Re: Charging the Charger [was: GPL v3 public performance idea?]

Marshall W. Van Alstyne wrote:

> At 01:16 PM 4/12/2005, Taran Rampersad wrote:
>
>> So, since it's not really Free Software for 3 years, you're asking the
>> user to be a beta tester for that period?
>
>
> The first part is largely correct but not quite. Of the four main
> freedoms (run, access source, redistribute, modify), we only suggest
> tampering with the ability to redistribute, and then only briefly.
>
> On the part about being a beta tester, not really. Asking that would
> obviously reduce willingness to buy.
>
>> There are many EULAs, but this one is yours....
>
>
> Yes, but help me out here. What we propose is really only a short term
> mechanism for allowing a developer to charge, and in a way that
> guarantees new code becomes mostly free always and totally free after
> a brief delay. Taran, your own statements in other locations indicate
> you see the value of charging:
>
> On 4/12/2005, Taran Rampersad wrote: <
> http://www.knowprose.com/node/1065 >
> I believe in Free Software but until I become so rich that it's
> offensive,
> I won't be too much of a *software philanthropist*. The pay sucks, the
> hours are long, coffee isn't 'free as in beer' and my creditors don't
> know
> what philanthropy means. So I charge for Free Software. I suppose some
> may
> think me evil, but I'm not looking for sainthood.
>
> So clearly you seem to appreciate the value of charging under some
> circumstances. We're just trying to provide one economic model for
> allowing this to happen. And we're open to others.

My solution doesn't require the changing of licensing, or the compromise
of the central FLOS license. My solutions probably never will.

People need code. People are willing to pay for the code. Developers
need money, and are willing to GPL code for money. I've done it, and in
the future I may do it again. That I have sold people complete rights to
what they have paid for is not new - in fact, it's quite old and is
actually how the software industry originally worked.

In the grand scheme of things, software is increasingly easy to develop.
This, in a very basic sense, requires a decrease in software cost -
especially for those who would treat software as a commodity instead of
a service. So if you do what you are talking about - and which others
have thought about, and less have done - then how can you compete with
GPL code produced in another country and without the compromises that
you are hypothesizing about?

In the end, you're competing against a lot of GPL'd code which you
cannot apply this license to, and which someone in a country with lower
costs can easily beat the price of - and perhaps the quality of (a
product of many factors in a complex web determined by the context of
the software).

To get the hypothetical concept working, you'd have to get everyone to
sign onto it. I've been down these paths with peanut butter sandwiches.
At the end of the day, people pay for software contracts - and have
before microcomputer software became proprietary. That's where the money
is.

Mitigating the risk of the user, not mitigating the risk of the
developer, is where it's at. Business is risk. Writing software is risk.
Eating peanut butter sandwiches sucks at times, but it's better than
Adam's Ale and wind pie. :-)

-- 
Taran Rampersad
Presently in: Esteli, Nicaragua
[email protected]

http://www.linuxgazette.com
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http://www.easylum.net

"Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo