8 ms·

Why do programmers write apps and then make them free

168 points by awa 16y ago

chaosmachine 16y ago
"Releasing free apps and working on open source programs are great advertisements for selling a product, namely you. (Alternatively phrased: free apps are a loss leader for selling your time.)" This seems like a really backwards approach. If you can code, create a few good paid apps and start generating passive income. Then you'll no longer need to sell your time at all.
- benjoffe 16y ago
  My first paid app has only got a few hundred people using it. I've gotten a lot of work from people stumbling across my free web apps, which have been used by millions of people. I'm very glad I released free software.
  - chaosmachine 16y ago
    Nothing wrong with releasing free software, but if you're going to use it as a promotional vehicle, promote stuff that makes you money while you sleep (paid software), not stuff that eats your free time (consulting).
    - benjoffe 16y ago
      I think this point (about it being good to promote yourself) is aimed at people who aren't yet in a position to get a lot of work (I made most of my free stuff when I was still in school). If someone already can fill their whole week consulting then it's a no-brainer (in which case free software is more for filling a hobbyist desire or whatnot).
- chc 16y ago
  This sounds like Underpants Gnome planning. 1. Create a few good paid apps 2. ???? 3. Get enough passive income that you'll no longer need to work How is merely creating a good app and charging money for it a solid plan for making more than a few bucks? Unless my understanding of the software industry is very far off the mark, the app has to target a good market, fit that market well, be sold effectively to that market and have a good support system in place that works without you participating — and if you're missing one element, the others have to be hit a lot stronger. Am I wrong in your experience? Contrariwise, free software has no barrier to entry at all. Just being free is a marketing campaign in itself. You're much more likely to get wide adoption with free software, so if you don't feel capable of marketing and supporting a product, it at least is good advertising for your skills.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - chc 16y ago
      I don't mean to be disagreeable, but my experience really doesn't bear that out. People want a Web browser, but selling one is a loser's game — even Opera has given up. Ditto for word processors and media players. Your second point is exactly what I was getting at — what you need for a successful product is product-marketing and SEO skills. But that's totally orthogonal to making good software and charging money for it. (Edited thanks to beoba's correction.)
      - beoba 16y ago
        Nitpick: Even opera is free (not Free) these days.
        mkr-hn 16y ago
        Isn't the mobile version still a paid application?
  - jasonkester 16y ago
    Why do you assume that it's easier to get wide adoption of a product if it's free, but not if it has a price tag? If you want your free thing to take off, you still need to market it and do all the other things you describe. The barrier to entry is almost exactly the same, except that with a paid product you need to figure out a way to accept payments.
    - chc 16y ago
      I assume it's easier because most people's experience has shown that it's far easier to get people to take something for free than to part with even a dollar for it. For a real-world example, free app downloads on the iPhone positively dominate paid apps — that's why they have separate "Top Downloaded" lists.
- muhfuhkuh 16y ago
  "create a few good paid apps and start generating passive income" I think we need look no further than patio11 to see just how hard it is to make "good paid apps" for a living. We love seeing the Angry Birds runaway successes, but it can be a slog and really slow going. People just starting out can work on free apps as a learning exercise during or just after college and get picked up by a big name company doing great stuff. Alot of mobile development companies recruit people based on existing experience making apps. Some app makers push their app development services more aggressively than their released apps (alot of them give their apps away to show off their skills to potential clients). Perhaps the free app maker's ideas aren't polished or just not good enough to stand alone, but the functionality may wow someone looking to take on a technical co-founder or hire a lead developer to produce a bankable product.
- random42 16y ago
  If you can code, create a few good paid apps and start generating passive income. This is certainly one way (and a valid way), to do it. But not everyone wants to/can sell. Its a completely different skillset and not everyone is good at it. Writing good (free) apps, is good for one's portfolio, which helps in freelancing/job market.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  It's a lot less work, with fewer ongoing demands on your time, to write a mildly popular open-source library and then get a job at Google than it is to support a micro-ISV.
ComputerGuru 16y ago
