

There is no free software, only software that is paid for by somebody else. - asciilifeform
http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/prolegomena%281%29.htm

======
GiraffeNecktie
He seems to be suggesting that the only economic model for software
development is to sell it as a product. That might make sense if your business
is selling software. The rest of us are in the business of designing websites,
running universities and large enterprises, selling widgets etc. In other
words, our business is making other kinds of stuff or just in providing
services. In the course of running that business we need to use software. If
there's free stuff (especially stuff that can be freely customized to fit my
business) then great. If we improve it, we might give it back to the community
and everyone benefits. Well, everyone, except that poor sap who's trying to
sell the commercial software that doesn't benefit from the stream of
incremental improvements that come from the community. Or maybe they've still
got a better solution than the FOSS product. That's excellent and if they make
money, more power to them! But there's nothing broken or wrong with the FOSS
model and the writer doesn't offer much evidence to support his argument other
than an anecdote about how Ubuntu from four years ago (!) didn't work for him.
Sheesh.

------
omail
This article is difficult to understand because it is written as a flamebait
rather than an objective critique.

Here is what I understand so far. His primary point is that for a FOSS project
it is not easy to have it economically self-sustainable. I believe he is
almost correct on this point and counter arguments exist elsewhere in this
thread and on the internet. As for whether FOSS is useful or not or how to
solve the problem described, he gives no suggestion. However, he does take
many cheap shots at RMS and FOSS supporters.

Anyhow, my counterpoint, which I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, is the
contribution of FOSS is beyond direct monetary compensation. For organizations
FOSS provides cheap, commoditized off-the-shelf parts for internal software
projects. For consumers, FOSS allows independence from software producers and
system lock-ins. These benefits are real in economic terms and can not simply
be waved away.

~~~
ewjordan
Further, the funding of a lot of free software has already taken place because
a company needed to scratch its own itch. After that, the question is, "Does
keeping this software closed source provide us a significant competitive
advantage?" If the answer is "no," then there's really no point in _not_
sharing the source. Anyone that thinks shrink-wrap sales of their pet Lisp
dialect are going to make up the cornerstone of a viable business model is
freaking deluded; these things are dime a dozen, and the market is next to
non-existent.

Pretty much all of the open source stuff that comes out of Google comes out
for this reason; they're not in the software sales biz, so if they develop
something neat that helps them get things done but is not core to their
business, they give it away. Economically speaking it's neutral to positive
for them (helps PR quite a bit, and gets programmers invested in the Google
ecosystem), and positive for everyone else.

My immediate response to the article: no shit, software takes time to write,
even the most hardcore FOSS advocate wouldn't claim otherwise. But once those
costs are funded (which they will be if you need the functionality yourself),
if there's no money to be made by keeping the results a secret then you should
be indifferent to opening it up. Yes, this means that FOSS is driven more by
big companies than by basement programmers, because they generate a lot more
code, but nobody ever claimed otherwise, except when constructing strawmen to
knock down.

I was going to bring up the obvious point that most of the Internet runs on
FOSS software (convenient not to mention Apache in a rant like this, arguably
the producers of the most successful FOSS in existence), but upon checking, I
can't call him out for hypocrisy - check out any non-existent url (for
instance, <http://www.lambdassociates.org/doesnotexist>), at least he's
actually drinking the Microsoft Kool-aid as he rails against the poor quality
of open source.

------
Goladus
Of course large, important projects require a certain amount of funding to
succeed. I'm not sure where this is really disputed, I don't see the actual
argument the author is railing against. Fedora Linux may not generate revenue
directly, but it is an important component to the development of RHEL, which
is the core component of Red Hat's highly successful business model.

There are many, many, many organizations of all types all over the world that
use different economic models to fund various different interests. I sing in a
choir. We're a non-profit organization and raise money in a variety of ways to
pay for music, a professional director, various instrument ensembles, venues
to perform in, and people to record the concerts. The choir itself is
auditioned, but all volunteer. We spend a few hours per week for fun because
it enriches our lives, and as a result people get to come enjoy our concerts.
Last spring we performed Mendelssohn's Elijah at Sanders Theater in Harvard
Square. Unlikely to happen, but in theory the recording of that concert could
become popular, and for a trivial cost via file sharing networks that
performance could be listened to by 1 million people all over the world.
Demand for those digital copies on that scale might average $0.001/per copy.
Not worth it to try and charge for it anyway.

But we aren't a business. There are a few people associated with the choir who
are compensated for their work. They are highly trained and skilled and put in
more than the typical 3 hours per week. The rest of us are not paid and in
fact pay dues. Is it really that different from the way an OSS project might
work? 2-3 key maintainers and a hundred other contributors averaging 3-ish
hours per week?

According to their website, WCVB-TV supports 484 non-profit organizations in
the Boston area.
[http://cf.thebostonchannel.com/bos/sh/charity/front_charity....](http://cf.thebostonchannel.com/bos/sh/charity/front_charity.cfm)

There are many valid ways to fund software projects. Some of those projects
turn out to be extremely successful and popular, and in many cases the Open
Source nature of the product actually adds real value to end-users. Sure,
there is some bad software, but I've used lots of bad software in my life,
both free and not-free. The fact that people might be working without the
compensation they might deserve in a perfectly balanced economic world is not
really a big concern. That's life. It doesn't just apply to software, and the
reverse is also true. It is most assuredly the case that some large companies
are paying some programmers far more than they theoretically deserve for the
software that company sells.

------
pcof
Oh, my. It is free as in "freedom", you idiot, not free as in "gratis", RMS
would tell you. And he would be right. You've debunked only your own
misunderstanding of the problem...

