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Comment by cracrecry | Hacker News Reader

I can't see where the problem lies. Open Source is free as in freedom, but you can charge for it. E.g Long time ago I paid for Suse Linux distributions.

I see everyday University's and companies laboratories and offices paying tens of thousands of dollars for proprietary software a year. It is not unreasonable to pay hundreds or thousands for OSS if with that you support development on the free.

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To add to this...

I remember buying physical media to get my first distros of Linux. The source was open but the builds/dists were what I was paying for.

Open source doesn't mean free distributions/builds or free support.

If you look at the open source definition[1] it has to do with the source and what you can do with it. The key theme here is the source itself.

I've spent a significant amount of my time around open source and having a healthy functional ecosystem of people around it is important. For that to happen you have to solve for the financial parts.

Note, I'm not endorsing or rejecting this document foundation move. I've not thought about it enough to do so.

[1] https://opensource.org/osd

Ha yes this is a nice memory. Getting Debian 3 cd’s and then failing to do my first install because obviously with only one PC you can’t look up a guide online. (My dad always bought the big OS manuals, like 30 cm of paper per MS DOS-version, but this was my first time on my own.) Struggle, struggle to get to text only. Go onto IRC for help. All channels block you because “don’t use root for online”. Well another few days and user created and even X works. Hmm, no gaming on Linux. Miss that. Back to XP. Decade later. Proton is a gift. Installation is easy. Did pick up the Linux basics old school. Never looked back. Decades fly by.

Was it IRC channels blocking you or the servers themselves?

The channels. They kicked you after a few minutes if you were root. And that made it really hard and probably quite funny to ask for help / pointers. Hey, there’s that stubborn kid again.

It’s even (still) in their guidelines [1]!

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianIRCChannelGuidelines

I see one problem with this - for outside contributors. If I contribute a patch to a project that is free of charge, then my contribution is on the same altruistic grounds as other devs' contributions - for both of us the profit from our contributions is the continued existence and improvement of the software. However, if an organisation is charging money in some way, then I do not profit equally - I get better software, but the organisation gets both better software and money, which they pay to their staff developers. That is, my contribution has calculable monetary value and someone else gets paid for it.

Obviously for small contributions, e.g. writing or updating a bug report, or fixing some trivial one-line bug, the amount is insignificant and not worth thinking about. I'm thinking more about larger contributions - extra features, tricky bugs, etc - stuff that takes weeks or months to develop. You can expect outside contributors to want some guarantee of getting paid for large contributions if you're a project that is actively monetised in some way, even if the software is also available completely for free.

True. But the approach we're talking about here is more akin to fundraising. The sum is fairly nominal, and there are alternative free ways of getting the software.

So long as you can refuse to pay and just get the source, build it yourself and use it for free.

That's not actually required for free software (as in freedom), but once you buy you need to get the source as well, and should be able to do with it whatever you want.

E.g. the GPL mandates not "you will make the source freely available", it mandates "you will make the source available to everyone who receives the software".

Furthermore, the Document Foundation will still be offering free downloads of LO for macOS, they just add another way of getting it that does cost money.

More than that, it allows any recipient to redistribute. You can buy one copy for $10 and immediately give it to everyone else.

That's what I mean by "should be able to do with it whatever you want" :)

This is going off-topic, but I'm curious. Does this mean I can take a GPL project, modify it, then sell the binaries+source for $$$ and refuse to release my modifications for free?

Yes, of course. You are required to make the patches of your modifications available under the GPL, but you are not required to distribute your modified binaries for free.

> You are required to contribute patches of your modifications back to the upstream project

That is not required by the GPL, you only have to distribute source to people you distribute binaries to. Those people can decide to redistribute it (or not) to anyone (including upstream) of course, and they are bound by the same terms as you are.

Yeah, edited.

Yes, as long as you make the source available to customers under a GPL-compatible license (i.e. with no restrictions on their modification or distribution), you can charge whatever you like.

Though it only takes a single buyer publishing your changes to potentially undermine such a business model.

I think Red Hat’s approach is that they will refuse to sell you any more versions if you do that. I’m not sure if I like it or not.

Not sure how they'd enforce that since you can republish anonymously. Also not sure how the various CentOS alternatives that have popped up in recent years would work in that case, they'd need to find a new person to buy it every time there's an update.

With CentOS, Red Hat pulled a cunning move: they started supporting the project themselves, then after some time changed its direction from a repackaged white-box Red Hat to a fast-moving prerelease Red Hat. Now it's much harder for a bigger business to decide which of the CentOS-lookalikes to choose.

Your modifications will be GPL licensed so you still need to provide the source code for your modifications.

Roughly speaking, with GPL binaries can cost someone money but source code is always free of charge.

> Long time ago I paid for Suse Linux distributions.

The box set even came with a book.

Pins and a plushy mascot as well.

Not by default, or at least not the 5.x/6.x versions I bought here in Germany.

I never got the plushy mascot :(

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