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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

Your app looks great, but I won't even consider using it unless it's open source. I need to know I can modify it (for my own use), see what it does, and recompile it if I need to when I upgrade my operating system if you've stopped supporting it. I would have no problem paying you for software like this if I decide to use it, but I wouldn't use it without the source even if it were free. Yes, commercial open source software is a thing; a thing people often forget about. You might be worried that people will steal your program if it's open source. Some people will, just as they steal books, which are the most familiar commercial open source thing. But authors and publishers make a living anyway.

EDIT: Apparently the concept of commercial open source software is so confusing to some people that, bizarrely enough, they describe this comment as supporting the "free software" movement.

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This sounds like the orthodox "free software" position, which I think is espoused by a very small, ideological, and vocal segment of the general population. I think in practical terms, average people use software that's useful to them, regardless of whether it's open source, and regardless of the longevity of the operating system for which the program is compiled. (The lifetime of Windows or Mac OS, whatever it may turn out to be, is long enough for them.)

As an aside, my friends and I still use a closed-source tournament management Windows program whose last version was published in 1998. It's not the greatest, but it works well enough (and for many people in many use cases, "well enough" is more than plenty.)

We fought by pushing BillionsLOC of quality software because we believed in a defined freedom. (some actually did not care, for real, but most cared)

We made it a name, we made the rules by backing up our ideals with our code, and our definition of free software (sometimes great (python, Perl, postfix..) sometimes worthless (mine for instance ;) ).

Call me a vocal integrist. It may be true. But we all worked hard to achieve where we are today.

We fought to define Free Software in very precise way to backup our claim for freedom. CC (/NC) won't change the definition of free software without the people who defined it being a little pissed.

You cannot take our freedom away to define what free software is, because we all collectively took part in it thanks to theses licenses.

And for the record, I may be a so called integrists. But, making fun of my values because you don't like them or they don't suit you, is what integrists do.

Have to admit this makes me curious to know more about your contributions!

- a bot self hosted on my server to pickup girls on dating sites that conveniently disappeared;

- a lot of trolls (Don't check I am a real troll);

- some actual freelancing jobs where I was pretty much a failure;

- took part in a website in a an uninteresting minor foreign language about free software;

- and I took part in some of obscure gatherings where people talked about free software like benjamin.

I am an average no one (you can actually check my background, I am a failure without any false modesty with ultra minor contributions, but I am not really ashamed). I am little bit excessive, but I can make people smile while talking about free software.

I have the weired idea however it does not matter.

I really don't think any open source programming language will accept my revolutionary idea that objects should follow the 17 rules of linear algebra (I swear I am convinced my idea is as brilliant as checking PRNG with Taken's series, or using L1 geometry instead of Euclidean while working with computers, and I swear I know I will fail and I am a bit crazy). I think I may be the member of the family you don't want to show to your neighbors/fiancée. But still I am part of the family :)

It's kind of cool, though. There is nothing wrong in not being successful or as fun as linus torvalds. I am pretty happy with it and I guess I am not alone in not feeling alone doing free software without being a star. Maybe like probably http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ROG5728 A gun nerd that cares the truth is said about the H&K P11.

I think the idea is more important than who you are.

Even though I am really no one, it is fun, and I like it... the way it is... I am pretty conservative. Sorry.

>Your app looks great, but I won't even consider using it unless it's open source. I need to know I can modify it (for my own use), see what it does, and recompile it if I need to when I upgrade my operating system if you've stopped supporting it.

Yeah, but the parent doesn't have to care much about your use case (if he doesn't want to), because that's extremely atypical, and millions of units of proprietary software are sold every year just fine.

Why is that bizarre? The fact that you concentrate on your rights as the end user to modify the software is exactly what the Free Software movement defends, unlike Open Source which focuses on the superiority of the development process.

And the Free Software movement also supports selling your software. In the words of rms, "redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it."[1]

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

(1) I said nothing about any imaginary "rights" to modify software; I said that I would choose to avoid software that I couldn't modify, for practical reasons.

(2) I made an analogy to books to explain what I meant by commercial open source software. The author or publisher would retain the copyright, and I would have no rights to redistribute sources or compiled versions. This, of course, is directly contrary to what the free software movement advocates.

I thought even Microsoft had given in to OSI's definition of "open source". So you mean open source as in source available, like PGP was. Fair enough.

>And the Free Software movement also supports selling your software.

Yeah, but in a way that clashes with most real life ways to sell software. Basically, if you're not selling support or add-on services (or if your software doesn't need either) you can't really much sell "free software".

Sure, you'll find 2-3 people that have done it. I doubt you'll find 10.

I'm actually one of them :) the company I work for - ThinkOpen - is based on developing modules for, hosting and supporting a FOSS platform called Odoo, and there are hundreds like us worldwide.

I think you're underestimating the number of people who sell Free Software. NewsBlur, for example, is available on GitHub, yet still has thousands of premium users.

In the end, it's not like having a proprietary license will keep it from The Pirate Bay. As long as your price is reasonable and buying is less of a hassle than getting a free version, enough people will pay.

>ThinkOpen - is based on developing modules for, hosting and supporting a FOSS platform called Odoo, and there are hundreds like us worldwide. (...) NewsBlur, for example, is available on GitHub, yet still has thousands of premium users.

Both are examples of selling a service/add-ons (hosting, SaaS, etc). E.g the very examples I already gave as viable ways from making money from something open source (along with selling support).

This doesn't hold for most desktop software.

>In the end, it's not like having a proprietary license will keep it from The Pirate Bay.

No, but it will keep users buying it from the source (as opposed to feeling -rightly- entitled to just get it for free, if it was open source).

> And the Free Software movement also supports selling your software. In the words of rms, "redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it."

When that was written, redistribution was hard. The Internet did not yet exist. Redistribution often meant mailing a tape. Someone actually had to do work to redistribute.

Redistribution now is trivial and for most of us has a marginal cost too low to be wroth measuring. It's automated, and usually available from multiple sources.

The commercial open source model may work for Redhat because it caters to enterprise customers who need commercial support, but this is somewhat intellectually dishonest. Redhat doesn't sell software; it sells support. If you don't want support, you get CentOS.

If your users are ordinary people - not corporations that need to placate their boards - there is no reason to expect that you would be able to pay for development time by selling support.

If I wasn't able to contribute to the FLOSS I use, I would definitely buy Redhat even if I didn't need their commercial support, simply because they fund a lot of development work on the FLOSS I use.

"...this is somewhat intellectually dishonest. Redhat doesn't sell software; it sells support."

Not seeing the dishonesty. RedHat spends huge amounts of money developing software. They sell one version with support, they offer a slightly different version for free. What's dishonest?

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