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"Not everything can or should cost a buck." When I talk to many developers they tell me that everything should be free. How do you recalibrate the consumer's

"Not everything can or should cost a buck." When I talk to many developers they tell me that everything should be free. How do you recalibrate the consumer's perception of the value of software, when so many developers don't value software either?

jiggy2011 14y ago
I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom" which is something that comes up time and time again thanks to the FSFs insistence on using poor wording. I don't think that developers don't "value" software. It would be a push to suggest that people who use Linux,Apache or Emacs don't see any "value" to them. I'm sure if they though about it they could probably assign a high dollar amount that would reflect the utility they receive from these programs. Personally I don't have a problem either paying for a commercial software or using an open source alternative. It's when an application is either free (as in $0 or outrageously cheap) and closed source and I can't "get" the developer's business model that I would be very hesitant to rely on it.
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  > I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom" Not necessarily. Most of the software developers use - from IDEs/editors, through version control, synchronization, web stack, to server software and even the basic but important tools like ls or grep - is free. Free as in "free beer". We are used to get tremendous value for free. We are used to give away value for free. And I'm not surprised that many developers (myself included) like this utopia, even if it is not currently sustainable.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Open source is a sustainable way of making software a zero money cost though. The contract is basically that they allow you to use the software on the basis that you might give some value back in the form of patches, bug reports or even just asking intelligent questions on their forum or paying for commercial support. Even if you don't they don't really lose anything. A huge amount of OSS is fairly "developer facing" too, with possible exceptions of stuff like firefox of VLC (few people would imagine paying for a media player or browser today). I agree though that bad FOSS evangelism may be partly to blame, if you tell everyone to "use Linux because it is free, all software should be free!" without explaining that price not the important part of the equation and you are a software developer yourself then I guess you can't be too surprised if people see that as endorsement to pirate Photoshop.
briandear 14y ago
Exactly! When the torrentfreak folks start bitching about Kim Dotcom's problems, I think about that very point. How can anyone expect to be paid for their labor in creating something while at the same time arguing for wholesale software/music/movie theft under the shoddy justification that the marginal cost of digital content is nearly zero.

jiggy2011 14y ago

I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom" which is something that comes up time and time again thanks to the FSFs insistence on using poor wording. I don't think that developers don't "value" software. It would be a push to suggest that people who use Linux,Apache or Emacs don't see any "value" to them. I'm sure if they though about it they could probably assign a high dollar amount that would reflect the utility they receive from these programs. Personally I don't have a problem either paying for a commercial software or using an open source alternative. It's when an application is either free (as in $0 or outrageously cheap) and closed source and I can't "get" the developer's business model that I would be very hesitant to rely on it.

TeMPOraL 14y ago
> I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom" Not necessarily. Most of the software developers use - from IDEs/editors, through version control, synchronization, web stack, to server software and even the basic but important tools like ls or grep - is free. Free as in "free beer". We are used to get tremendous value for free. We are used to give away value for free. And I'm not surprised that many developers (myself included) like this utopia, even if it is not currently sustainable.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Open source is a sustainable way of making software a zero money cost though. The contract is basically that they allow you to use the software on the basis that you might give some value back in the form of patches, bug reports or even just asking intelligent questions on their forum or paying for commercial support. Even if you don't they don't really lose anything. A huge amount of OSS is fairly "developer facing" too, with possible exceptions of stuff like firefox of VLC (few people would imagine paying for a media player or browser today). I agree though that bad FOSS evangelism may be partly to blame, if you tell everyone to "use Linux because it is free, all software should be free!" without explaining that price not the important part of the equation and you are a software developer yourself then I guess you can't be too surprised if people see that as endorsement to pirate Photoshop.

briandear 14y ago

Exactly! When the torrentfreak folks start bitching about Kim Dotcom's problems, I think about that very point. How can anyone expect to be paid for their labor in creating something while at the same time arguing for wholesale software/music/movie theft under the shoddy justification that the marginal cost of digital content is nearly zero.