[CS-FSLUG] Sydney Morning Herald: Cuba to Dump Windows for Linux

[Don Parris]

On Fri, 20 May 2005 01:33:34 -0700
David Aikema <daikema at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/19/05, Don Parris <evangelinux at thefreelyproject.org> wrote:
> 
> > Everyone has the opportunity to make money.  How many different on-line
> > stores sell GNU/Linux CDs?  
> > How many consulting businesses have sprung up
> > around LOSS? (I don't know, either.)  A po' boy like me has the
> > opportunity to become technically adept, and find ways to capitalize on
> > that.  That does not mean that all the folks who live in the slums don't
> > have other issues to address in the process.  Still, they have an actual
> > equal opportunity, as opposed to a theoretical equal opportunity.
> 
> I'd be curious to learn what percentage of those shops are actually
> making a profit.  I honestly can't remember the last time that I
> directly paid for CDs containing a distribution release (the closest
> that I can think of is the Mandrake-Club membership I had, but I could
> have gotten those CDs by going the download route as well - I only had
> a standard membership, so I didn't get the ISOs with the commercial
> packages).  In general, with broadband, I've found that it's typically
> faster to just download than to buy a physical copy.
> 
> As well, if I sell a burned copy of your software, how is this
> benefitting you (unless you take the increased-usage implying
> hopefully tech-support... maybe someone willing to pay for the
> addition of features)?  My ability to gain money from your work
> without sending anything back to you sounds kind of communistic to me.
> 
> I see a lot of advantage for the implementor/distributor, but not
> necessarily much for the behind-the-scenes programmer.
> 
> There's also the addage that it takes money to make money ... if I can
> code, but don't have the available resources to sufficiently market my
> product/skills, then it seems to me somewhat unlikely that I would
> make of anything from it.
> 
> > If you want to sell the software, just put a price on it.  You can put a
> > second price on the source, as long as it is not higher than the binary
> > distro.  For instance, according to the FSF, I could write a new app,
> > sell the binaries at, say, $50.00.  I can then charge an additional fee
> > for the source code, as long as the second fee is not higher than
> > $50.00.  The reason for that is that, without a limitation, people could
> > *effectively* cut off access to the source by charging an astronomical
> > fee.
> 
> Well, let's say you developed your product and think that it's worth
> $50 / person in terms of convenience.  What if one person buys a copy,
> and then immediately rereleases the source code at no cost... then I
> am no longer able to market my work at any reasonable price, and I
> wouldn't expect the first user to necessarily be willing to pay the
> whole cost of development.  However, I'd either have to do exactly
> that, or before making any sales first find X buyers, where each buyer
> is willing to pay $(total cost) / X.
> 

That's why there's so much focus on the ancillary services.  If you're a
single programmer trying to sell your own distro, I would think that would
be pretty tough.  In that case, you have to develop, market, and provide
support for your distro all on your own.  I would want to offer
both, a free support forum, and a paid support service.  I would sell the
support licenses to cover the salary of any developers on my team.  

A lot of the guys on the SUSE lists buy the boxed edition *just* to support
the programmers.  And when people start asking about the gratis download
sites, the guys usually suggest buying the boxed set.  Many people recognize
the value of libre software, and are willing to help support the
programmers.  An awful lot of people are merely cheapskates.

I released PitP 2.0 under a CC-Attrib+No-Derivs so that people can freely
redistribute.  Several have purchased the download, and others have
purchased the paperback.  I'm pretty certain a few just want to encourage
me.  The folks who helped edit it could pass along their copies (I gave
each one a copy of the PDF), but have stated that they would refer people to
the storefront.  However, sharing a copy won't hurt a thing.

Will I get paid if you share that copy?  No.  In fact, that person may
decide they want the paperback, and go order it for themselves.  Or they may
realize that, by supporting my efforts, they might encourage me to write
another book.  No incentive, no reason to continue.  I'm willing to give you
some incentive for your continued development.

I'm watching to see how people respond to PitP 2.0.  I released it as I have
for a number of reasons.  One of those is to test my own theory about the
need for a new business model.  It won't translate properly to the software
world, but it will be revealing nevertheless.  I said previously that a
number of people are cheapskates.  I'm seeing how true that is with 2.0. 
PitP 1.0 has been downloaded 10x more than 2.0 has been purchased this
month.

We also need to realize that copyright law never addressed this kind of
sharing.  I think it is inappropriate to criminalize sharing just because
new technology makes it easier to share on a broader scale.  I do think we
need to address the problems involved.  I do not think the current mode of
thinking will get us there without sacrificing too much freedom.

It's up to us to devise a new business model that allows this kind of
sharing. Each of the major commercial distros are experimenting with various
business models. Some seem better suited to certain environments than
others.  These new business models will eventually take shape.  We'll figure
them out, and make them work smoothly.  Right now, there are kinks to be
worked through.


> > Mandriva,
> 
> Mandriva seems to surviving, although at least some of this must be
> attributed to the club that they're running.  There aren't really that
> many benefits to a standard membership though, and I'm not sure how
> well the community would support multiple clubs of this sort.
>

I used Mandrake 8.0, which is about when they started the Mandrake club.  I
did not buy into it because of my budget.  I really liked their program
where you pay, say $200, and get two upgrades on top of the initial distro
purchase.  I don't know how profitable that is.  They also went through
bankruptcy court, if I'm not mistaken.  It's been a touch road.

> > Red Hat, & SUSE are decent examples (though not necessarily the
> 
> I don't really think that Red Hat is the best example, given that it's
> licensing policy for the enterprise linux basically limits the ability
> granted by the GPL to make additional copies... I'm wondering if we'll
> end up seeing a court challenge to their licensing scheme one of these
> days.
> 
> There are projects reusing RHEL source RPMs, but AFAIK this is only
> legal as Red Hat is distributing these source RPMs free to all from
> their website.  If the creators of these rebuilt-RHEL distros had in
> fact signed a licensing agreement with Red Hat, I think that the
> license agreement basically prohibits them from doing this.
> 
> Of course, I'm not a lawyer, and it's been a while since I looked into
> this, but that's the sort of situation I recall.
> 

As I said, it's a decent, but not the best, example.

> > best).  Why would Novell have bought SUSE if it were failing?  Of
> > course, Yast was initially proprietary, until Novell released it under a
> > libre license.
> 
> Novell basically had Netware (which is fading out of the picture), and
> didn't really seem to have many options left.  I don't think that
> they're the best example of a company with a great record.  They did
> seem to go on a buying spree, but with the exception of licensing
> revenue from their old closed-source products, I'm unsure if they're
> making a profit.
> 
Novell's stock apparently soared fairly high, and has dropped off a bit
over the last year. However, it is climbing slowly.  Not sure what kind of
indicator that is.  SUSE's pricing is very reasonable.  I've passed along a
copy to someone locally.  He and his roommate have decided to get their own
boxed set in the future.  Of course, that's if they don't move over to
Mepis. ;)  If they stick with SUSE, they'll buy the boxed set.  While Novell
didn't make any money off them, they could.  And precisely because they
allowed the redistribution.

I'm very interested in seeing what happens in Brazil.  The government said,
"We are against piracy.  We respect Microsoft's intellectual property.  And
the best way to respect it is to switch to free software." - something to
that effect.  Thus, Microsoft (as a proprietary developer), may have shot
itself in the foot by trying to stop the kind of sharing that copyright law
never addressed. You can see my Lulu blog (Who Owns Ideas) about the
original article.


Don
-- 
evangelinux    GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/                   http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/
"Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime
anywhere."