~~~
mixmax
I think you misunderstood the point he's trying to make. Here's the conclusion
of the article:

 _The problem is that FOSS is part of an equation that has never been properly
balanced. The other part of the equation is an economic one and one that has
not been thought through. Instead ad hoc and unconvincing explanations have
been floated for why FOSS makes money when in fact, as presently constituted,
it so often does not and is parasitic on conventional capitalism or state
money_

It's a rant about the economics of FOSS, not freedom. And you know what? He's
right.

~~~
DarkShikari
No he isn't.

If Company X gains $1,000,000 savings due to investing $700,000 in developing
a piece of software, they have earned $300,000. Then, they open source the
software, and improvements to it by outside contributors result in them saving
another $500,000.

Then, Company Y adopts the software and uses it to save $2,000,000. They
improve it as well, which results in them saving another $500,000 and Company
X saving another $300,000.

Total profit: $3.8m

Compare this to the alternative:

Company X gains $1,000,000 savings due to investing $700,000 in developing a
piece of software, they have earned $300,000. Then, they keep the software
closed. No contributions are made by outside users.

Then, Company Y writes their own version of the software for $700,000 and uses
it to save $1,500,000, less because they don't have the improvements made by
outside contributors. They don't have the logic from Company X to combine with
theirs, so they don't improve it, and they don't save any extra money. Company
X doesn't save money either, since they don't get anything back.

Total profit: $1.1m

 _Everyone involved made more money in the first situation than the second_ ,
despite Company X giving up their source code to be used by other companies as
well. This works completely fine under existing systems and requires nobody to
arbitrarily throw money at open source for no potential gain.

Open source is the free-market solution to the problem of inefficiency due to
competition--everyone implementing their own versions of software and in the
end generating a worse result than if they had worked together.

~~~
caffeine
What you've proven is that if I choose whatever numbers I want, and add and
multiply them together in whatever order I choose, I can get whatever answer I
please.