Both this question and many of the answers really, really pissed me off as a free software developer (free, not open source). What's written below is referring to my chief app which has tens of millions of free downloads [0]. I write free software for the same reason people help old ladies cross the street, crying mothers find their kids, etc. I write software that saves people in time of need, that makes them sigh in relief and say a silent prayer of thanks to whoever it was that wrote this application that made their day so much easier. I write free software for the karma, the brownie points, the feel-good feeling. I don't write free software so people can buy my paid software (of which I have none). I don't write free software to avoid responsibility or support (I provide free support in forums, with tens of thousands of posts). I don't write free software to "experiment" or to learn (I'm a professional developer with 7 years of commercial systems engineering under my belt). That said, the open source zealots piss me off just as much, if not more. I'm always being asked "if it's free, why not make it open source and give back to the community?" [1] What about the word "FREE" doesn't include giving back to the community? Why should I release my years of hard work, research, and effort to people who will take it apart, line by line, take from it what they want, repackage it, or take away the little attribution I get from the software itself? Sure, if I were a bigger man with a bigger heart, maybe I would... but I'm not and you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Just because I choose not to charge for it doesn't mean I'm going to give away the source code for free, especially for software as complex, critical, and well-researched as mine. 0: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 1: http://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/cp84s/the_new_version_of_easybcd_the_free_bootloader/c0u9d9q http://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/cp84s/the_new_vers...
- lachyg 16y ago
  I'm curious how you make a living from giving out free software?
  - ComputerGuru 16y ago
    I don't. :) I basically work two full-time jobs, one that pays and one that doesn't.
thristian 16y ago
I think there's a distinction between "apps" and "tools"; I doubt anyone would spend years of their life and thousands of dollars in UI testing trying to make, say, an accounting package, and then give it away. On the other hand, many people write useful tools — even business-critical things like rsync and ssh — and give them away freely. As somebody who has contributed to a few open-source projects, and even put up some code of his own (that nobody else is ever likely to look at or use - but at least it's out there), the main reason I do it is because I like to master skills and concepts - the code is just a reside, a side-effect that proves to other people that I've understood the topic at hand. It makes much more sense to advertise my skills to as many people as possible than to try and make people pay to see how good I am. A second reason is that nobody should ever have to re-solve a problem with known solution (unless they really want to). When I can see somebody struggling with a problem I know how to solve, keeping the answer to myself, or (worse!) extorting the other person is jerkish behaviour; I hate when it's done to me and I won't do it to others. Finally, actually making a product and selling it involves a whole bunch of skills and responsibilities that are largely alien - sales, market research, management, etc. I could go out and learn all those things, but that's time I'd much rather spend on helping people out, and becoming a better programmer.
- robryan 16y ago
  Your right that no one probably would, but I could see a group of companies/ single people that have a vested interest having a specialised accounting package contribute to an open source accounting software project.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  > I doubt anyone would spend years of their life and thousands of dollars in UI testing trying to make, say, an accounting package, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCash ... oh wait, you said 'thousands of dollars in UI testing.' :)
  - shadowfox 16y ago
    > ... oh wait, you said 'thousands of dollars in UI testing.' :) Or in the case of GnuCash, any UI testing at all :P (Ok. That is not really true. The UI is not that bad)
patio11 16y ago
Some people like writing it, and gain value out of it being used. Some people believe an OSS portfolio is a strong asset for advancing their career. Some people are pressured into giving away for free what could be sold by savvy businesses who like getting free things from people with poor business soft skills. Some people succumb to peer pressure because they think having business soft skills is frowned upon in their community.
- chc 16y ago
  I think rather than feeling pressured by peers into hiding their "business soft skills," probably more people just don't believe they have those skills at all.
zaidf 16y ago
It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. Isn't this suggesting border-line price fixing?
wheels 16y ago
Because it's fun. I love writing software. I've been programming for nigh-on 20 years, but it's only been in the last 3 or so of those that selling software has even remotely interested me. I could go on and on about what I've gotten out of doing open source stuff – it's made me a much better programmer, it's opened up doors to jobs that I'd not have had by other means, but really, at the end of the day, I've written a bunch of this stuff because I liked doing it. Also, for those who are working a day-job in addition to the stuff they're doing on the side, there's something freeing about being able to write OSS stuff outside of business constraints, what your boss told you to do, what the market thinks it wants ... you get to simply write software the way you think it should be written.
- _delirium 16y ago
