It has been long time since I posted anything which has a lot of debate in the background, any way today I'll talk about the concept of Free Software (I am not talking about Open Source, the title is really obvious, it's about FREE SOFTWARE).
So now here you are what I am thinking, every single profession in the whole world is for money, Doctors earn money from sick people, mechanical engineers earn money from people who owns any mechanical equipments, plumbers earn money from people who need plumping, even Hookers gain money from people seeking pleasure, so as you see every freaken profession on the planet earn money from servicing people who need this profession's services, so why the hell software must be different?!!!
What's the different between someone who spends 8 hours a day writing code and someone else who spends 8 hours a day making sex for money?!!
What?! A hooker makes more efforts?!
How do people measure it here?! How do they think?!! In my opinion, if there's a service which need to be free, it will me medical services because this is something that no one can live without it, but in software it's different, software is luxury, it's either for business or entertainment, so it doesn't make any freaken sense for someone to spend 6 months working day and night for free for someone else to use his efforts to gain money, or for someone to use this software when he gets bored (i.e. computer game), so why a service which is a primary need for any human costs money and a luxury service like software needs to be for free?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So now this is my $1,000,000 question for people who believes that software should be free:
How should software developers earn money?!!
I think I've some answers:
1- They should work on this in their spare time->whoever says this is an idiot because if this is the case, we'd return again into Stone Age.
2- They shouldn't seek money, they are doing this for mankind->Whoever say this is even more idiot that saying #1, I could accept this when I get medical services for free (in any time I should go to any doctor and do whatever I want for free), plumping services for free (in any time I should get a plumper to do whatever I want for free), hookers services for free (in any time I should get a hooker to do whatever I want for free), when all these services become free then we can accept that developers should work for mankind only!
You're more than welcome to give me any other reasons because I can't really understand the concept behind this strange wave!!!!
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Free Software, How?!
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9 comments:
Actually Meshref - you are mistaken. There are companies out there that do make money from Free Software and there are ways to make it work...Free Software has its place in my opinion, and to be honest, I would not have learned as much as I have if it wasn't for Free Software (I did it while at Uni because I enjoyed it)...
1. Support is a big way to make money off Free Software. There are many big companies that do this. While the source code is out there and free, a simple company and/or person does not necessarily have the expertise to set it up and install it. So you hire a company to do it for you...Some examples: RedHat (they compete with the likes of IBM and Microsoft to get Linux deployments in companies and support contracts). Redhat also sells boxed versions of its products. There is also MySQL which you can pay them for support services. I know some open source companies in Egypt that go to customers find out what they want/need and try to provide a solution through Open Source software (would make things cheaper than Windows)
2. Training. Redhat does it through certifications
3. Development. Just because your product is open source, it does not mean you can't make money off development. People can pay you money to write new tools/apps and/or to fix bugs within a certain period of time and/or to create enhancements to a product.
4. Niche Markets. There are some markets that have open source products, but the general expertise in it is lacking...For example, have you ever heard of Asterix? It is an open source VoIP/PBX solution...For complicated setups (setting up a PBX for a small/medium/large companies) it can be a complicated process and many companies just pay other companies to do it. Plus, it sells hardware ;)
5. Web Services - you could have an open source platform and then charge people a sort of "subscription fee" for the service (due to bandwidth/storage space). Ex: Wordpress
6. Advertising. This might be a bit related to the above - but look at Google for example (using customized free/open source software)...Look at different open source blogging services
Additionally - it is not just money that motivates people to do open/free software! Part of the reasoning is that software are like sciences - the knowledge needs to be shared for progress to happen...
Think of it like this...Drug companies and government/non-profit foundations are both working on cures for various diseases. Now, if a drug company finds a solution, it will package up the product, patent the hell out of it and sell it for a really high price to recoup R&D costs (ex. HIV mediciation) and no one will be able to find out what this cure is or release a similar product - if the government or non-profit foundation does it, they will probably release it for cost to the people....
Same mentality with software companies...But the difference in my mentality is - I believe Microsoft does an amazing/phenomenal job of providing great, easy-to-use software that just works, which I consider an added value that is well worth the cost.
As I said, it is not just money that motivates people...Some people do this as a hobby (think non-CS people or people without CS degrees), some people do it as learning opportunities, some people use it as a way to break into the industry to get some programming experience on their CVs, some people do it for the money too (think of all those open source companies that were founded and are successful!)
Ali you say "learning" and at first I say "I am not talking about open source", so forget about learning for now :)
1- Not every single project can support the "support methodology", one example for this is video games, what kind of "support for money" can be there?!
2- Training falls in the same category as support, not every single software product needs training.
