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It’s one thing I’ve always struggled with organizations like GNU. There is a vested interest in convincing me of something as opposed to being as up front and obvious as possible.

They aren’t trying to teach me as much as they are trying to persuade me.

This ends up resulting in awkward doublespeak as you described.

I love GNU and truly want it to survive and prosper into the future. I feel like the younger audience is too aware of these tricks and the technique at this point does more harm than good. Instead or persuasion, it is losing trust. Which is sad because of all the organizations in tech(when you include for-profit companies) GNU is one of the organizations I can trust the most to act in my best interests.

It's frankly ridiculous to suggest the GNU philosophy is "disingenuous". The issues that motivated "free as in freedom" go back decades [0]. It was not some "disingenuous" attempt at "reducing the market value of software to zero". Not at all.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html

Although I agree that their purpose wasn't to reduce the market value of software to zero, it is the effect. That's why it's disingenuous to me. It's an attempt to route around an obvious truth: if you allow someone to distribute your software freely, you've set its market value to zero. Not sure how you can disagree with this.

You haven't offered any counterargument to that.

I don't see why something "going back decades" can be an argument on the validity of a philosophy.

"Free-as-in-beer" only makes sense if the customer is e.g. a student. Now that I have a real job and manage people, it's "free as in $200/hour employee time instead." It's like providing the ingredients for beer for free, and people can have free beer, if they agree to brew it themselves.

I want the free-as-in-freedom since if the vendor goes under, I can pick up the pieces myself. If my vendor goes Oracle and decides to milk me, I can find an alternative supplier.

I don't want free-as-in-beer because I'd rather pay a vendor $10 or $50 per month or something than pay my IT staff $100 or $200 per hour.

I'd also rather pay the original author $50 per month than pay an off-brand hosting company $25 per month because (1) I'll get better support (2) I'm not a douchebag.

> Now that I have a real job and manage people, it's "free as in $200/hour employee time instead."

Richard Stallman used to make that much consulting on GCC for clients -- in 1980s/early 90s dollars. His commitment to software freedom did not compel him to wear sackcloth and live as a pauper.

I've always been curious as to what did compel him to wear a sackcloth and live as a pauper...

He's also got the MacArthur back when a megabuck was real money.

RMS told a story about the introduction of a new printer at the AI lab. The gist was that the manufacturer of the new printer would not release the source code (which was also under claimed copyright). At the time, this was a novelty; code was released so that people could modify it to work with the rest of the hardware they happen to have.

The way RMS wrote of the event, I had the impression he felt shocked and betrayed. That was the inciting incident.

Stallman is a man whose idiosyncrasies intensified over the decades.

I think his current lifestyle was motivated in part by huffing his own farts (figuratively speaking) and believing his own hype. He thinks he's the free software prophet he's been cast as by admirers, and is deliberately renouncing the ways of the world, much as prophets did in times of old, and hippies do to the present day.

In essence, the freedom "free as in freedom" means you are free to pay nothing, or pay it to the off-brand hosting company.

As you say, "I'm not a douchebag" implies there's some kind of karma involved; when MySQL "went Oracle," the free-as-in-freedom choice of the developers was to start MariaDB and many in the community interpreted this as the developers' way of saying "I'm not a douchebag."

Oracle kind of has a reputation.

So in essence, if someone pays me when they were free to pay the off-brand hosting company, then it is a strong positive signal. Companies that Oracle-lock their customers are trading long-term profitability for revenue this quarter, as their savvy customers will immediately begin looking elsewhere for a competitor.

Basically if I grant you, the user, the freedom not to pay me, I can trust the signal that those who do pay me want more of my product.

Economies are all about signalling.

No. I'm not free to pay nothing. I'm free to pay:

* My IT guy $200 per hour. If maintaining a technology takes a day a month -- which is wildly optimistic -- that's $1600 per month

* The organization which developed the tool e.g. $50-$200 per month

* A random outsourcing organization $10-$50 per month

By making your software free software, I will still pay you, but I know that:

1. If you do decide to spike prices, I can go to the off-brand company or to my IT guy. You better provide better service than the off-brand at lower prices than my IT guy.

2. If you do go out of business, I can go to my IT guy.

It's all about power dynamics. You don't have the option to f- me, and by having taken away that option, you've made it more likely I'll buy from you. It's often just simple good business.

Oracle's business model is largely about buying up companies with large locked-in entrenched bases, spiking prices while lowering costs, and milking cash cows as the cows gradually die. They did that to Java and a few others. Free software means I can't get Oracled too badly.

Some companies take a middle ground by e.g using open APIs. For example, AWS has services which have better price/performance than free software, but maintain compatibility. I'll be more likely to use those than proprietary alternatives because if AWS decided to Oracle me, I can switch to the free software version. There are systems like git, where essential business value is free software, so I can move my code out and around if Microsoft decides to oracle me, but where there is a significant proprietary value-add.

Your value to customer goes up with:

100% free > hybrid models > proprietary

Your barriers to competitors go the other way.

