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If you are a software developer and you want to make money, sell your software. If you want give away your software for free, do that. Giving away software fo

If you are a software developer and you want to make money, sell your software. If you want give away your software for free, do that. Giving away software for free and then using adware to make up the difference is something else entirely. If someone wants to make money with developing software, they have many many ways of doing that. Framing this as poor starving software developers getting the shaft by for-profit companies is a huge mis-representation of the situation. No one is chained to their desk and forced to produce NPM packages.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Indeed. In particular, using a MIT or BSD license is a choice, and one that comes with forgoing expectation of profits, in exchange for boost in chances of adoption. Want to make money and open source software? Try GPL and dual-licensing.
mLuby 7y ago
1. Sell 2. Gratis. 3. Gratis; donations welcome. #3 is barely adware. Sometimes people are extra appreciative of someone's work and want to express that through action; this just tells them how. On a personal level, I have no issue with an OSS author asking for donations. I draw the line at a company doing so. (An individual soliciting donations for something unrelated, like vim's "Help poor children in Uganda!" insert, isn't my favorite.)
CJefferson 7y ago
Why not switch that around (honest question)? If you are a software developer and you want software without adverts, pay for it. If you want software for free, you accept whatever the author of that software chooses to do to pay their bills.
- wvenable 7y ago
  Software that has ads is no longer free (gratis). You're just paying for it with annoyance and intrusion instead of money. And I think the collective opinion here is that we'd rather go without that software than to pay for it that way. In other words, we won't accept those terms and we won't use that software.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ken 7y ago
    How did you arrive at that "collective opinion"? Google and Facebook still seem to be doing OK. Even limited to developers, StackOverflow is being used as much as ever.
    - wvenable 7y ago
      I meant in this particular case. People accept that consumer products like Google and Facebook are funded by advertising. We are talking about Free Software, libraries, and advertisements in the console. I think the collective opinion is that developers would rather not use that package than be subjected to ads in their console.
      - CJefferson 7y ago
        Well then that's easily solved. People who don't want ads, don't use the software.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ken 7y ago
In other words, don't do what Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, or Yahoo did. I appreciate the sentiment (and it's what I do with my own hilariously unsuccessful software), but you can't walk into a room full of data-driven aspiring entrepreneurs and tell them to do exactly what the market has shown it doesn't want, even though that would be better for all of us.
- wvenable 7y ago
  None of these companies make money from Free Software. They might use Free Software but the majority of those companies run proprietary software as a service. Data-driven aspiring entrepreneurs would notice that companies attempting to create and sell distributed free software haven't historically done so well. Putting ads in free software doesn't make it analogous to the business of Google and Facebook.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Building a particular thing using a set of tools is not the same as infecting a set of tools with a thing. More to the point: by injecting advertising directly into packages distributed through a package repository and/or a specific toolset / toolchain / language, the parties injecting the advertising are exploiting and mining the accrued trust of that project, toolchain, and/or language, for personal gain. It's a tragedy-of-the-commons effect: socialised costs (building of the larger toolchain), privatised benefits (ads revenue). The long-term consequence will be a very-well-deserved shunning of the toolchain by others. A cost largely born by the vast majority not acting antisocially.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Indeed. In particular, using a MIT or BSD license is a choice, and one that comes with forgoing expectation of profits, in exchange for boost in chances of adoption. Want to make money and open source software? Try GPL and dual-licensing.

mLuby 7y ago

1. Sell 2. Gratis. 3. Gratis; donations welcome. #3 is barely adware. Sometimes people are extra appreciative of someone's work and want to express that through action; this just tells them how. On a personal level, I have no issue with an OSS author asking for donations. I draw the line at a company doing so. (An individual soliciting donations for something unrelated, like vim's "Help poor children in Uganda!" insert, isn't my favorite.)

CJefferson 7y ago

Why not switch that around (honest question)? If you are a software developer and you want software without adverts, pay for it. If you want software for free, you accept whatever the author of that software chooses to do to pay their bills.

wvenable 7y ago
Software that has ads is no longer free (gratis). You're just paying for it with annoyance and intrusion instead of money. And I think the collective opinion here is that we'd rather go without that software than to pay for it that way. In other words, we won't accept those terms and we won't use that software.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ken 7y ago
  How did you arrive at that "collective opinion"? Google and Facebook still seem to be doing OK. Even limited to developers, StackOverflow is being used as much as ever.
  - wvenable 7y ago
    I meant in this particular case. People accept that consumer products like Google and Facebook are funded by advertising. We are talking about Free Software, libraries, and advertisements in the console. I think the collective opinion is that developers would rather not use that package than be subjected to ads in their console.
    - CJefferson 7y ago
      Well then that's easily solved. People who don't want ads, don't use the software.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ken 7y ago

In other words, don't do what Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, or Yahoo did. I appreciate the sentiment (and it's what I do with my own hilariously unsuccessful software), but you can't walk into a room full of data-driven aspiring entrepreneurs and tell them to do exactly what the market has shown it doesn't want, even though that would be better for all of us.

wvenable 7y ago
None of these companies make money from Free Software. They might use Free Software but the majority of those companies run proprietary software as a service. Data-driven aspiring entrepreneurs would notice that companies attempting to create and sell distributed free software haven't historically done so well. Putting ads in free software doesn't make it analogous to the business of Google and Facebook.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Building a particular thing using a set of tools is not the same as infecting a set of tools with a thing. More to the point: by injecting advertising directly into packages distributed through a package repository and/or a specific toolset / toolchain / language, the parties injecting the advertising are exploiting and mining the accrued trust of that project, toolchain, and/or language, for personal gain. It's a tragedy-of-the-commons effect: socialised costs (building of the larger toolchain), privatised benefits (ads revenue). The long-term consequence will be a very-well-deserved shunning of the toolchain by others. A cost largely born by the vast majority not acting antisocially.