4 ms·

I assume this is just meant as an observation, not a criticism. I've certainly experienced this with some free software for various purposes, where you wade thr

I assume this is just meant as an observation, not a criticism. I've certainly experienced this with some free software for various purposes, where you wade through 3000 forum posts to get it to run and someone chimes in, "oh, it only works if you install in in X directory...". Sure it sucked to read 3000 forum posts and google things for 2 hours, but, once it worked, it worked. I don't know why this would be a "problem" though. This year I got a free snowblower. it had all the parts, but it didn't work. After much reading, disassembly, and other mess, I got it to work and now I have a snowblower. To me, commercial software is often about ergonomics and immediacy - if I can pay to have it now, with no work, great. But, free software can be about capturing marginal value below the market clearing price. If I need to put in some time and effort but I don't need to spend any currency, then great! I've succeeded at getting a job done and exchanged time for cost. Seems reasonable, and it's nice to have the option. (obligatory hardware example: just look at youtube for the humongous number of things made with washing machine motors. Sure, they're inconvenient, but they are free and available. For a lot of people this trade is worth it.)

D13Fd 6y ago
For individuals, a lot of it comes down to how you value your time. The snowblower was not free, you just paid in time rather than money.
- foxhop 6y ago
  There are other costs with not fixing it, but I get your point regarding time. That said the experience earned and the courage to take on bigger efforts is found through trying and spending time keeping other people's trash out of a landfill. This is true with software too otherwise we wouldn't have free and open source software. Right to repair for the win! https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed
- iso1210 6y ago
  > For individuals, a lot of it comes down to how you value your time. That's why I use open source, I don't have the time to deal with crappy closed source programs
- xfer 6y ago
  But not everyone's time is valued equally by the market. Yet commercial software has the same price regardless. So yes a lot of time it is more economical to pay in time than money.
ttt0 6y ago
> "oh, it only works if you install in in X directory...". Sure it sucked to read 3000 forum posts and google things for 2 hours, but, once it worked, it worked. I had similar problems with proprietary software and I most often ended up with the answer that the thing I want to do just cannot be done. Or sometimes with no answer at all. I prefer having an option to look up the source code to see what it does, file a bug report or even fix the problem myself than receiving a response "you're an outlier, so we don't care about your problem and there is nothing you can do about it".
- drewzero1 6y ago
  So true! No answer, can't be done, or redirected to a sales rep to purchase additional licenses for software that may or may not completely interoperate with the stuff you're already paying them for. Want to write your own program that extends or interfaces with an open-source software package? It can probably be done with some amount of work, depending on documentation, forums, and readability of the (available!) source code. Want to do the same with a proprietary software package? Buy the SDK for $X000, there aren't any forums, and the documentation that is basically eyes-only. Maybe a screen-scaper could work, but that would be unreliable and tie up a licensed terminal (not to mention probably violates the EULA!).
cashewchoo 6y ago
I don't get why this is specifically directed at gratis/free software, though. It's not like commercial software is much better. I spent a lot of time in the beginning of my career punching extremely expensive proprietary software into submission. Things like Solidworks, Autocad, Windows itself, nvidia drivers, various scientific/engineering programs, circuit designing programs, etc. Tons of extremely expensive licensed software, with expensive support contracts, and we still spent a ton of time and wrote a ton of Perl to punch them into a shape that worked on our very vanilla installs of Windows 7 enterprise. Contacting anyone's support was invariably an absolute fucking joke of an endeavor. We literally only ever did it when we were sick and tired of bashing our heads against their shitty software and wanted to shelf the project for a week or two to recover our sanity while their support "looked into it" and "escalated our ticket" or whatever. My experience with whether software was more like Stripe or more like a piano sitting on the sidewalk is that it completely depends on the company's attitude. Either they care that people be able to actually use their software, or they don't. I've seen both huge corporate products and small free software projects that both clearly do not care much about whether someone can get their program working easily. And I've also seen both paid software and free software that care immensely about getting you started and keeping you going.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  My experience mirrors yours. I have never experienced frustration with free/open-source/source-available software like I have with proprietary software. If I had a dollar for every damned time I was dealing with proprietary software and became frustrated that I just couldn't looked at the source code to figure out what the programmer meant... sigh When I do contact support I end up taking to people who also don't have source code access. They might have better documentation and a more comprehensive knowledge base, but they're no more equipped to look at the code (and, arguably, probably less equipped to understand the code) than me. Occasionally I find proprietary software whose accompanying documentation is sufficient to troubleshoot the really bizarre problems w/o source code access. Microsoft's protocol disclosures, created because of the EU anti-trust action, are a good example. Having source code access and a modicum of reverse engineering and programming knowledge is a game changer for supporting software.
- 6y ago
fouric 6y ago
I think that the comparison between software and physical goods breaks down a bit in this particular instance. If you don't have a snowblower, no amount of time spent on your own will allow you to get one - you have to get the physical parts from somewhere. If you don't have a particular piece of software, you can often write it yourself, with some time, but without paying another person or needing to find a physical good. As the difficulty of using a piece of software increases, the cost-benefit tradeoff tilts more toward "write it yourself".
- abakker 6y ago
  Full disclosure, I have a pretty sophisticated home machine shop, so I could have built a lot of a snow blower by hand. OTOH, I have a minimal knowledge of software dev- mostly the cut/paste kind. It is usually easier to start with most of the right parts, though.
- drewzero1 6y ago
  I've come to accept that there are certain pieces of imagined software that I could not reasonably expect to write myself, regardless of the amount of time given or my own meager brainpower. As the difficulty of writing a piece of software (or coordinating the components thereof) increases, the tradeoff invariably tips back toward trying to make somebody else's software work.
brindlejim 6y ago
This is true in many cases. But in many others, it is the OSS maintainers who are expending the effort responding to the needs of free-software users. Many would argue that companies and adopters of OSS are creating negative externalities for those maintainers, who presumable accept that cost for the sake of their ideals or reputation.