Also, if you read the article, he doesn't argue that source code should be
closed - he argues that it should be paid for.

~~~
olefoo
Let's turn his analogy around and ask, if every startup and nonprofit that
ever wanted to put up a website had to either buy or build a webserver, would
the web as we know it exist? More to the point would the standard protocols
and encodings that we mostly take for granted have evolved? Or would we all be
coding for aolserver and bitching about how to get our websites approved on
different cable networks?

And the stuff about the source being paid for is a red herring, only a very
few licenses prohibit the sale of software (and the GPL explicitly allows it,
the only restriction is that if you sell software built with GPL components
you must provide the source as well as the object code).

------
lutorm
I suppose the author is one of the people that argue that everything should be
paid for by a direct transaction. If I walk to the corner store to get a beer,
I should pay for the use of the sidewalk because "someone paid to put it
there".

There are things that are better for everyone if the cost is borne by
everyone. You could argue that because Linux or Emacs are free (as in beer),
there's some sort of circumvention of capitalism going on that robs the
economy. But how about the fact that thousands of people now can learn how to
run a unix system and write program that would otherwise _never_ have paid to
do so? I believe there is a net benefit to society there, just like with
publicly funded streets and publicly funded research. It induces activity
which otherwise would not happen.

Only the most fundamentalist capitalists would argue that common investments
are never good, and this strikes me like the same kind of rant. And I'm sorry,
but that doesn't convince me one bit.

------
tokenadult
"Emacs was supported financially by people working at the MIT AI Lab, which
means that it was funded by Uncle Sam. It was not invented by Richard Stallman
contrary to popular myth, although he did grab the sources and improved them
and tried successfully to claim as much credit as he could. It’s real cost in
market terms was effectively many thousands of tax dollars and it was paid for
as such by Joe Schmoe."

This is an interesting bit of history. Is that a correct description of the
history? How many other now "open source" projects began with that kind of
initial taxpayer subsidy?

~~~
lutorm
But what kind of point is that? If it was _really_ paid for by the taxpayers,
it should be free (free as in free beer _and_ free as in free speech) because
it was funded by taxpayers. How is arguing that it should _not_ be free any
kind of solution to this (imagined) problem?

~~~
nova
Exactly. The real disgrace is all those technologies developed with taxpayer
money and yet patented, closed or restricted.

------
pingswept
"There is no such thing as free software."

This isn't true. It's just exaggerating to make a point.

As a counterexample, <http://pysolar.org>. I wrote the code for free, because
I wanted the experience. You can have it for $0 under the GPL. That's free
software.

The truth is more like: "Free software is often subsidized by governments or
companies." But so what? So is proprietary software. With that revision, I
don't see more than a poorly written rant.

~~~
anatoly
What about the opportunity cost? You paid for this code with your time, which
otherwise, if you felt like it, you presumably could have used to earn money.
If your time is worthless, then indeed the code costs nothing; is it? That's
the point the author's making.

~~~
pingswept
You're confusing the cost to you with the cost to me.

You're correct that there was an opportunity cost for me to write the code. I
spent a few hundred hours on it, when I might have been programming for money.
Fair enough.

But when we talk about whether software is free, the question is either how
much is costs to use it (i.e. is it free as in beer?) or what license it uses
(i.e is it free as in freedom?).

In this case, the cost to you is $0-- free as in beer-- and the license is the
GPL-- free as in freedom. (Perhaps we can omit the GPL vs. BSD argument here.)

A better counter-argument might talk about the opportunity cost for you to use
free software.

~~~
anatoly
I'm not confusing anything, I'm explaining to you what the original author
meant by software not ever been free. Someone always bears the cost; if the
user pays nothing whatsoever, the developer pays with his/her time, which they
could have used otherwise to program for money. Yes, this isn't what's usually
meant by the code not being free, but _that is the author's entire point_.
He's arguing that the usual way to talk about it - the one you recap in your
sentence starting "But when we talk about whether software is free, the
question is..." - is deceptively incomplete.

The author has a point - one I don't sympathize with much, by the way - and
he's explaining it clearly. His reward? An alarming number of commentators
here on YC smugly calling him an idiot and repeating with tedious
condescention the standard talking points on freedom, gratis, etc.,
advertising nothing much beyond their lack of reading comprehension and a
healthy knee-jerk reflex.

~~~
Goladus
The author has a point, and I think the "free as in freedom" comments are
clearly missing that point. But I wouldn't say it is explained very clearly.
It's framed as an attack on what appears to be a straw man. Finding a frame of
reference to interpret the tirade is hard[1], and the point about the costs of
work must be extracted from the rest.

[1] Hard to do well. It's pretty easy to make vague assumptions and proceed
from there.

~~~
anatoly
You're right, and thanks for checking my ire. I probably exaggerated the
merits of the tirade because I was so annoyed by all the smug comments that so
clearly missed the not-so-sophisticated point about the cost of work. I still
think it's an interesting rant, even if it could have been better structured
and less ranty.

------
Virax
Here is my take on FOSS, I hope you find it interesting:

* FOSS is great at very small number of things: C compiler (gcc), Operating system (Linux), programming languages (zillions), Apache, MySQL, and a few others.