  Also, for those who are working a day-job in addition to the stuff they're doing on the side, there's something freeing about being able to write OSS stuff outside of business constraints That's a big part of my reason. If I'm already working a day job, there's something freeing about not having to worry about whether my side project makes any money or not. Just do what I think is a good idea, release it, done. Actually I do that for writing also. I spend a bunch of time writing Wikipedia articles, writing answers on various question forums, posting on HN and Slashdot, etc., when in theory I could probably find some way to monetize my writing. But writing a Wikipedia article on something I find interesting is an enjoyable hobby, while figuring out how to start a website with similar content that I could monetize feels like it'd be more of a job.
reynolds 16y ago
It seems obvious that the person asking this question is a troll.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  It was a good troll, then - look at the vehemence of the resulting discussion, even here.
hasenj 16y ago
I'm at a point where I'm actually afraid to use any infrastructure that's not open source, and I think many developers/hackers feel the same. If I were to write a library/tool that lies more on the "infrastructure" side than the "product" side, I would open source it because I would be scared to depend on infrastructure that's not open source. Also, because I will get much better value out of it if people more talented than me took part in its development. If node.js wasn't open source, I wouldn't even bother looking at it. If I looked at it, I wouldn't use it, just because it's not open source. I wouldn't trust one company to do it right. But I trust the hacker community to make it rock.
- robryan 16y ago
  Definitely for infrastructure, but usually if a project is valuable to many businesses/ individuals there will be many contributors so the burden falls less on a few people to dedicate their lives to something everyone else is drawing benefit. The dynamics are quiet different I think for small single person OSS.
hackermom 16y ago
Out of love and benevolence.
jasonkester 16y ago
Read the top answers on that page and it's easy to distill down the underlying motivation behind a lot of developers: Fear. "All these angry customers will demand support", "Nobody will buy it", "It's not good enough to charge money for." It's all just fear of the unknown, and if they'd take the leap, they'd find that none of those things are true. The 3rd answer comes closest to explaining why I put some of my stuff out there for free: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-applications-and-then-make-them-free/3243#3243 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-p... A good web application with a base of happy people using it, that was clearly built by you and only you, goes a long way towards proving your value for people who might want to do business with you in the future.
edw519 16y ago
It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. Here's the dirty little secret about B2B software: It's not about the money. It's about the risk. I tell my customers that if they can find a free generic horizontal piece of software that provides them value without risk, then by all means, use it. Then I ask them to consider questions like these: - Is the website up? - Is the fulfillment system up? - Is the phone system up? - Did we get that order? - Did that order ship? - Did the customer pay? - Did the bank get the money? - Did the material get received? - Did we make payroll? - Did we get the best price? - Where are our revenues below plan? - Where are our margins below plan? - What are our numbers for the day? Week? Month? Quarter? Then the killer question: "If we don't know the answer to any of the above because of our free software then who are you going to call?" If you have a good answer to that question, then you may want to consider a free software alternative. Otherwise, paying for legitimate software and support is simply the price of doing business. The risk to your business and its stakeholders is simply not worth the couple of bucks saved on free software.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  > I tell my customers that if they can find a free generic horizontal piece of software that provides them value without risk, then by all means, use it. No software is risk-free, regardless of the licensing terms. One big risk is you'll find out, after weeks or months using the thing, that it doesn't do all that you want it to do, and getting it to do the rest is costly and time-consuming. > Then the killer question: If the answer to any of the above is "no" because of our free software, "Who are you going to call?" Literally millions of businesses do well using Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl, Python, Django, Ruby, Rails, MySQL, etc without having problems. (My answer to that question is "do a Google search on the problem and find the solution thast way). > The risk to your business and its stakeholders is simply not worth the couple of bucks saved on free software. If you want personal support for your software, you're going to pay a good deal more than $2 for it. And paid-for technical support is available for open source software too, if that's what you want.
- praptak 16y ago
  Yes, but there are also some risks associated with commercial apps. What if the company folds? What if they decide to stop supporting my platform? Are slow to fix bugs? Having no rights to the source code leaves you in the cold if any of the above happens.
ylem 16y ago
