[Warning: long rant ahead.] On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Shaun Ladewig wrote: > How many of us have done anything to support the open source business > model? Sure some of us write software and contribute that way, but how > many of us have paid for tech support... or a little extra money sent to > the developers of a piece of software...
I suppose I have a different outlook on the Free Software business model (to me, "open source" means something completely different from "Free[d] Software"). To me, it seems like much of Free Software wasn't created with the view to make money from it. In fact, there are a lot of programs whose authors refuse to take money for them. This idea of the "poor starving coder who gives his livelihood away for free" seems quite foreign to me. To me, most Free Software begins by scratching an itch. I need some software to do something, or Company A needs some software to do something, and so I program Package Q (or A pays me to program Package Q). For whatever reason (say Microsoft already has a monopoly in this area) Q is unmarketable; it would be basically impossible to make money by selling it. So I distribute it under a Free, Open Source license. Then people from around the world are free to help develop, maintain, and improve my program. Pretty soon, it becomes something quite useful to many people worldwide. Let's say people really benefit from this program. Are they obligated somehow to pay me for it? If I were the coder, I would feel almost immoral to take money for this project. First of all, there are many more people around the world who contributed to it than just me--how should I divide the check amongst them? What about all the non-programmer users who submitted bug reports? What about people who wrote documentation? What about people who programmed add-ons? Is there any possible way to distribute the money equitably? Perhaps I should get all the money since I was the one that started the project. Well, as far as I'm concerned, I already /was/ paid for the program--either the utility it gave me originally (the reason I programmed it), or Company A paid me for my time. Why should I get any money above and beyond this? There may be instances of programmers who create a program entirely on their own with the potential to be closed-source and sellable, but decide to Open Source it and distribute it for free because of some personal ethical feelings or some such, but I think these cases are few and far between. That's why I don't consider "just using" the software because it's free to be "freeloading" off other people's work--that's why they made it freely distributable! They didn't have to choose such a license if they didn't want to. They could have made it Shareware, in which case it /would/ be freeloading to continue to use the software without contributing to the author. But while I don't consider contributing money to authors or distributors of Free Software to be necessary (although if the authors or distributors welcome such, do feel free!), I /do/ consider it to be ethically appropriate to pay attention to how you /can/ contribute, non-monetarily, to Free Software. You don't have to be a programmer, although that's usually the easiest way. Bug reports, writing documentation and help files, or even just copying the software around as much as possible and encouraging others to use the program--to me, all these are contributing to the quality of Free Software. If you want to give Red Hat money, give them money for what they do! i.e., if Linux is very useful, but you don't ever need support for it, you shouldn't feel obligated to buy support in order to support "Linux"--Red Hat wasn't responsible for creating a large percentage of the distribution they sell. They are merely the /distributors/. However, if buying a boxed set is really useful for you so you don't have to download it on your modem connection, buy a boxed set! It's useful, it's worth your money, so buy it. That supports Red Hat; it gives them money in exchange for a service they actually provide. /However/, I do think that there _is_ a place for direct monetary support in a lot of instances. For example, it's always seemed amazing to me that places such as sourceforge, freshmeat, rpmfind, etc. all exist. I can't figure out any real way for sites such as sourceforge to actually make money. But imagine how much such a simple site has contributed to the Open Source and Free Software movements. Those are the kinds of places I think really deserve our money for the services they provide. ~ Ross ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
