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Comment by throwaway4799 | Hacker News Reader

No one is entitled to a business model. If your userbase has a culture of being (rightfully, in my opinion) defiant toward proprietary products, that's for you to remedy. If you can't make any money from ancilliary uses of your product (support, hosting, whatever) maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place.

Free software is strictly more ethical than nonfree software. Any attempt at arguing otherwise basically boils down to a rationalization of 'but I want to make money', which is not a tenable ethical stance. I'm not saying it's wrong per se, but it doesn't inspire goodwill or good sentiments either. Trying to deride people with a strong sense of ethics regarding software production and use by comparing them to religious fanatics is misguided as best, malicious at worst.

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What if we change "software" for "work" in your argument? "Free work is strictly more ethical than nonfree work. Any attempt at arguing otherwise basically boils down to a rationalization of 'but I want to make money', which is not a tenable ethical stance."

We can argue that not all software is work, but some certainly are, and many times the final product is used to make money. Like any other work or product of work.

That's why I consider an extremist position on FOSS (Stallmanesque) comparable to fanaticism.

You did not only change the word "software" to "work". You also changed the word "free" to "free". Just because those two words happen to be spelled the same way in the English language, that does not change the fact that they mean different things.

I agree that the game of changing software and work is fun and interesting in a certain light, but not really meaningful.

At the core of all of this is something that people here just don't seem to want to wade into (understandably): capitalism does not have an ethical foundation. Capital is limited, for some to have, some have to forego (usually not by choice, or laziness, but by systemic force). That is not an ethical or moral system. Yes, we are talking about software here, but so many of the points made here boil down to those that are comfortable with capitalism and (so-called) democracy.... and those that see the major major flaws in it and are trying to actively pursue something better.

> maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place.

I assume that the author happens to enjoy food and shelter, how strange of them.

Are you implying that the author is so much reliant on this specific business model that they would likely end up homeless and starving to death if they were deprived of it?

Don’t be silly, no.

But the chance that they would quit this job and go work on open source code for a living is about 0%. Would you rather they go make proprietary code for a megacorp instead? Nobody seems to single out Google engineers for abuse when it comes to FOSS vs proprietary, it’s always the little guys who get all the abuse.

He did not get abuse. He got one or two responses two years ago that said that they'd prefer this to be FOSS, I'd prefer Google's tools to be FOSS too.

Context. I’m talking about GP.

I'm certainly not trying to deride open source. For the record, we have plenty of Linux users paying for the product (see previous article), but I simply don't understand why some people won't buy the product because it's not open source. I mean it's their choice - fine. But it's also our choice on whether we open source or not. No need to abuse us for this choice. I am trying to remedy the issue - I'm writing about it.

As for free software being more ethical, I'm just not sure what that means? You think because someone is giving their time the motive is always altruistic and therefore superior choice? I'm not trying to antagonise you. Just asking the question. I don't think of it as a zero sum game. You can add to humanity and get paid for it. I'm no libertarian, but if you add value, create jobs, contribute to taxes...

I don't think I was in any way abusing. I said that your attitude does not inspire goodwill or good sentiments. You're trying to make money, like everyone. That's fine, not everyone is a monster for not writing free software, giving to charity, whatever. I just don't see why you should feel entitled to make the money the way you're attempting to. Your userbase feels strongly about some issues and these are the same people you're trying to convince to give them money to you. Calling them fundamentalists will not help or solve anything, and I can't emphatize with "If only more of my users agreed with me so I could make more money".

> I simply don't understand why some people won't buy the product because it's not open source

Because we want the freedom to use it however we wish, to modify it to behave as we wish and to share those modifications with our friends. That's why I don't use proprietary software any more than I have to: I like freedom.

I'd be interested in paying for your product if it was open source. Having an open source product doesn't stop you from selling it.

> I simply don't understand why some people won't buy the product because it's not open source.

Because Microsoft is putting ads into its email application.

The software people pay for.

Used to be, you could say "If you didn't pay for it, you're the one being sold."

Well, their users damned well did pay for it, and they're still being sold.

You can say you'd never do that.

I'm sure Microsoft would have said they'd never do it five years ago, too.

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