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> The era when people paid an affordable fee for software they could use however they wanted was much better. But it got squeezed out by free software on the on

> The era when people paid an affordable fee for software they could use however they wanted was much better. But it got squeezed out by free software on the one side and serf-ware on the other. Charging for free and open-source software is not only possible, but encouraged Stallman himself.

dns_snek 1y ago
Yes but how do you build a consumer software business on top of a licensing scheme that legally allows anyone to share their copy of the software with anyone else, and allows other businesses to resell your software at half the price?
- pyeri 1y ago
  Few companies have done it successfully like Red Hat, Odoo ERP and Sensio Labs (the company that builds Symfony framework).
  - Ajedi32 1y ago
    Notice all three of those companies make their money selling support contracts to businesses, not selling software to consumers.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    Yes but notice how all of those are B2B? I was responding in the context of B2C, on one hand we know that people are willing to pay for convenience - Steam has largely beaten piracy by simply offering a better service. But that wouldn't hold up if games were released under a FOSS license. There would be nothing stopping me (maybe trademark law? I'm sure there are workarounds) from setting up "SteamForFree", rehosting every game with the same user experience as Steam, and offering access for a small monthly fee to cover hosting costs and make a tidy profit. I'd like to offer source code, allow modifications for personal use, while prohibiting redistribution and certain types of commercial use (e.g. companies over $x million in revenue). That's a pretty fundamental mismatch between what I feel comfortable with in order to protect my income and what FOSS licenses allow.
    - Ajedi32 1y ago
      Fully agree with this sentiment. I do think though that disallowing "certain types of commercial use" is a poison pill that would prevent your project from getting any significant adoption. I think a better option would be something like GPL but with the "you can redistribute copies of this to anyone you like without paying me" part stripped out. (Maybe replaced with a provision that allows transferring your license to someone else, but then you're not allowed to use it afterwards.) The goal being to protect consumer freedom to exercise ownership rights over their software (including the ability to modify it) without simultaneously trying to abolish the copyright system and killing your own funding mechanism in the process.
    - MarsIronPI 1y ago
      I still think you'd get the part of the market that cares about creators. The part that doesn't would pirate anyway. Now, this is assuming they can determine that you are the original creator, but IMO this is what trademarks are for.
      - dns_snek 1y ago
        Sure, some would. But in the general case that's going to be a tiny fraction of the market. Why would I ever do that when I can simply not set myself up to be screwed and instead use a license that aligns with my definition of fairness? Remember that people regularly walk into small businesses and spend 15 minutes talking to an expert asking questions about the products they sell. As soon as they get quoted a price of $120 they scoff and order it from Amazon because it's $20 cheaper. Consumer price sensitivity is... extreme.
- davisr 1y ago
  I charge for copies of free software I wrote, an AGPLv3+ desktop application, and earn about $2k MRR from it. Most people don't care about your choice of license, they just want software that conveniently solves their problem(s). If they want to share it, that's fine. They're giving it to people who wouldn't have bought it anyway. If those grantees ever want an official copy, with updates and support, they come back to me. You see the same effect mirrored in illicit distribution of copyrighted works. Sharing movies increases box office revenue. Sharing albums increases music sales. The people who get a copy for no charge weren't going to buy a copy in the first place. When you expose them to the product, some percent go on to become fans, advertising the work, and perhaps giving money to support it. Read through my past comments from last year to find more info.
  - andoando 1y ago
    The problem is with someone taking your whole software, branding and marketing it as their own and undercutting your service for half the price, not individual using it for personal reasons.
    - davisr 1y ago
      So what? That sounds like competition, which is healthy in a free market. And it's not a service, it's a copy. Customers are explicitly allowed to resell it, and they have. And I still earn enough cash to continue developing it. And I have the search engine top hits. And I have thousands of social media comments linking to my website. Copying a business isn't just about copying the product. They have to copy my reputation, too. And my sales channels. Stop being so afraid. Selling free software is good, and sustainable, and those who think otherwise are extremely naive, ignorant, or with ulterior motives.
      - andoando 1y ago
        Sure, link me to your codebase and I'll give it an active try and lets see what happens. There's no doubt putting up your source code makes your business much easier to copy. If I spent a year building something sophisticated with the intent of selling it, why would I give someone else, with possibly more resources to market, a free competition? It may have worked out for you, but I think so non nonchalant saying "its not a problem ever" is rather bold. This is a known problem even in the hardware space, where Chinese companies will copy an existing problem 1:1 and flood the amazon market with 20 different listings.
unethical_ban 1y ago
Charging for open source software is possible but improbable, and I respectfully say it is naive to think otherwise. Every open source product that takes in real money sells services and support, or they sell closed "premium" features. Oh, and the third bucket, philanthropy.
1oooqooq 1y ago
the people saying gpl cannot sell software is always bsd users, who always work for some company contracting with Boz allen Hamilton and such. It's never an honest opinion.
immibis 1y ago
It seems like B2B consumers pay a lot of money to get rid of that pesky "as is, without warranty" clause. It seems like almost every business that is paying for something they could do in-house for free, is basically paying for it because of this. They don't want to outsource the actual labour, per se - they want to outsource the blame when it goes wrong, even if the actual uptime percentage is identical or worse. Centralization is an advantage here - if we say "we're down because five other websites are down, sorry" it looks worse than "we're down because half the internet is down, sorry" More generally, they want to have a contract for services with someone. That's what's really meant by "support". Not merely being able to call tech support, but having people backing their services. The really big places have their own engineers, and the really small places can't afford it, but the middle-sized places would rather pay you to support them as needed, than hire someone on their side dedicated to managing your product. The illusion of support can also sell just as well as actual support. Just see Oracle vs Postgres...