3- Again, I said "FREE" not "OPEN" you can still have open source and not free, and vice versa, my post here is about "FREE" not "OPEN" :)
When you need to generalize something "i.e. all software must be free" then all the points you've mentioned must apply to all software products, but in reality many of them can't have those point ever, I mentioned Video Games before, but you can add products Word processing applications, compression programs, etc.
M. Meshref,
I have a comment here. Free software is about freedom "free as in freedom". It's not free-ware.
Technically, it's not Free Software unless the source code is enclosed. Yes you can have opensource that's not free, but not the vice versa. Every free software has the source code accessible, and inheritly (by Freedom property) an open source.
Freedom here is the ability to modify, redistribute for money or for free. Practically, major FOSS's are zero-$.
At the end, the license rules.
I'm not an advocate for converting every piece of software to FOSS, but in general, I enjoyed the benefits of software like Linux LaTeX, GCC, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, Eclipse (I run a lot of them) without charge. Am I a lazy person who like to get everything for free? maybe :)
IMHO, the most effective model is allowing a zero-charge version for you know showcase purposes & a licensed version for commercial production. Like what trolltech company is doing with Qt Toolkit. Also, I like the following model (esp the part when customer lawyers assign the ownership of the improvements to him to turn around GPL :) http://paybills.notlong.com
It's still an endless open debate.
Frankly speaking, if I'm to have my own software company I would think twice before writing my license draft, or at least for the end-user part.
Regards,
-Mustafa
Oh God, I said before I am not talking about OPEN SOURCEEEEEEEEEE
And I am not talking about "Freedom" and know the difference between free and freedom.
I am talking about people who are saying that software must be for free (where free = without money, with no cost, for nothing, for free, etc)
In my opinion, every work must have something in return, software is like any other freaken work, people still spend time and thoughts on their products and they must expect something in return.
Open source or not open source is not my context here, I don't care whether the software I buying is open or closed or anything else, what I care that if I spend 1 hours working I must get something in return.
I may change my concept in this if you can get me medications, and everything else for free, when I see a hocker who's spending time with people for free then I may change my opinion.
And I disagree with you, software for money shouldn't be for commercial customers only, I can spend 1 year making a video game and then because the customers won't use it for commercial purposes it must be free, this is really crazy, and let me ask you one question, in your profile you say that you work in Education field, so are you working for free?! (knowing that your customers are not using your services for commercial pursposes)
I'm not talking about OPEN SOURCEEEEEEEEEE too :) Also, I don't talk about difference between free and freedom.
I'm talking about FREE SOFTWARE, by definition of R. Stallman, the founder of FSF. That's not freeware. I assume you know the difference between FREEWARE, and FREE SOFTWARE. free software can be sold for money and have like two pages definition.
In that context, free software is by definition obligatory to be Open source. However, I didn't talk about Open source here. If you read the article in the link, it's about ONE of the free software models.
>I am talking about people who are
>saying that software must be for
>free = without money
either they are freaks, or they don't understand free software movement (I meet a lot of Egyptian advocating for FOSS with bothering to read the definition by FSF)
Yes, I agree that everyone must be paid for every single second of work. Free software is not against that.
May be in the commercial license thing, I'm a little biased to models of software library writers. However, I have never said that free software model can fit everywhere. For example games, or in general end users of course: no. I wouldn't do it. If you read the last lines of my first comment (did you?) you will find it obvious:
>I would think twice before writing
> my license draft, or at least for
>the end-user part.
-Mustafa
ps. you are angry like "Malcolm X"
you are angry like "Malcolm X" ?
Yeah :) Malcolm X, a black movement & civil rights leader in US 1960s. He was very angry man (at least in his own words).
It's a joke! I feel that are always angry in your posts.
A developer can offer his software product with or without source code for free for reputation or for certain marketing strategies, like IE or media player from MS for example. But I don't think this is what we are talking about here. I think we are talking about people who beleive its their right to have any software for free. People who beleive in the proverb "Hardware is for sale. Software is for free" if we may say. People similar to those who pirate movies, dvd's, songs, books, and zillion other intellectual properties. Of course no one accepts this fact. It isn't arguable as you suggest in your post. I think everyone agrees that it is wrong and is just like robbery.
However, just like theives have a Robin Hood, the pirates have some philosophical concepts that they sometimes use to justify their evil deeds. For example as Ali says, for pharmaceutical companies, they get their intellectual property pirated on the basis that pirates want to help the poor sick people and protect them from the drug market monopoly. Similarly, books get pirated because the students can't pay US$70 for every book they buy in poor countries.
So you see, like automotive manufacturers are using Newton's Laws to design vehicles but not paying royalty for it. They think science should be free. Knowledge should be left in the open domain.
@elsheikhmh: yeah may be sometimes I post in angry words :D
@ams: No, what I mean is people who say: "Software Products must be free", and they mean that people should develop software products for free, this is really stupid.
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