Sometimes because people want help? Look at some libraries like matplotlib, or numpy. They're extremely useful, but they benefit because you have a team of developers working on it. Now, imagine that you're a company that sells services (data analysis, made to order applications, etc.)--it makes sense to open source the core (which is built from commonly known algorithms) and have that rock solid, because it is not your core competency. Another example might be language translation. While there are open source (and even non gpl) libraries for western languages, unless ocrpus has advanced a lot recently, I didn't find much out their for Chinese (at least on English web sites). Writing a good online OCR library for Chinese is nontrivial and more than I'm likely to be able to do in my spare time--but, I might be able to get one started and open source it with a permissive license (so businesses can also contribute developer time) and have a community of people who might work on it if the groundwork is good. Now, people might use this for a variety of other applications (scanning, so-so machine translation, etc.) which might be profitable. Otherwise--for some people we simply happen to have a "hobby" that could be profitable....
agentultra 16y ago
I write free software because I can. If I had to pay for every line of source code that was written to make my computer useful, I'd be very poor. I actually open source my code as well. I believe innovation can only happen when people share ideas. I probably wouldn't have the career I do without open source software. So I like to give back and share what I've learned. I'm not really in the business of policing people. If they want to plagiarize my software or whatever I don't really waste my time trying to stop them. Or tell them off. Their dishonesty will eventually reveal itself to others. It's hard hiding that sort of behaviour from people forever. That all being said, I don't have a problem with charging money for software. I just won't charge for the upgrades. Whatever price I set just ensures that I can continue to work on it and release new features, bug fixes, etc.
KedarMhaswade 16y ago
All the "infrastructure" code should be open source. It is better for everyone. I can't imagine a world where such code that enables others to write code (that may not be infrastructure) is not FOSS. Paid services made available using that infrastructure code is also loosely called software (because programming is involved). But it involves other things as much as programming and hence making a business out of it makes sense if one has energy, passion and talent for it. As a programmer, if you are in a position to do both, a balance is achieved. If you are producing software that does not involve other things that a service has to offer, then it is better to just open source it right from the beginning or once you realize the force of open source. And "free" in FOSS has an interesting connotation that Jamie Zawinkie said to have captured -- "Linux is only free if your time has no value".
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
njharman 16y ago
i cant believe people are still beating this dead horse
guptaneil 16y ago
"If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” - The Joker There's a difference between free and $0. A developer's goal may be to just build his portfolio, in which case giving away the software is more valuable than the cash he could make selling it. Nobody gives anything for free, the pricing just depends on the person's motivations. Another example is Google giving away Chrome because it wants user data more than it needs cash. I could go on, there are plenty of things more valuable than cash, depending on your situation.
warwick 16y ago
I have one free app. It's a loss leader for another app. I know that the popular wisdom is that if you want to get your name out you should blog a lot, but my specialty is creating software, and it gets my name out to my potential customers extremely well.
mnwcsult 16y ago
Years ago I wrote a significant C++ GUI library for just pure FYI. It was available to anyone. I had answered the questions I was interested in.
nhangen 16y ago
There are merits to owning a portion of the marketplace and being ubiquitous, just as there are merits to making a profit. My new little project: iconswitch.me is free, but because it would be easier to monetize the traffic than to monetize the user. There are a lot of reasons, but the key ingredient to free is having a strategy rather than trying to figure it out later.
enneff 16y ago
I feel great satisfaction when people find value in the things that I do.
jarin 16y ago
While I've been known for being anti-GPL, I'm totally for open-source software. My philosophy is to open-source anything that a) is too simple to be sellable, b) is an extension of something already open-source (like a Moonshine plugin), or c) I don't want to take the time or energy to sell. A lot of stuff falls under c).
momotomo 16y ago
Skimmed the thread and it doesn't seem to move away from the assumption of one programmer, one product. Open source is always at it's most impressive (imho) when you have a mass of individuals contributing to an application or system. It combines community, professional development, experience, peer review, etc. to produce some impressive products.
losethos 16y ago
I'm not sure my reality is normal. In 2000, I wrote SimStructure, a physics edutainment package and distributed it as shareware. I had 6000 downloads and only 1 check for $20. I tried to interest people but discovered no teachers, school administratiors or game distributors or game companies would talk to me. With LoseThos, not a chance in hell I could sell it with Linux free. The only hope is the option to make money on ads or something--I'll worry about that when I get there.

