged for the binary: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDow...
- MertsA 8y ago
  I'm not as familiar with the GPLv3 but for v2 it's very clear that you're only allowed to charge what it cost you to provide the source code redistribution. Section 3 subsection b makes this very clear. > Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; I believe that "equivalent access" is intended to mean the more restrictive interpretation that you're not allowed to charge a fee for downloading the source code without also charging an additional fee for providing the binary to customers that already have a license. I.E. If you provide binaries for free on your website you can't pull a Mikrotik and demand that any requests for the source must be mailed in to an address in Latvia along with $50 (or something like that) for them to mail you a CD a month later while at the same time have binaries available on your website for free. The spirit of that clause has always been that the distributor should not put some onerous burden on anyone requesting access to the source code. They can charge what it takes them to provide the service for GPLv2 and from what I can tell for GPLv3 it's limited to what they charge for binaries.

pjmlp 8y ago

It just plain doesn't work. Our startup tried a bit to explore this idea during the .COM wave, but it just doesn't work out as most business look at open source as a legal way of doing piracy. I know it isn't the same, I am just oversimplifying here, given how many companies leech FOSS projects. So the solution ends up being dual licenses, hiding the key features behind server walls, or just go commercial and forget the whole FOSS ideals. This is specially bad in the consumer software, as this is a domain where no one is willing to pay for services, trainings or books. And the few that are willing to do so, don't do it in a sustainable volume.

jordigh 8y ago
What about selling to consumers, not to businesses? Couldn't you do gamedev this way? Given the big indie market as well as the modding community, I'm surprised it's not done more often.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Consumers even less, as noted on my last paragraph.
- jungler 8y ago
  In the consumer space it touches a number of fronts. When you have a game people want to mod, you end up with a dev/community line of interaction where someone ends up with the most popular mod/tool/forum/etc. and suddenly gains the power to wield mobs of players who will be upset if "their" mod breaks. It can quickly become a politicized scenario - who really "owns" the game? Does the modmaker get money? If the modmakers were making money, can the dev claim benefit? And so on. Even if the terms and agreements say one thing, the court of public opinion will say something else. Association with random third parties is risky and can damage a brand. Basically, the more you make ongoing support and "community leadership" part of your business model, the more room there is for the community to interfere with business goals and push for self-governance. This leads most game devs down the path of controlling everything and dictating terms: their game, their codebase, their servers, their account system, their official tournaments, etc. They often do things that make for a worse experience overall in the process, but it lets them set their own targets. With smaller developers there's more of an issue of not having the resources to support a community properly, and often stepping into success with no preparation for adopting any kind of collaborative governance. In those cases the community just generally overwhelms the dev and does whatever they want, fragmenting the game and creating various secondary power struggles in the process. It's all fairly vicious stuff. When you have something popular, everyone will look for an angle of personal profit, and while in other media the rules around derivative work are mostly known and straightforward, there are many original ways to create derivatives of games that have had little legal testing. Open sourcing is just a way of leaning toward a derivatives-encouraged stance, but it only describes part of the whole work(assets and any "live data" also count).

ryacko 8y ago

Never noticed that provision in the GPL. If that was advertised more, a lot more companies would use it, although it would be counteracted by crowdfunding campaigns to distribute source code. It’s difficult to get by, what with rising rents and prices. The only way to get around the bottleneck of needing investors would be to live a quasi-monastic life with as little as possible until a minimum viable product is developed.

mikekchar 8y ago

I've posted this before, but this game is completely free software (in fact it's in the public domain!): http://onehouronelife.com/ http://onehouronelife.com/ The author does just as you say (and even charges a pretty hefty $20 per copy). Admittedly it's a multi-player game and you can't get access to the main servers without paying, but you can easily run your own server. I think the reality is that most people are perfectly fine with paying for software if you actually ask for money. The people that won't pay, often won't pay anyway. They only real downside to this is that you can't control competition who may decide to undercut you. For example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wereviz.evolution https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wereviz.ev... In this case, the undercutting group have the complete support of the original author (who is uninteresting in building a mobile version). However, there is also nothing stopping someone from competing directly in his target market except that most people are decent. Eventually it is bound to happen, though, if it were popular/lucrative enough. I think the main thing that the success of Red Hat shows is that you can still build a business with that kind of competition. The key, though, is that your business needs to be better than your competition. If you charge more, then there needs to be some value that drives people to your business rather than your competitors (or just getting it for free). How you find that value is how you build the viable business. I've found that most business people are uninteresting in this kind of work. They would rather be sales oriented rather than solution oriented. They have a product. Nobody else has that product. They try to make sure you want the product and since they have complete control, they can get you to pay for it. Giving up that control gives up their most powerful tool and transforms their job into something they don't actually want to do.

profalseidol 8y ago
The goal however is: enough to make a living I wonder if the author of the game will still get a decent living despite the freeloaders. Seems to me, setting up some kind of in-game cosmetic shop (and make it like Fortnite[0]) will surely get loyal fans put in the support. [0] http://www.wisecrack.co/shows/wisecrackedition/fortnite/ http://www.wisecrack.co/shows/wisecrackedition/fortnite/ But looking at the website, it looks like it's gotten popular enough to support a decent living for years to come.