
Synergy (GPL'd Software KVM) switches to paid downloads - yincrash
http://synergy-project.org/download/?paid
======
cge
Synergy has been a bit odd in recent years. It doesn't seem like a
particularly large or complex piece of software, and many projects that seem
to be of similar scope are things maintained in the spare time of a few
developers. It has long been stable, and it isn't clear that drastic
improvements in it have been made, or even need to be made.

Yet Synergy appears to have a corporation behind it (Synergy Si) that only
appears to work on Synergy. They have an office, and apparently provide free
meals, Google-style 20% projects, and a variety of other perks. They're
apparently hiring. They even offer stock options, despite my being rather
bewildered at where the opportunity for growth is.

I donated years ago, and found myself occasionally receiving emails that just
didn't make sense, making the whole operation sound giant. If they were
working on other projects, too, but it seems like all they do is work on
Synergy.

~~~
nbolton
From the user's perspective its easy to say: it looks simple, so why shouldn't
it be simple to maintain? I don't think its reasonable to compare Synergy to
other projects unless you've actually tried to develop the code.

I'm not really sure how we can come across as a large company, there's only 2
of us right now.

Your post baffles me.

~~~
chazu
As a premium user who has gotten a ton of mileage out of Synergy, I totally
support this - keeping this software up to date and easy to use while
improving its utility for complex computing setups can't be easy, and I don't
know what I'd do without it. Keep up the great work!

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jmhain
This should be the norm for a couple of reasons:

* There are still people that believe free-of-cost software cannot be high quality, which is likely a result of the well known relationship between price and perceived quality.

* If open-source developers are paid for their work, there will be more open-source software.

Interesting recent discussion on reddit about this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2hvtuc/dear_gnome_i_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2hvtuc/dear_gnome_i_want_you_to_start_charging_me_money/)

~~~
ggreer
Unless "apt-get install" starts deducting BTC from your wallet.dat, charging
money for open source software isn't worth it. The revenue collected is
minuscule, yet it reduces adoption and fragments the community. People use
free forks instead of the "official" version.

There are better ways to monetize open source software: Consulting/support
contracts. Bounties for features. Paid SaaS features. "Enterprise" features,
such as turning Synergy into a mass remote admin tool. (I bet this would be
handy in schools.)

It took me 30 seconds to think of those monetization ideas. I'm sure Nick
Bolton can come up with better ones.

~~~
adrusi
Your argument doesn't address the parent's first point, that many customers
hesitate or refuse to use free software. By having paid downloads from their
main front, they can market to these people, and use them to generate a modest
amount of revenue that would otherwise not exist.

~~~
mbreese
So you offer those people a paid support contract upfront.

* Click here to download Synergy with support ($4.99)

* Click here to download Synergy with no support (free)

It's common to call the no-support option the "community" version.

~~~
nbolton
We tried that a while ago. It turns out, around 90% of Synergy users are very
technical (fellow Software Engineers and the like). Often technical people
aren't that interested in support because they prefer to figure stuff out for
themselves (because we find it fun). Synergy does have a private help desk
that Synergy users can contact for troubleshooting, but users that contact the
help desk are often less technical (when it comes to Synergy troubleshooting).

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uncoder0
I found out about this when installing Synergy on my fresh Windows box that I
use mostly for gaming. I gladly coughed up the $5. Of course, I could have
built the software myself but, it wasn't worth the hassle of recompiling on
all my platforms and keeping the software up to date. I think this model of
open source software makes quite a bit of sense. I hope they get enough
funding from this to keep making Synergy... It is a very useful tool.

~~~
tsukikage
Likewise, I use it all the time and can't really say I begrudge them their
one-off $5

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yincrash
from the page:

Founder & CEO of Synergy Si, Inc.

Many people believe that the spirit of GPL licensed software is that you
should not charge money for distributing copies of your software. This is a
misunderstanding. Read more about this in the gnu.org article, Selling Free
Software by the Free Software Foundation (the principal organizational sponsor
of the GNU Operating System).

With that in mind, I have made the decision to charge a small fee for access
to the Synergy download page. This will allow us to hire more engineers and
improve Synergy faster than ever before. It turns out that given the option,
only 0.002% of users will choose to donate, which just isn't enough to fund
the team size required to maintain the program. The old donation model was
just not sustainable. Synergy is still open source and "free as in free
speech" (to quote Richard Stallman), except that now there's a small fee to
download the software. As with all GPL licensed software, you are free to run
the program, change the program, and redistribute the program with or without
changes.

Thanks for your understanding. I hope you decide to buy Synergy and support
the development of open source software. Nick Bolton Founder & CEO Synergy Si,
Inc.