dns_snek 1y ago

Yes but how do you build a consumer software business on top of a licensing scheme that legally allows anyone to share their copy of the software with anyone else, and allows other businesses to resell your software at half the price?

pyeri 1y ago
Few companies have done it successfully like Red Hat, Odoo ERP and Sensio Labs (the company that builds Symfony framework).
- Ajedi32 1y ago
  Notice all three of those companies make their money selling support contracts to businesses, not selling software to consumers.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  Yes but notice how all of those are B2B? I was responding in the context of B2C, on one hand we know that people are willing to pay for convenience - Steam has largely beaten piracy by simply offering a better service. But that wouldn't hold up if games were released under a FOSS license. There would be nothing stopping me (maybe trademark law? I'm sure there are workarounds) from setting up "SteamForFree", rehosting every game with the same user experience as Steam, and offering access for a small monthly fee to cover hosting costs and make a tidy profit. I'd like to offer source code, allow modifications for personal use, while prohibiting redistribution and certain types of commercial use (e.g. companies over $x million in revenue). That's a pretty fundamental mismatch between what I feel comfortable with in order to protect my income and what FOSS licenses allow.
  - Ajedi32 1y ago
    Fully agree with this sentiment. I do think though that disallowing "certain types of commercial use" is a poison pill that would prevent your project from getting any significant adoption. I think a better option would be something like GPL but with the "you can redistribute copies of this to anyone you like without paying me" part stripped out. (Maybe replaced with a provision that allows transferring your license to someone else, but then you're not allowed to use it afterwards.) The goal being to protect consumer freedom to exercise ownership rights over their software (including the ability to modify it) without simultaneously trying to abolish the copyright system and killing your own funding mechanism in the process.
  - MarsIronPI 1y ago
    I still think you'd get the part of the market that cares about creators. The part that doesn't would pirate anyway. Now, this is assuming they can determine that you are the original creator, but IMO this is what trademarks are for.
    - dns_snek 1y ago
      Sure, some would. But in the general case that's going to be a tiny fraction of the market. Why would I ever do that when I can simply not set myself up to be screwed and instead use a license that aligns with my definition of fairness? Remember that people regularly walk into small businesses and spend 15 minutes talking to an expert asking questions about the products they sell. As soon as they get quoted a price of $120 they scoff and order it from Amazon because it's $20 cheaper. Consumer price sensitivity is... extreme.
davisr 1y ago
I charge for copies of free software I wrote, an AGPLv3+ desktop application, and earn about $2k MRR from it. Most people don't care about your choice of license, they just want software that conveniently solves their problem(s). If they want to share it, that's fine. They're giving it to people who wouldn't have bought it anyway. If those grantees ever want an official copy, with updates and support, they come back to me. You see the same effect mirrored in illicit distribution of copyrighted works. Sharing movies increases box office revenue. Sharing albums increases music sales. The people who get a copy for no charge weren't going to buy a copy in the first place. When you expose them to the product, some percent go on to become fans, advertising the work, and perhaps giving money to support it. Read through my past comments from last year to find more info.
- andoando 1y ago
  The problem is with someone taking your whole software, branding and marketing it as their own and undercutting your service for half the price, not individual using it for personal reasons.
  - davisr 1y ago
    So what? That sounds like competition, which is healthy in a free market. And it's not a service, it's a copy. Customers are explicitly allowed to resell it, and they have. And I still earn enough cash to continue developing it. And I have the search engine top hits. And I have thousands of social media comments linking to my website. Copying a business isn't just about copying the product. They have to copy my reputation, too. And my sales channels. Stop being so afraid. Selling free software is good, and sustainable, and those who think otherwise are extremely naive, ignorant, or with ulterior motives.
    - andoando 1y ago
      Sure, link me to your codebase and I'll give it an active try and lets see what happens. There's no doubt putting up your source code makes your business much easier to copy. If I spent a year building something sophisticated with the intent of selling it, why would I give someone else, with possibly more resources to market, a free competition? It may have worked out for you, but I think so non nonchalant saying "its not a problem ever" is rather bold. This is a known problem even in the hardware space, where Chinese companies will copy an existing problem 1:1 and flood the amazon market with 20 different listings.

unethical_ban 1y ago

Charging for open source software is possible but improbable, and I respectfully say it is naive to think otherwise. Every open source product that takes in real money sells services and support, or they sell closed "premium" features. Oh, and the third bucket, philanthropy.

1oooqooq 1y ago

the people saying gpl cannot sell software is always bsd users, who always work for some company contracting with Boz allen Hamilton and such. It's never an honest opinion.

immibis 1y ago

It seems like B2B consumers pay a lot of money to get rid of that pesky "as is, without warranty" clause. It seems like almost every business that is paying for something they could do in-house for free, is basically paying for it because of this. They don't want to outsource the actual labour, per se - they want to outsource the blame when it goes wrong, even if the actual uptime percentage is identical or worse. Centralization is an advantage here - if we say "we're down because five other websites are down, sorry" it looks worse than "we're down because half the internet is down, sorry" More generally, they want to have a contract for services with someone. That's what's really meant by "support". Not merely being able to call tech support, but having people backing their services. The really big places have their own engineers, and the really small places can't afford it, but the middle-sized places would rather pay you to support them as needed, than hire someone on their side dedicated to managing your product. The illusion of support can also sell just as well as actual support. Just see Oracle vs Postgres...