[I was David B.]

Hi all,

I don't understand this open source/freeware world.

I find a lot of great software out there that is free for everyone.
This morning I have read a short note that the developers of video lan client are desperately looking for donations to BUY A USED POWERMAC G5. They need it for testing their software on the mac platform.

This is one example that clearly shows: open source/freeware is a risk. People develop great software (vlc IS great) and they risk the future of their development by not asking money for it. I don't understand whats going on in the minds of software users who want premium quality software, that was developed in hundreds of hours of very smart and well educated people, without paying a dime for it.

Excellent work is worth money!

The developers need it to finance their work and make sure that the product will be available also in a couple of years.

What is the economical side of free software?
Qualified people, who might make their money with a day job, work for free on projects they love (this is the only way for me to understand why they do it.).
Doing this, they work to bring software companies, that pay taxes and pay (their) salaries out of business. They work to replace tax paying companies. For nothing. As a side effect they destroy their market and help to reduce their own salaries. All this in their spare time, in the evenings and in the nights (this is a presumption). And while not asking for money they don't work to establish a future self paying business for them.

So I honestly ask: Are these people mad? Or dumb?
Please tell me why this is wrong.

[Big Mac]

I would respond that most of the people developing freeware/donationware either do so in their spare time out of love or do not believe there is sufficient value to justify nagging people for license fees. A developer of a very successful piece of software really should charge at least a modest fee in recompense, unless that developer is independently wealthy. There is a similar dynamic with open source development, but open source developers have additional reasons for contributing to the betterment of respective projects.

[Millennium]

The idea behind most "free software" is not that software shouldn't be sold; it's that permission to use software shouldn't be sold. The idea is similar to the idea that permission to listen to a song or read a book shouldn't be sold. A fair amount of effort goes into researching and developing alternative business models for software, which sell things other than simple permission to use it.

Of course, this is more troublesome than simply selling restrictive EULAs, and so most open-source developers don't bother with it. They just give everything away (you may have heard the phrase "free beer"; this is what it means).

The biggest problem with the whole thing is the English language, which has only one word to describe the very different concepts of "liberated from oppression" and "lacking a price". RMS' childish insistence on continuing to use this word has hurt the "Free Software" movement greatly wherever the English language is spoken. I suspect that its increased popularity in non-English-speaking regions comes at least in part from the fact that its translated names are often more accurate than the original, and do not require the same sorts of explanation.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by I was David B.

Excellent work is worth money!

So donate some. End of story.

-t

[Mastrap]

On a side, but related, note: I did some research recently about the split between commerical/non commercial content on the internet. The result is 40% commercial, 60% non commercial with the non commercial part growing.

A lot of people are doing a lot of things out of love. And because they can.

[Sven G]

Money isn't the only "compensation" for work: the pleasure of doing and having done something useful and even beautiful can be a much better motivation than money. Of course, if one "desperately" needs money, software isn't, probably, the best way to get it, anyway.

The equation money = happiness is one of the most perverted things in our society, indeed.

OK, money is (still) needed, but it shouldn't be the final goal for everything that is done.

I wouldn't call Stallman "childish": certainly, he has some "prima donna" characteristics, but that's also understandable, being a true "guru" on the free software front - and without Stallman, probably, many of the UNIX things of OS X wouldn't even exist, who knows...

I think he sincerely believes in his ideals, but sometimes isn't quite understood, especially by the "new" (?) generations.

The real problems (regarding money, etc.) are elsewhere, at much "higher" (but also basic) levels...

[tooki]

Much free software (either kind) is free because the developer needed a program to do something, wrote it, and then decided to let others benefit from the work they already did.

tooki

[wataru]

Originally Posted by turtle777

So donate some. End of story.

-t

Exactly I just donated $10. I've also donated to plenty of other projects, like NeoOffice/J, Desktop Manager, CarbonCopyCloner, and a bunch more I can't remember right now. And some people donate to me for my software. What goes around comes around.