* FOSS is OK at a certain number of larger areas - relatively simple games (BzTank), office applications (Open Office)

* FOSS is absolutely horrible at new product development. Anyone with a brain and a decent idea that SOME people MIGHT pay for can see that FOSS is inferior to all of these:
    
    
       * web-based subscription model
       * web-based advertising model
       * closed source shrinkwrap model
       * closed-source consulting model
    

The only reason you would choose FOSS over these is you don't believe anyone
would pay anything for what you want to make (but they might donate after
using it). At this point, if you still choose to develop, then

    
    
       A) It is a hobby, and the only thing tying you to the project is your interest
    
       B) You can choose between freeware/shareware and FOSS
    

The game Dwarf Fortress is a good example of freeware. The creators want to
retain artistic control over their creation, so they release as closed source
software.

In conclusion, if you release source code, then:

    
    
       * others may improve the product, which benefits you because you are using it
    
       * you may lose artistic control due to fork pressure
    

If you don't release source code, then:

    
    
       * you have to do all of the development yourself or through people you hire
    
       * you retain total control over the product
    

Now you know!

------
comice
What an ass clown.

So firstly, it's free as in freedom. We don't mean free as in cost.

But secondly, if someone pays for some software to be developed and it solves
their problem and then they give it away then it's truly free as in cost too.
They paid money equivalent to the value they got from it, everyone else rides
for free.

And thirdly: ass clown.

~~~
BrentRitterbeck
I'll refute you by asking a simple question. If you sell software that you
originally designed for your own use, does it not have a value?

~~~
billswift
Free NEVER refers to value. Free refers to price. Also, free does not refer to
cost - everything has a cost, even if only the opportunity cost of the time
used making or acquiring the free software (or anything else free). Actually,
the time acquiring and learning to use the software is why I still use MS
software for a lot of things that aren't worth my time fiddling with.

~~~
BrentRitterbeck
It's been a long week. Normally, I would have busted someone's chops for the
exact thing I did.

------
Mz
I am reminded of the saying in the military: Freedom isn't free. (I think
Heinlein said it was paid for with the blood of patriots.) The article says
his time is worth something, and that is a big part of his point: To get all
this "free" stuff, you have to have some intelligent, capable person giving
away skills and knowledge they could be making money for.

I spent a lot of time giving away information. The information was valued but
I wasn't making a cent. (In fact, I was paying for the privilege because of
web hosting costs and domain names.) I've seen a number of websites that
started with giving stuff away and when they became popular enough they turned
into commercial ventures and you could no longer get free stuff from them. The
websites basically became advertisements for the skills and products they were
offering. I also know some very idealistic webmasters who basically are
resentful of the time and energy they have spent on their projects and the
fact that they aren't making much money, aren't getting the kind of
recognition they crave, etc. At some point I decided I did not want that to be
me -- and could no longer afford to follow in the footsteps of people like
that.

I still want to give information away for free but these days I also want to
figure out how to make money at it. Since I am mainly looking to give
information away, I think some of the traditional ways of monetizing that
should work, such as advertising. I haven't (yet) spent any time pondering how
one would make money from open source software. But it seems to me this is an
issue that needs a good solution. As I see it, code is basically information
and that's always been a tricky thing to effectively commodify.

