Free (open source) is good. Free (cost) is bad? | Hacker News Reader

Free (open source) is good. Free (cost) is bad?

lunduke.substack.com

24 pointsGuyNumberFive12 comments

Gratis is good. Libre is good. The “if you dont pay you are the product” only makes sense for services with ongoing cost. I paid nothing for my Arch Linux and add negligible load on update servers which are mirrored by academic institutions worldwide. You cannot argue that my machine or me is now productized for Arch. Not everything needs a monetary price tag associated, however I do agree that everything has a cost, in a abstract economic sense.

I hadn't paid attention to Lunduke, was he always this off with his thinking?

He completely disregards societal benefits to libre software (apart from educational advantages). Libre software's bigger impact on my life has been my way of thinking: on morality, on digital liberties, on sharing and societies.

He supposes that everyone is in it for the money and that money can only come from all users paying for the software (otherwise they don't value that software).

He begins with

> I've been an advocate for "Free and Open Sourse Software" for a long, long time

and ends with:

> That same software should also provide source code — at least in some form, in some way. At least most of the time.

Of course there are arguments for paying for software either individually or collectively through various ways. Unfortunately, the author does not take under account _at all_ how and why gratis software works now, the relationship basis of libre & gratis, examples of FLOSS gratis software that successfully has well fed developers and other where development stalled due to money.

There is a multitude of interesting ways to look at this issue but this is not one of them. It basically reads "you should pay for all software you use, otherwise you don't appreciate it". And it doesn't even deeply go into that either; would the user pay once and have a lifetime license? Would they pay for updates? Would everyone globally pay equally? He mentions 20$ for the browser but not everyone lives in a $ country.

Pff, a waste of time this article.

Beep beep! Obvious police here! All software has cost, in the form of labor. Free software is different because it doesn't associate a /price/ to that cost. Important distinction, because they are totally different concepts that barely have the same units.

Cost: the inputs of time/treasure to produce something

Price: the value sought for something on the market to compensate its creator for its cost.

Anyway he's saying that free software should have a price, which is tough because customary definitions of the 'something' being priced/sold are inadequate.

'things' we have tried to price when trying to offset the costs of OSS:

1. support

2. good vibes from the developers

3. CD-ROMs

4. 'premium' features

5. ??? (add yours)

A lot of free software has its origins in the author solving a problem for themselves. The reward was the solution to their problem.

Much of my contributions to open source, and what I've made available in terms of projects, is quite literally just "this functionality wasn't available", or "this was poor UX", and offering my solution to whoever wants to incorporate it into their stack, or into the main project.

This exactly. I'm writing code because I have a problem to solve, and I don't mind sharing the solution.

It's like sharing construction/tool tips while working in a shop or maker space.

Does my time have cost? Sure, but I'm there because I enjoy it. And the nifty thing about software is that it's basically free to distribute.

I'll add - I don't provide any support or feedback for my software at all to users. I don't find that fun - so I don't do it.

Except someone actually paid for those construction tools, and many developers are not even willing to do that.

No, but they paid for the computer - which seems like exactly the same situation.

Physical items that have per item costs? Pay what the item costs.

Digital items that have no per item costs? Pay what the item costs (nothing).

Your time? If you want to be paid, start a commercial venture (aka - a company that charges). If you're doing it because you like it? Charge what you'd like - in my case nothing.

Sure, eventually all major software stacks will turn into SaaS anyway.

The early free software was developed by the people using it, e.g. Emacs, GNU tools, Linux.

GPL is a code sharing agreement among the developers. You get value from the product and contribute back to it. If you need features, you add it yourself. If you find bugs, you submit a patch. The value is shared, and so is the cost, and so is the burden of maintenance.

It is only when people started commercializing free software that it became a problem.

Even Bill Gates was actually selling BASIC as Free Software, he had to make it proprietary because people were not paying him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

On another note, a lot of free software is also produced by universities, they get paid by research grants, and they don't need users to pay them. They do usually require attribution which increases the citation count on their papers.

> Free (open source) is good. Free (cost) is bad?

Original title was “Free (open source) is good. Free (cost) is bad.”

FTR, Lunduke not highlighted third one type pf free software: "Free (no cost)"

Sounds similar to what Bruce Perens said in the latter half of a recent talk (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27961940) about the corporatization of FLOSS and the need for a post-open source license that's sustainable for developers.

Basically we have gone full circle back to public domain and shareware models, they just get called something different.

And yes, back in those days, getting the source was possible for some stuff, after getting the paid version.

And naturally there were the books and magazines with source listings, which most authors also got paid for having them published.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com