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> The free software movement has completely failed at providing a business model for itself. Wouldn't you say the Freemium model is a successful business mode

> The free software movement has completely failed at providing a business model for itself. Wouldn't you say the Freemium model is a successful business model for many? Or there are free software but we can do extra for you like Automatic/Wordfence etc. Ad driven 'free' software is quite common place. Also 'goodwill' supported. Not saying its not challenging for many free software services but there are business models around 'free'.

jolux 6y ago
>Not saying its not challenging for many free software services but there are business models around 'free'. Not when it comes to desktop software, it seems.
- Gustomaximus 6y ago
  Mailchimp, Survey Monkey, Asana, Jira, Github, Firefox, Opera etc ... maybe we're defining things differently but there's a bunch I thought.
  - jolux 6y ago
    >Mailchimp, Survey Monkey, Asana, Jira, Github This is SaaS though, and much of it proprietary as I understand. >Firefox Seems to be sustained in large part by the Google search subsidy, and implicitly Google's desire not to be a true monopoly with Chrome. >Opera Isn't Opera proprietary?
Qwertious 6y ago
I didn't go into the details but ads/data are a funding mechanism. It's a funding method where you pay with intangibles, and is successful because ads/data are implicitly available on literally every platform out there and is so convenient it requires literally zero clicks on the user's behalf to activate. I didn't mention it because it's uhhhh, antithetical to Free Software. Let me explain that: Free Software says "put ultimate power in the users' hands, so that they can call the shots" - this is why they commonly use the GPL (sorry if obvious). Ads/tracking puts the devs at the mercy of the third parties who are paying their bills, despite said third parties not giving a shit about the quality of the software. It's why ads are so often unoptimized. A more minor reason is that it's situational. Anything offline basically can't do either. Anything like libpng just doesn't really make sense. But fundamentally, the crux is that devs have to do what they're paid to do. There are exceptions, but those are only exceptions and not the rule.
diffeomorphism 6y ago
Is there any free software that uses a freemium model? I can only think of proprietary freeware that does this. Or did you mean open core?

jolux 6y ago

>Not saying its not challenging for many free software services but there are business models around 'free'. Not when it comes to desktop software, it seems.

Gustomaximus 6y ago
Mailchimp, Survey Monkey, Asana, Jira, Github, Firefox, Opera etc ... maybe we're defining things differently but there's a bunch I thought.
- jolux 6y ago
  >Mailchimp, Survey Monkey, Asana, Jira, Github This is SaaS though, and much of it proprietary as I understand. >Firefox Seems to be sustained in large part by the Google search subsidy, and implicitly Google's desire not to be a true monopoly with Chrome. >Opera Isn't Opera proprietary?

Qwertious 6y ago

I didn't go into the details but ads/data are a funding mechanism. It's a funding method where you pay with intangibles, and is successful because ads/data are implicitly available on literally every platform out there and is so convenient it requires literally zero clicks on the user's behalf to activate. I didn't mention it because it's uhhhh, antithetical to Free Software. Let me explain that: Free Software says "put ultimate power in the users' hands, so that they can call the shots" - this is why they commonly use the GPL (sorry if obvious). Ads/tracking puts the devs at the mercy of the third parties who are paying their bills, despite said third parties not giving a shit about the quality of the software. It's why ads are so often unoptimized. A more minor reason is that it's situational. Anything offline basically can't do either. Anything like libpng just doesn't really make sense. But fundamentally, the crux is that devs have to do what they're paid to do. There are exceptions, but those are only exceptions and not the rule.

diffeomorphism 6y ago

Is there any free software that uses a freemium model? I can only think of proprietary freeware that does this. Or did you mean open core?