168 points by awa 16y ago

"Releasing free apps and working on open source programs are great advertisements for selling a product, namely you. (Alternatively phrased: free apps are a loss leader for selling your time.)" This seems like a really backwards approach. If you can code, create a few good paid apps and start generating passive income. Then you'll no longer need to sell your time at all.

benjoffe 16y ago
My first paid app has only got a few hundred people using it. I've gotten a lot of work from people stumbling across my free web apps, which have been used by millions of people. I'm very glad I released free software.
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  Nothing wrong with releasing free software, but if you're going to use it as a promotional vehicle, promote stuff that makes you money while you sleep (paid software), not stuff that eats your free time (consulting).
  - benjoffe 16y ago
    I think this point (about it being good to promote yourself) is aimed at people who aren't yet in a position to get a lot of work (I made most of my free stuff when I was still in school). If someone already can fill their whole week consulting then it's a no-brainer (in which case free software is more for filling a hobbyist desire or whatnot).
chc 16y ago
This sounds like Underpants Gnome planning. 1. Create a few good paid apps 2. ???? 3. Get enough passive income that you'll no longer need to work How is merely creating a good app and charging money for it a solid plan for making more than a few bucks? Unless my understanding of the software industry is very far off the mark, the app has to target a good market, fit that market well, be sold effectively to that market and have a good support system in place that works without you participating — and if you're missing one element, the others have to be hit a lot stronger. Am I wrong in your experience? Contrariwise, free software has no barrier to entry at all. Just being free is a marketing campaign in itself. You're much more likely to get wide adoption with free software, so if you don't feel capable of marketing and supporting a product, it at least is good advertising for your skills.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - chc 16y ago
    I don't mean to be disagreeable, but my experience really doesn't bear that out. People want a Web browser, but selling one is a loser's game — even Opera has given up. Ditto for word processors and media players. Your second point is exactly what I was getting at — what you need for a successful product is product-marketing and SEO skills. But that's totally orthogonal to making good software and charging money for it. (Edited thanks to beoba's correction.)
    - beoba 16y ago
      Nitpick: Even opera is free (not Free) these days.
      - mkr-hn 16y ago
        Isn't the mobile version still a paid application?
- jasonkester 16y ago
  Why do you assume that it's easier to get wide adoption of a product if it's free, but not if it has a price tag? If you want your free thing to take off, you still need to market it and do all the other things you describe. The barrier to entry is almost exactly the same, except that with a paid product you need to figure out a way to accept payments.
  - chc 16y ago
    I assume it's easier because most people's experience has shown that it's far easier to get people to take something for free than to part with even a dollar for it. For a real-world example, free app downloads on the iPhone positively dominate paid apps — that's why they have separate "Top Downloaded" lists.
muhfuhkuh 16y ago
"create a few good paid apps and start generating passive income" I think we need look no further than patio11 to see just how hard it is to make "good paid apps" for a living. We love seeing the Angry Birds runaway successes, but it can be a slog and really slow going. People just starting out can work on free apps as a learning exercise during or just after college and get picked up by a big name company doing great stuff. Alot of mobile development companies recruit people based on existing experience making apps. Some app makers push their app development services more aggressively than their released apps (alot of them give their apps away to show off their skills to potential clients). Perhaps the free app maker's ideas aren't polished or just not good enough to stand alone, but the functionality may wow someone looking to take on a technical co-founder or hire a lead developer to produce a bankable product.
random42 16y ago
If you can code, create a few good paid apps and start generating passive income. This is certainly one way (and a valid way), to do it. But not everyone wants to/can sell. Its a completely different skillset and not everyone is good at it. Writing good (free) apps, is good for one's portfolio, which helps in freelancing/job market.
nostrademons 16y ago
It's a lot less work, with fewer ongoing demands on your time, to write a mildly popular open-source library and then get a job at Google than it is to support a micro-ISV.