~~~
irongeek
I coughed up the fee and I read this statement prior to doing so. I have used
Synergy many times over the years and regularly over the last year. That said,
I cannot say I see much improvement, it works with some weird bugs, like
unable to cut from Firefox on Windows and paste on Linux desktop. I am not
holding my breath on this type of bug getting fixed or the product being any
more than what it currently is.

Someone else said it in this thread, over the years I have received strange
emails that made it seem like Synergy was some sort of hip Google-like startup
company, even a reference to a possible office in California. Yet Synergy
seems to have been mostly the same as when I first ever used it and I do not
see any other products from the company.

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gergles
This is a bad thing for a lot of reasons. The biggest one is that Synergy is
going to get the bad press when users Google "free synergy download" and
download the first random binary they come across, which could contain
anything. Those users are going to complain "Synergy gave me a virus" or "the
installer crashes" or whatever else and hurt the reputation of the project.
This is regardless of the fact that they didn't download the official Synergy
binary.

The second is that this will hurt the discoverability of the software. There's
no way to try it now and see what it does and PC users are used to having that
ability. Throwing up a paywall is going to strangle the community, IMO.

Third, you've now stranded anybody who downloaded it free from getting
updates. What if there's a security flaw? Charging people $5 for what will be
perceived as fixing bugs in the software is going to create a lot of grouchy
users, I imagine.

An additional one is that the idea of "we're charging because we can" is
something that I think has bad optics; using an FSF essay as your primary
justification for charging for "free" software is going to rub several people
the wrong way. A low (percentage) donation rate doesn't translate to a low
amount of income, and I find it disingenuous to try to conflate those numbers.

~~~
wmf
Sadly, downloading random shady binaries already happens to open source
projects whether they charge or not, because the shady people spend effort on
SEO and open source developers don't.

For updates, all Windows/Mac software should be self-updating by now.
Requiring users to download updates by hand is basically the same as no
updates.

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jpgvm
Having already donated ~$15 this is entirely reasonable imo. I expect to be
paid for my work, just like I expect to pay others so they too can earn a
living.

I hope this goes well for them and a higher percentage of their user base
chips in, Synergy is good software that makes some painful stuff a whole lot
better.

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aidenn0
I don't think I've ever installed Synergy by downloading it from their
website, so this won't affect me. I use a package manager to install nearly
all the software I use.

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lawnchair_larry
I donated once, and all I get is spam and dramatic whining from the project
author, begging for more donations, while major bugs go unfixed and progress
is abysmal.

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NotHereNotThere
For what it's worth, the nightly builds seem freely available still
([http://synergy-project.org/nightly/](http://synergy-project.org/nightly/))

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nbolton
Hint: underlying download URLs aren't behind the paywall: [http://synergy-
project.org/files/packages/synergy-1.6.0-r241...](http://synergy-
project.org/files/packages/synergy-1.6.0-r2411-Linux-x86_64.deb)

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oppositelock
Hah, cool. I remember using Synergy a lot while I was working at SGI, to
connect between a windows, linux, and irix box. I never imagined there'd be a
company built around it.

~~~
nbolton
SGI, you say! Then this page will be a blast from the past for you :)
[http://synergy-project.org/info/](http://synergy-project.org/info/)

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joelthelion
I hope they post a follow-up in a couple months. I would find the numbers
interesting.

~~~
nbolton
Our downloads dropped to 25% (which is sad), but our income has doubled
(allowing us to double our team size).