This isn't just signaling. It's power dynamics. Companies send out false signals all the time. This is a hard barrier.

The right business model depends on your market and technology. I've mostly done free software, and that's mostly a matter of choice -- I've picked businesses where 100% free makes business sense.

The signal I am receiving from your businesses is one that would make me only do business with you as a last resort, and then I would lock you in with contracts and spend a lot of time carefully studying everything.

In other words, I'm signalling that the power-dynamics players end up costing too much.

Fair enough. Fortunately, if you don't like me, you're welcome to take my code, and hire someone else to host it for you. There's a whole ecosystem of folks who will do that for you too, and quite a few of them are quite competent. Most of what I do is 100% pure free software.

I used to do business-on-a-handshake too. Nowadays, I don't try to "lock [customers] in with contracts," but I do "spend a lot of time carefully studying everything" to make sure things are guaranteed fair to both sides. I'd advise the same, but until you've been down that road once or twice, I suspect you're right that we might not get along. I was there too at one point.

The business-on-a-handshake crowd is a mixture of honest people and con artists. I was told by more seasoned mentors that good contracts make good partnerships, and now I believe that philosophy.

I'm not arguing against free software. I love free software.

I'm not arguing against the various business models that surround free software, such as vendor support contracts.

I'm arguing that GNU seems uncomfortable with what seems to me to be a self-evident truth: As soon as I grant you the freedom to use my software in whatever way you like, including for distribution, that software is effectively free-in-price moving forward.

And that's not a bad thing! What I DO think is bad is going to great lengths to avoid accepting that truth, or to avoid talking about it.

Free software is free in every sense of the word, no matter what GNU wants to believe.

The only model that seems to work with GNU's philosophy while also compensating the developer fairly is that you have to create the software, or a demo of the software, and then do a kickstarter style fundraising effort BEFORE you release it. You can have it completely done, but in essence the first customer doesn't get the software until you get paid. Then they are free to do whatever they want with it once you release it. Updates can be released on the same model. NOBODY gets it until you can support yourself on the income before releasing it into the wild, because once you do, there's no way to get compensated without some kind of support contract (which is no guarantee) or restricting the user from doing what they want with their own bits.

Make no mistake, closed source mostly works out the same way except the "pre-funding" tends to come from VCs and traditional investing.

Well, that's certainly one model. But I don't think it's the only one.

There's a lot of ways to make money around free software.

But pretending that you can maintain the price of the software itself after you've given every buyer the right to sell or give it away for free is silly. It's not silly to give it away. It's not silly to sell it once and accept that it's not free. But it IS silly to pretend that's not what you're doing.

It's an interesting approach, I have not seen it used (much?) for free software. Are there prominent examples that I'm not aware of?

One problem with this would be ongoing software maintenance. This could be great to launch a new piece of software; how do you fund the maintenance?

I agree with what you say, but I think there are valid points in the beer vs speech part.

I agree with you that it seems impossible to have free as in speech software that isn't also free as in beer, but you can have free as in beer software that's a gateway to vendor lock-in, for example.

Exactly. The OP correctly argued that libre practically implies free-as-in-beer, but I think the point of the distinction is to argue that free-as-in-beer doesn't imply libre. So it's a useful distinction.

This is certainly true. It's very much possible (and common) to give away software without giving away any rights to it.

If that was the only point GNU was trying to make, I'd be in full support.

But that doesn't seem to be their only point. As I read it, they're arguing that freedom-of-speech does not imply freedom-from-cost. And I think that's nonsense (again, after the first sale).

Am I wrong to read their philosophy this way?

You are misunderstanding what these terms actually mean. Free as in freedom basically implies free as in price. No one is hiding this. Free as in price does not imply free as in freedom. Free as in freedom is a lot stronger of a concept than free as in price.

You've stumbled upon one of the many benefits and consequences of free as in freedom. It should be obvious that the market value of anything free as in freedom will be zero. If you're an American citizen, I'll sell you freedom from government censorship for $5.

I don't think I misunderstand the terminology at all.

My point was that "free as in freedom" implies free as in price. That's literally what I said.

I do acknowledge that I appear to be in disagreement with many people about what GNU's point is when they insist "it's not about price".

To me, "it's not about price" means you're trying to say that price has nothing to do with freedom.

For others, "it's not about price" simply means that's not the focus, or not the only point, or not the main point. Which is a fair and perhaps more accurate understanding of GNU's point.

I could very well be mistaken about GNU's intent. Judging by the amount of downvotes I'm getting, I'm clearly in a minority. But I remain unconvinced.

It's not about the price, because merely being Freeware is not the same and not the point.

It seems to me that it is, at least in part, about price.

It's not the only thing it's about. But it's definitely a big part of it.

Debian is free software. You can purchase Debian install CDs for a nominal price. You are free to share your Debian install CDs with others as much as you want. This is free as in freedom, even though you paid money for it.

I would argue you're buying the physical medium, not the software itself. But your point is well taken.