D13Fd 6y ago

For individuals, a lot of it comes down to how you value your time. The snowblower was not free, you just paid in time rather than money.

foxhop 6y ago
There are other costs with not fixing it, but I get your point regarding time. That said the experience earned and the courage to take on bigger efforts is found through trying and spending time keeping other people's trash out of a landfill. This is true with software too otherwise we wouldn't have free and open source software. Right to repair for the win! https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed
iso1210 6y ago
> For individuals, a lot of it comes down to how you value your time. That's why I use open source, I don't have the time to deal with crappy closed source programs
xfer 6y ago
But not everyone's time is valued equally by the market. Yet commercial software has the same price regardless. So yes a lot of time it is more economical to pay in time than money.

ttt0 6y ago

> "oh, it only works if you install in in X directory...". Sure it sucked to read 3000 forum posts and google things for 2 hours, but, once it worked, it worked. I had similar problems with proprietary software and I most often ended up with the answer that the thing I want to do just cannot be done. Or sometimes with no answer at all. I prefer having an option to look up the source code to see what it does, file a bug report or even fix the problem myself than receiving a response "you're an outlier, so we don't care about your problem and there is nothing you can do about it".

drewzero1 6y ago
So true! No answer, can't be done, or redirected to a sales rep to purchase additional licenses for software that may or may not completely interoperate with the stuff you're already paying them for. Want to write your own program that extends or interfaces with an open-source software package? It can probably be done with some amount of work, depending on documentation, forums, and readability of the (available!) source code. Want to do the same with a proprietary software package? Buy the SDK for $X000, there aren't any forums, and the documentation that is basically eyes-only. Maybe a screen-scaper could work, but that would be unreliable and tie up a licensed terminal (not to mention probably violates the EULA!).

cashewchoo 6y ago

I don't get why this is specifically directed at gratis/free software, though. It's not like commercial software is much better. I spent a lot of time in the beginning of my career punching extremely expensive proprietary software into submission. Things like Solidworks, Autocad, Windows itself, nvidia drivers, various scientific/engineering programs, circuit designing programs, etc. Tons of extremely expensive licensed software, with expensive support contracts, and we still spent a ton of time and wrote a ton of Perl to punch them into a shape that worked on our very vanilla installs of Windows 7 enterprise. Contacting anyone's support was invariably an absolute fucking joke of an endeavor. We literally only ever did it when we were sick and tired of bashing our heads against their shitty software and wanted to shelf the project for a week or two to recover our sanity while their support "looked into it" and "escalated our ticket" or whatever. My experience with whether software was more like Stripe or more like a piano sitting on the sidewalk is that it completely depends on the company's attitude. Either they care that people be able to actually use their software, or they don't. I've seen both huge corporate products and small free software projects that both clearly do not care much about whether someone can get their program working easily. And I've also seen both paid software and free software that care immensely about getting you started and keeping you going.

EvanAnderson 6y ago
My experience mirrors yours. I have never experienced frustration with free/open-source/source-available software like I have with proprietary software. If I had a dollar for every damned time I was dealing with proprietary software and became frustrated that I just couldn't looked at the source code to figure out what the programmer meant... sigh When I do contact support I end up taking to people who also don't have source code access. They might have better documentation and a more comprehensive knowledge base, but they're no more equipped to look at the code (and, arguably, probably less equipped to understand the code) than me. Occasionally I find proprietary software whose accompanying documentation is sufficient to troubleshoot the really bizarre problems w/o source code access. Microsoft's protocol disclosures, created because of the EU anti-trust action, are a good example. Having source code access and a modicum of reverse engineering and programming knowledge is a game changer for supporting software.
6y ago

fouric 6y ago

I think that the comparison between software and physical goods breaks down a bit in this particular instance. If you don't have a snowblower, no amount of time spent on your own will allow you to get one - you have to get the physical parts from somewhere. If you don't have a particular piece of software, you can often write it yourself, with some time, but without paying another person or needing to find a physical good. As the difficulty of using a piece of software increases, the cost-benefit tradeoff tilts more toward "write it yourself".

abakker 6y ago
Full disclosure, I have a pretty sophisticated home machine shop, so I could have built a lot of a snow blower by hand. OTOH, I have a minimal knowledge of software dev- mostly the cut/paste kind. It is usually easier to start with most of the right parts, though.
drewzero1 6y ago
I've come to accept that there are certain pieces of imagined software that I could not reasonably expect to write myself, regardless of the amount of time given or my own meager brainpower. As the difficulty of writing a piece of software (or coordinating the components thereof) increases, the tradeoff invariably tips back toward trying to make somebody else's software work.

brindlejim 6y ago

This is true in many cases. But in many others, it is the OSS maintainers who are expending the effort responding to the needs of free-software users. Many would argue that companies and adopters of OSS are creating negative externalities for those maintainers, who presumable accept that cost for the sake of their ideals or reputation.