Open Source: Free as in "Free"

blog
41

Jeff, seriously, you really believe this:

“Contributing code to an open source project is a far greater extravagance than any monetary contribution could ever be. It’s also infeasible for 99 percent of the audience-- those who have both the time and the ability-- which makes it an even more extravagant demand.”

It’s not THAT hard to contribute a PATCH file when the project includes the source or a debug build includes PDBs. I’ve contributed fixes to a half dozen projects in the last year or so. Projects I didn’t pay for, but projects I needed to get the job done - and bugs I needed fixed.

Considering that programmers are downloading these apps to support their code, is it THAT much to ask that 1% of them contribute a patch occassionally?

Case in point - there’s at LEAST 20 bugs that have be reported on DasBlog over the years that included a pasted in stack trace and explanation of the line of code that was going wrong.

Is it too much for us to ask for the fix? That’s all I’m saying.

And yes, I fixed a few NDoc things in HtmlHelp2 a long long time ago.

42

Jeff,

Idealism or realism? Your blog title belies your attitude.

Is their such a thing as a truly free lunch/beer/puppy/product? Taking into consideration, of course, that all people are bastards. Everything costs somebody something.

If all people do work for personal gain (whether that is a warm fuzzy feeling or $$$), then what happens when the return/reward equation stops adding up in favour of the person doing all of that hard work?

Scott’s comments are poignant because they are true.

In reality 99% of the world treats freeware like a whipping dog. Download it, use it, tell your friends, bag it if you hate it, review it, blog it, critique it, mail bomb the authors if you dont like what they do.

People rarely then offer to help change it for the better. And the paradigm still seems to thrive. However, by your own admission, so much of it fails.

What if…ideally…that same 99% treated open source in the manner Scott suggests. Do you think freeware would suffer for it? Do you think the percentage of failed attempts would increase or decrease. It seems logical to me that there would be less abortive attempts at good software. And more good, free, wtf free, software at that.

Doesn’t the phrase “Help me to help you.” Bear any weight here? What about paying it forward?

No, simply using somebodies hard work and using it for your own time saving purposes is not the greatest contribution you can make. Thats like saying that advertising is the most important aspect of a product. In reality, that is simply a compliment. Albeit, imitation being the sincerest form.

I came away reading Scott’s blog feeling like I should be giving something back to the freeware community, and feeling like the best way I can do that is to a) make some freeware of my own or b) help maintain some existing freeware any way I can. But I also recognised that the more people who do that, the better we will all be.

43

“”"Case in point - there’s at LEAST 20 bugs that have be reported on DasBlog over the years that included a pasted in stack trace and explanation of the line of code that was going wrong.

Is it too much for us to ask for the fix? That’s all I’m saying. “”"

You have an order of magnitude easier time of fixing a “blah.persist() fails if the drive is full, line 274, blahcode.lang” than any random open source user, even when they could write the actual code for the fix in minutes.

Downloading software - easy and quick.
Watching it bomb into a traceback - quick and easy.
Reading the traceback, seeing the faulty line, and having a guess at why it crashed - possible.
Explaining this in a post to a website - trivial, and with minimal waste of time if it is ignored.

Downloading the current source, and all test cases, supporting build software, patching, testing, diffing, getting in on the right coding and documentation styles, developer’s mailing list, finding who/where to submit to, etc. - pain in the ass, and a lot of effort to put in to something you’re not sure will help or even be read.

Why not make “submitting a patch” as easy as submitting a traceback and suggestion?
(Open source in general, not you specifically).

44

I just wish open-source people would just shut the hell up and stop with the god damned whining. You want to work on a project for no money? What the hell were you expecting? You want everybody to swoon to your supposed superiority?

Look, if you want money for your project, then get someone to sponsor it. Stop begging and prodding for money - it just makes you look like a shill. If you want to release something for free, then you need to realize the consequences of your actions.

It always astonishes me just know ingorant programmers are when it comes to economics.

45

As I already said, the situtation with NDoc was “special”. In general, though, I think I agree with Jeff’s position on free software. (This debate is really about free software, not open source… you can provide the source for commercial software, after all, and you can hand out free software without the source.)

There are two alternatives which are known to work fine: make software freely available, with an understanding that no payment is expected. Or sell software for money upfront.

If you expect money, don’t hand out your software until you get paid. If you offer software for free, don’t expect money. It’s that simple.

Offering software for free and THEN expecting to get paid is not a logical choice. The impression will be that you don’t want to spend to effort to build a proper business, that you don’t feel confident enough in yourself and your product to ask money upfront and give proper support, and that you’d rather use moral blackmail instead.