ComputerGuru 16y ago

Both this question and many of the answers really, really pissed me off as a free software developer (free, not open source). What's written below is referring to my chief app which has tens of millions of free downloads [0]. I write free software for the same reason people help old ladies cross the street, crying mothers find their kids, etc. I write software that saves people in time of need, that makes them sigh in relief and say a silent prayer of thanks to whoever it was that wrote this application that made their day so much easier. I write free software for the karma, the brownie points, the feel-good feeling. I don't write free software so people can buy my paid software (of which I have none). I don't write free software to avoid responsibility or support (I provide free support in forums, with tens of thousands of posts). I don't write free software to "experiment" or to learn (I'm a professional developer with 7 years of commercial systems engineering under my belt). That said, the open source zealots piss me off just as much, if not more. I'm always being asked "if it's free, why not make it open source and give back to the community?" [1] What about the word "FREE" doesn't include giving back to the community? Why should I release my years of hard work, research, and effort to people who will take it apart, line by line, take from it what they want, repackage it, or take away the little attribution I get from the software itself? Sure, if I were a bigger man with a bigger heart, maybe I would... but I'm not and you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Just because I choose not to charge for it doesn't mean I'm going to give away the source code for free, especially for software as complex, critical, and well-researched as mine. 0: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 1: http://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/cp84s/the_new_version_of_easybcd_the_free_bootloader/c0u9d9q http://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/cp84s/the_new_vers...

lachyg 16y ago
I'm curious how you make a living from giving out free software?
- ComputerGuru 16y ago
  I don't. :) I basically work two full-time jobs, one that pays and one that doesn't.

thristian 16y ago

I think there's a distinction between "apps" and "tools"; I doubt anyone would spend years of their life and thousands of dollars in UI testing trying to make, say, an accounting package, and then give it away. On the other hand, many people write useful tools — even business-critical things like rsync and ssh — and give them away freely. As somebody who has contributed to a few open-source projects, and even put up some code of his own (that nobody else is ever likely to look at or use - but at least it's out there), the main reason I do it is because I like to master skills and concepts - the code is just a reside, a side-effect that proves to other people that I've understood the topic at hand. It makes much more sense to advertise my skills to as many people as possible than to try and make people pay to see how good I am. A second reason is that nobody should ever have to re-solve a problem with known solution (unless they really want to). When I can see somebody struggling with a problem I know how to solve, keeping the answer to myself, or (worse!) extorting the other person is jerkish behaviour; I hate when it's done to me and I won't do it to others. Finally, actually making a product and selling it involves a whole bunch of skills and responsibilities that are largely alien - sales, market research, management, etc. I could go out and learn all those things, but that's time I'd much rather spend on helping people out, and becoming a better programmer.

robryan 16y ago
Your right that no one probably would, but I could see a group of companies/ single people that have a vested interest having a specialised accounting package contribute to an open source accounting software project.
steveklabnik 16y ago
> I doubt anyone would spend years of their life and thousands of dollars in UI testing trying to make, say, an accounting package, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCash ... oh wait, you said 'thousands of dollars in UI testing.' :)
- shadowfox 16y ago
  > ... oh wait, you said 'thousands of dollars in UI testing.' :) Or in the case of GnuCash, any UI testing at all :P (Ok. That is not really true. The UI is not that bad)

patio11 16y ago

Some people like writing it, and gain value out of it being used. Some people believe an OSS portfolio is a strong asset for advancing their career. Some people are pressured into giving away for free what could be sold by savvy businesses who like getting free things from people with poor business soft skills. Some people succumb to peer pressure because they think having business soft skills is frowned upon in their community.

chc 16y ago
I think rather than feeling pressured by peers into hiding their "business soft skills," probably more people just don't believe they have those skills at all.

zaidf 16y ago

It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. Isn't this suggesting border-line price fixing?

wheels 16y ago

Because it's fun. I love writing software. I've been programming for nigh-on 20 years, but it's only been in the last 3 or so of those that selling software has even remotely interested me. I could go on and on about what I've gotten out of doing open source stuff – it's made me a much better programmer, it's opened up doors to jobs that I'd not have had by other means, but really, at the end of the day, I've written a bunch of this stuff because I liked doing it. Also, for those who are working a day-job in addition to the stuff they're doing on the side, there's something freeing about being able to write OSS stuff outside of business constraints, what your boss told you to do, what the market thinks it wants ... you get to simply write software the way you think it should be written.