~~~
lutorm
But you are manufacturing a problem. If you don't think free software works
for you, don't write it. Not everyone's a capitalist fanatic and feel like
they must be "paid" for (in money) for everything they do. Like you say,
plenty of people do volunteer work without any expectation of return apart
from feeling like they've helped someone. How can you argue that this "needs a
good solution"?

~~~
Mz
I did volunteer work for about 25 years. I've spent a lot of time in that
realm and thought a lot about it. I don't mean to imply that what is currently
being done must stop. But I agree with the author that his time has value, so
if other people expect him to keep giving it away for free, it's basically a
parasitic expectation. If he wants to give it away for free, that's his
choice. But if he isn't independently wealthy, time put into a FOSS project
competes for time he could spend making money or with family and friends, etc.
Good projects generally require substantial time and effort. It is common for
volunteer situations to result in shoddy work, people you can't count on
because they feel no real obligation since they aren't being paid, and similar
problems.

I was diagnosed late in life with a serious medical condition. Prior to my
diagnosis, I was too ill to pursue a paid career. Many of the idealistic,
talented and intelligent people I have known who routinely give away their
work for free are also handicapped in some way. (Actually, I can't think of
anyone who gives away substantial amounts of their time and skill on a regular
basis who isn't seriously handicapped in some manner.) If you are handicapped,
doing volunteer work has the easy terms that work for you. Moderating a forum,
running a website part-time, and so on are things you can do when you feel up
to it and no one can force you to be more consistent. And the quality of the
work is generally consistent with the fact that you are unreliable, impaired,
etc.

So while I still value some of the free resources made available by other
people like me, now that I am well enough to work a full time job, I am
somewhat less of a bleeding heart. I still think some things need to be "free"
-- in terms of rights and also in terms of financial access -- but I think
many of these resources would be of better quality than is currently available
if the people running them were compensated in some manner. Non-profits don't
operate without budgets. They still need money. That money is typically raised
from the community based on the idea that the organization is offering
something of value. They aren't "beggars". They are just doing work that has
human value more than commercial value and therefore needs to be monetized
without directly selling services.

~~~
bayareaguy
Compared to your situation I feel less sympathy for Mr. Tarver since much of
his work took place in a university environment and while he claims to have
spent 20 years developing the ideas behind Qi, he obviously didn't profit from
those efforts in the way that he may have wanted.

But I doubt he would have been as critical of government support for projects
had his own efforts been more successful since presumably the university
partially supported his research (or at least didn't take the kind of hostile
attitude he would have encountered at many corporations).

I think this particular situation shows that there is a difference between
_having expertise_ and having _an ability to capitalize that expertise_.
Perhaps had he spent a little more time networking to find people who would be
willing to support his ideas, things would have worked out better for him.

~~~
Mz
I was inducted into Mu Alpha Theta (a college level math honor society) in
11th grade, the earliest you can be inducted. We did volunteer work tutoring
math once or twice a week. I've spent a lot of time in online communities for
folks with really smart kids -- the parents are typically also smart and it is
an environment where many people come to terms with their own social and
emotional problems through trying to do right by their kids. So I've thought a
lot about this as well: Smart people are given a lot of messages to the effect
that they have a moral obligation to give away what they know for the benefit
of all humankind and if, instead, they use it to make big bucks, then they are
evil incarnate. This mindset can be extremely hard to escape (at least for
some people).

Universities are rife with such "idealism", a form of idealism that I
increasingly think is misplaced. To try to put it in a nutshell: One
requirement for sainthood is that you be persecuted. We seem to think that
good people must suffer horribly as a means to prove their goodness. I'm
increasingly disenchanted with the idea that one has to martyr oneself to be a
good person, whether that means dying for the cause or just not getting paid
adequately for your work. I think all that teaches people is that there are
only two kinds of people: victims and victimizers and in order to be good you
must be a victim because the other choice is intolerable. I have concluded
that trying to be "good" by being a willing victim forces others into the role
of victimizer even if they don't want to be there. So I believe that if one
wants to genuinely do good in the world, one must pursue a paradigm of
symbiotic exchange rather than letting people parasitically use you up and
playing the role of martyr/victim.

Symbiotic exchange sounds rather like Capitalism. I don't think that means
every thing one does has to be in pursuit of the almighty dollar. I haven't
been here long, but I'm impressed with the quality of HN so far. I am struck
by the fact that it was initially created as a means for people at
Y-Combinator to get to know potential applicants -- ie although it's offered
as a "free" service, it ultimately is part of their business strategy. It
looks to me like this is why HN is a better run forum than many I have
participated in which were all-volunteer. HN can't afford to cater to personal
peccadilloes and personality quirks of a volunteer staff. It has to meet a
certain professional standard. And to the degree that at least some of the
members want to apply to Y-Combinator, the participants have motivation as
well to remain professional and polite. It is not a good place to indulge in
habits that promote flame-wars and the like because the purpose is not merely
social. Not everyone here will have such a goal, but it still impacts group
culture. An influential minority can go a long way towards shaping community
behavior. For some members, there is potentially millions of dollars at stake
(if they can get VC from Y-Combinator and launch a highly successful
business). It's strong motivation to behave better than what you see in many
online forums where everything is idealistically given away "free" and flame-
wars and other problems are the rule, not the exception.