And that impression will annoy your “customers” who will now be doubly reluctant to pay money. If you want money, be honest and straightforward about it – don’t come back like a beggar once you’ve already given away the software.

46

I must admit, this whole thread’s left me rather puzzled. There seems to be this misconception that the whole point of Open Source is to be free as in beer. Um, that’s not quite right. Last time I looked, the big F/OSS slogan was “free as in speech, not free as in beer”. The fact that it’s possible to get the software for nothing just something that sometimes falls out of the equation.

If you use F/OSS, you’re supposed to contribute something back, anything. If you can donate code, donate code; if you’re a graphic designer, donate icons, graphics, designs, whatever; if you’re a technical writer, donate documentation or improve what’s there; if you’re a corporation, sponsor it; if you’re a user, donate bug reports or a few quid to help keep the project afloat; and if those avenues aren’t open to you, just say thanks.

TANSTAAFL. Using the product isn’t enough; if you want it to survive, you have to contribute something to its survival.

47

“There seems to be this misconception that the whole point of Open Source is to be free as in beer.”

Probably because this is a fact, not a misconception. Whatever slogans some delusional OSS organizations might invent is irrelevant. Dropping a piece of gold on the marketplace, walking away from it, and later complaining that whoever picked it up didn’t do anything for you is merely childish.

It’s amusing that you use the “TANSTAAFL” quote, which is supposed to express a brutal reality, in order to justify such a hippie fairy dreamland…

48

Users of free software begin to feel as though they own the product after it becomes part of their workflow. Their reaction is almost the same as it would be if Adobe asked you to pay again for Photoshop after you had already purchased it. The free download is like a virtual purchase.

The way to go is to seek out a few companies whose employees use your product and ask them to make a large donation. If the product is really valuable to their business, you should have no problem getting enough money to fund one man’s living expenses.

Look at how projects like Linux and Firefox get all their money from large corporate donations.

49

“If open source software required as much effort as raising a puppy, your local pound would be even more full than it already is of unwanted dogs.”

I could be mistaken, but don’t you mean it the other way around? that if raising a puppy required as much effort as open source software… etc.

There is no “moral” obligation to donate to open source developers, but you are using tools they made and gave you free of charge. Donating $5 is not the equivalent of paying them for it, it’s like buying someone lunch after they let you borrow their lawn mower: you still didn’t have to buy one and they are happier for having lent it to you.

As a programmer I have to say that the highest compliment I could be given is not the use of the code/program, but maybe a note in my e-mail saying thanks for the great tool. If/when I start making my own open source tools I will have a donate link, but I would never expect people to be obligated to donate.

~Mazid the Raider

50

My philosophy is to help out an Open Source project that helps me in whatever manner I can.

For me, donating $5 to an open source project is like saying “I’d contribute my time to your project if I could, but thanx for saving me time on the project I am working on. Hope this $5 will help you to continue.”

51

Strange argument. I think that Scott is right in his analysis and that Kevin really did the best he could. He suggested donations -without- holding users hostage, and provided whatever level of support he was capable of. In return, his users mailbombed him.

This wasn’t a case of someone disguising his true intentions about an open-source project. It was simply a case of someone not having the resources to continue development, and getting mailbombed for it. Should he have told users earlier that he was having trouble supporting the project? Maybe, but then people probably would have thrown out the “ransomware” accusation.

In fact Kevin really did the honourable thing here. He could have made it ransomware, saying that he needed donations to continue, but he didn’t. Instead, he went for the only other possible option - dropping the project and offering to hand it over to someone with more resources. Scott has merely pointed out (rightly, I think) that if the users had been a tad less selfish, the project might have been able to continue.

Open-source developers are mostly well-meaning altruists who sometimes just don’t have a good grasp of project management or economics. That’s fine. What’s not fine is freeloading users who make pathetic attempts to hide their cheapness under a thin veil of altruism, even though they’ve never managed an open-source project themselves or even contributed to one. They write screeds about how all software should be “free”, then display utter contempt for the developers who provide it for free because they didn’t fix a bug or implement some new feature quickly enough. It’s lame enough to criticize something you got for free, but to attack the person who gave it to you!?

Yes, an open-source project really is like a puppy. When people kick it instead of feeding it, it dies. Very rarely do the developers actually want to make a profit, but few if any projects can survive in the long-term without financial support. That’s not hypocrisy, that’s life.

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