_delirium 16y ago
Also, for those who are working a day-job in addition to the stuff they're doing on the side, there's something freeing about being able to write OSS stuff outside of business constraints That's a big part of my reason. If I'm already working a day job, there's something freeing about not having to worry about whether my side project makes any money or not. Just do what I think is a good idea, release it, done. Actually I do that for writing also. I spend a bunch of time writing Wikipedia articles, writing answers on various question forums, posting on HN and Slashdot, etc., when in theory I could probably find some way to monetize my writing. But writing a Wikipedia article on something I find interesting is an enjoyable hobby, while figuring out how to start a website with similar content that I could monetize feels like it'd be more of a job.

reynolds 16y ago

It seems obvious that the person asking this question is a troll.

Vivtek 16y ago
It was a good troll, then - look at the vehemence of the resulting discussion, even here.

hasenj 16y ago

I'm at a point where I'm actually afraid to use any infrastructure that's not open source, and I think many developers/hackers feel the same. If I were to write a library/tool that lies more on the "infrastructure" side than the "product" side, I would open source it because I would be scared to depend on infrastructure that's not open source. Also, because I will get much better value out of it if people more talented than me took part in its development. If node.js wasn't open source, I wouldn't even bother looking at it. If I looked at it, I wouldn't use it, just because it's not open source. I wouldn't trust one company to do it right. But I trust the hacker community to make it rock.

robryan 16y ago
Definitely for infrastructure, but usually if a project is valuable to many businesses/ individuals there will be many contributors so the burden falls less on a few people to dedicate their lives to something everyone else is drawing benefit. The dynamics are quiet different I think for small single person OSS.

hackermom 16y ago

Out of love and benevolence.

jasonkester 16y ago

Read the top answers on that page and it's easy to distill down the underlying motivation behind a lot of developers: Fear. "All these angry customers will demand support", "Nobody will buy it", "It's not good enough to charge money for." It's all just fear of the unknown, and if they'd take the leap, they'd find that none of those things are true. The 3rd answer comes closest to explaining why I put some of my stuff out there for free: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-applications-and-then-make-them-free/3243#3243 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-p... A good web application with a base of happy people using it, that was clearly built by you and only you, goes a long way towards proving your value for people who might want to do business with you in the future.

edw519 16y ago

It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. Here's the dirty little secret about B2B software: It's not about the money. It's about the risk. I tell my customers that if they can find a free generic horizontal piece of software that provides them value without risk, then by all means, use it. Then I ask them to consider questions like these: - Is the website up? - Is the fulfillment system up? - Is the phone system up? - Did we get that order? - Did that order ship? - Did the customer pay? - Did the bank get the money? - Did the material get received? - Did we make payroll? - Did we get the best price? - Where are our revenues below plan? - Where are our margins below plan? - What are our numbers for the day? Week? Month? Quarter? Then the killer question: "If we don't know the answer to any of the above because of our free software then who are you going to call?" If you have a good answer to that question, then you may want to consider a free software alternative. Otherwise, paying for legitimate software and support is simply the price of doing business. The risk to your business and its stakeholders is simply not worth the couple of bucks saved on free software.

cabalamat 16y ago
> I tell my customers that if they can find a free generic horizontal piece of software that provides them value without risk, then by all means, use it. No software is risk-free, regardless of the licensing terms. One big risk is you'll find out, after weeks or months using the thing, that it doesn't do all that you want it to do, and getting it to do the rest is costly and time-consuming. > Then the killer question: If the answer to any of the above is "no" because of our free software, "Who are you going to call?" Literally millions of businesses do well using Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl, Python, Django, Ruby, Rails, MySQL, etc without having problems. (My answer to that question is "do a Google search on the problem and find the solution thast way). > The risk to your business and its stakeholders is simply not worth the couple of bucks saved on free software. If you want personal support for your software, you're going to pay a good deal more than $2 for it. And paid-for technical support is available for open source software too, if that's what you want.
praptak 16y ago
Yes, but there are also some risks associated with commercial apps. What if the company folds? What if they decide to stop supporting my platform? Are slow to fix bugs? Having no rights to the source code leaves you in the cold if any of the above happens.

