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Why Open Source Freeriding is a Good Idea
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Comments (3)
Bruce Byfield correctly pointed out that the Elementary OS developers owe quite a debt to Debian, Ubuntu and the countless other projects that make up the Linux distributions upon which Elementary is based.
Not to say they couldn't ask for money, because the license allows for it. But they didn't make their argument very well.
If they pledged to give back half of what they collected to the upstream projects, they would at least be acknowledging that they are in fact standing on the shoulders of giants.
Of course they could ask for donations in the "right way" -- like "we can do more with a paid development team," or "we can't really continue without the $$$," or even offering products like DVDs and USB keys, T-shirts, even preloaded computers. Lots of projects have gone this route (OpenBSD, Linux Mint, Slackware) and found some measure of success.
Badgering users sometimes works, but not all the time, as this case shows.
Not to say they couldn't ask for money, because the license allows for it. But they didn't make their argument very well.
If they pledged to give back half of what they collected to the upstream projects, they would at least be acknowledging that they are in fact standing on the shoulders of giants.
Of course they could ask for donations in the "right way" -- like "we can do more with a paid development team," or "we can't really continue without the $$$," or even offering products like DVDs and USB keys, T-shirts, even preloaded computers. Lots of projects have gone this route (OpenBSD, Linux Mint, Slackware) and found some measure of success.
Badgering users sometimes works, but not all the time, as this case shows.
I looked at their website. It says, "Name your price or download for free...."
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you can't! that's my issue in this whole discussion. you can not tell if someone who is using a Free Software application without giving anything back to it, isn't using his or her energy to contribute somewhere else?
i'd go as far as saying that the whole concept of Free Software is based on 'pay it forward', which is why there is no provision in the GPL to pass changes made back to the original creator, but only to pass the rights you received forward to your users.
so there may be a balance sheet of who takes more and who contributes more, but only god knows what everyones balance is.
i have no issues with developers asking for money, as long as they are honest about it: "this is a labor of love. i'd love to spend more time on it, but i need to make a living too. the more you can help out, the more time i can spend on this project for you."
i want to make a living from Free Software myself, so i do appreciate, that elementary os devs want to do the same.
greetings, eMBee.