ylem 16y ago

Sometimes because people want help? Look at some libraries like matplotlib, or numpy. They're extremely useful, but they benefit because you have a team of developers working on it. Now, imagine that you're a company that sells services (data analysis, made to order applications, etc.)--it makes sense to open source the core (which is built from commonly known algorithms) and have that rock solid, because it is not your core competency. Another example might be language translation. While there are open source (and even non gpl) libraries for western languages, unless ocrpus has advanced a lot recently, I didn't find much out their for Chinese (at least on English web sites). Writing a good online OCR library for Chinese is nontrivial and more than I'm likely to be able to do in my spare time--but, I might be able to get one started and open source it with a permissive license (so businesses can also contribute developer time) and have a community of people who might work on it if the groundwork is good. Now, people might use this for a variety of other applications (scanning, so-so machine translation, etc.) which might be profitable. Otherwise--for some people we simply happen to have a "hobby" that could be profitable....

agentultra 16y ago

I write free software because I can. If I had to pay for every line of source code that was written to make my computer useful, I'd be very poor. I actually open source my code as well. I believe innovation can only happen when people share ideas. I probably wouldn't have the career I do without open source software. So I like to give back and share what I've learned. I'm not really in the business of policing people. If they want to plagiarize my software or whatever I don't really waste my time trying to stop them. Or tell them off. Their dishonesty will eventually reveal itself to others. It's hard hiding that sort of behaviour from people forever. That all being said, I don't have a problem with charging money for software. I just won't charge for the upgrades. Whatever price I set just ensures that I can continue to work on it and release new features, bug fixes, etc.

KedarMhaswade 16y ago

All the "infrastructure" code should be open source. It is better for everyone. I can't imagine a world where such code that enables others to write code (that may not be infrastructure) is not FOSS. Paid services made available using that infrastructure code is also loosely called software (because programming is involved). But it involves other things as much as programming and hence making a business out of it makes sense if one has energy, passion and talent for it. As a programmer, if you are in a position to do both, a balance is achieved. If you are producing software that does not involve other things that a service has to offer, then it is better to just open source it right from the beginning or once you realize the force of open source. And "free" in FOSS has an interesting connotation that Jamie Zawinkie said to have captured -- "Linux is only free if your time has no value".

deleted 16y ago

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njharman 16y ago

i cant believe people are still beating this dead horse

guptaneil 16y ago

"If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” - The Joker There's a difference between free and $0. A developer's goal may be to just build his portfolio, in which case giving away the software is more valuable than the cash he could make selling it. Nobody gives anything for free, the pricing just depends on the person's motivations. Another example is Google giving away Chrome because it wants user data more than it needs cash. I could go on, there are plenty of things more valuable than cash, depending on your situation.

warwick 16y ago

I have one free app. It's a loss leader for another app. I know that the popular wisdom is that if you want to get your name out you should blog a lot, but my specialty is creating software, and it gets my name out to my potential customers extremely well.

mnwcsult 16y ago

Years ago I wrote a significant C++ GUI library for just pure FYI. It was available to anyone. I had answered the questions I was interested in.

nhangen 16y ago

There are merits to owning a portion of the marketplace and being ubiquitous, just as there are merits to making a profit. My new little project: iconswitch.me is free, but because it would be easier to monetize the traffic than to monetize the user. There are a lot of reasons, but the key ingredient to free is having a strategy rather than trying to figure it out later.

enneff 16y ago

I feel great satisfaction when people find value in the things that I do.

jarin 16y ago

While I've been known for being anti-GPL, I'm totally for open-source software. My philosophy is to open-source anything that a) is too simple to be sellable, b) is an extension of something already open-source (like a Moonshine plugin), or c) I don't want to take the time or energy to sell. A lot of stuff falls under c).

momotomo 16y ago

Skimmed the thread and it doesn't seem to move away from the assumption of one programmer, one product. Open source is always at it's most impressive (imho) when you have a mass of individuals contributing to an application or system. It combines community, professional development, experience, peer review, etc. to produce some impressive products.

losethos 16y ago

I'm not sure my reality is normal. In 2000, I wrote SimStructure, a physics edutainment package and distributed it as shareware. I had 6000 downloads and only 1 check for $20. I tried to interest people but discovered no teachers, school administratiors or game distributors or game companies would talk to me. With LoseThos, not a chance in hell I could sell it with Linux free. The only hope is the option to make money on ads or something--I'll worry about that when I get there.