Voice of the Masses: What’s the best way to fund Free Software?
Elementary OS is an up-and-coming Linux distribution that has gained popularity thanks to its attractive and consistent user interface. Until recently, the downloads page for the distro asked if users wanted to make a financial donation to the project – but the default amount was $0. Now the Elementary OS team has changed that to $10, and the reasoning? “We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software.”
Uh-oh. This has generated plenty of teeth-gnashing around the net, with many commentators noting that Elementary OS is largely a repackaged Ubuntu, which in turn is a spin-off from Debian, which doesn’t try to make users feel guilty for downloading for free. So for our next podcast, which ($DEITY-willing) we’ll record on Friday, we want to hear from you: is this a good way to fund Free Software projects?
Does it help users to realise that FOSS requires funding, or will it just turn people away? If you think it’s a terrible idea, how would you go about raising money if you were an Elementary OS dev? Let us know your thoughts in the comments and we’ll read out the best!
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About The Author
Mike Saunders
Mike stores his data by printing out hex dumps and laminating the sheets. He's the author of The Haynes Linux Manual and the creator of MikeOS, an operating system hand-built from assembly language.
While I don’t disagree with Elementary’s assertion that it makes sense to discourage the idea that all software (FOSS or otherwise) should be free of cost, to say that people who dont pay are “cheating the system” seems odd – how much do they pay upstream developers for the software they’re distributing?
Some of the more successful business models around FOSS that I’ve seen which strike a nice balance between revenue generation and keeping the software available for the community is trademark licensing. Build good software with a strong brand, then license the brand.
Moodle and Ubuntu both have a good model on this basis. If you want to sell services using the Moodle brand, you pay royalties to Moodle HQ, who employ the core developers. You can download and use the software for free, but if you want support from a Moodle Partner company, you pay them and they contribute 10% to keep the software maintained. Similarly, if you sell servers running Ubuntu, you pay Canonical a trademark license for using their brand. In both cases there’s clear set of guidelines that allow the community to make use of brand.
How do you know how much a piece of software is worth until you have tried it? I wish I had a £1 for every time I had downloaded a distro or piece of software only to find I didn’t like it and moved on to something else. I still think it best to fund those projects you like, once you’ve settled into using them.
Mind you, just as long as you still have the freedom to change the amount to $0 (and LinuxVoice is there to divert some of our subscriptions to a more diverse array of projects), all is well in the FOSSsphere.
(Disclaimers:
1. English is not my mother tongue. Be ready to read bad English.
2. I’m neither a developer nor a software company, so likely I’m wrong in my conclusions. But, ignorance is brave…)
I think that one of the most important things in software nowadays, that not many companies understand, is that most of the programs, distributions and services we use today are commodities. For example, an office suite now is a commodity. In many cases, you can use MS Office, Libreoffice or Google Docs and do your job. It happens the same with browsers, email clients, etc. In this situation, customers and companies will choose the cheapest option. And nothing is cheaper than free. FLOSS is a big contributor to this solution. If you want their money, you need to make your product desirable, so good that your customers are willing to pay.
Many distros are really good (and free) now, so it is going to be extremely difficult to earn money selling a distro. The same situation if you plan to sell a browser or even an office suite.
I thing the solutions are finding a niche market where your product is not a commodity or get money customising your software to cover the specific needs of your clients.
For relatively small, medium or even big FLOSS project, the solution could be crowdfunding campaigns for specific features. But, to do this you need a good history showing that you will be able to reach your objectives with the available resources. And, provide regular updates of your progress, if the campaign is successful. I believe that this is necessary to earn credibility, necessary for future campaigns.
I *need* an edit button…
I like to try thing out before paying money. Back in my windows days, I’d pirate stuff to try out, then pay later (Minecraft, for instance – hours of fun, totally worth it) Now, I get pretty much all my software for free legally (go free software) and try to remember to donate later. I would love it if software came with an option to pop up an extra window, say, 1 week after initial install, with a request for a donation and a clear explanation of how the money would be used. Then I don’t get pestered before I even try something out, but still have an option to contribute. Win win 🙂
TL;DR – have a checkbox that lets them notify me a week later to donate if I’ve enjoyed using the software
This is a spankyingly good idea. I’d say it would be a good revenue source for a lot of projects.
If their business model to earn money on a Ubuntu re-wrap, with a dash of eye candy, is to shame folk into donating, they may as well cease now and devote their efforts to something more rewarding, like Bitcoin mining.
Have you seen https://snowdrift.coop/ ?
They’re still working hard to get up and running but the idea is certainly interesting.
1) Sure it’s difficult for free software projects to find funding. However: As long as it’s free software, it should remain free as in beer AND as in free speech – otherwise it’s rather like shareware or freeware. 2) It’s also HOW you ask. Making people feel like they gatecrashed a nightclub and didn’t pay at the entrance seems wrong. Artist Amanda Palmer did a Ted Talk called “The Art of Asking” – Sure it’s difficult for free software projects to find funding. However: As long as it’s free software, it should remain free as in beer AND as in free speech – otherwise it’s rather like shareware or freeware. 2) It’s also HOW you ask. Making people feel like they gatecrashed a nightclub and didn’t pay at the entrance seems wrong. Artist Amanda Palmer did a Ted Talk called “The Art of Asking” – rhttp://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking/transcript. Quite inspiring.
Does this mean that people who don’t contribute to free distros are also cheating the system? They should redirect to the projects github once they have started downloading.
I find the best way to finance anything is with money.
We obviously want programmers and developers to be able to keep body and soul together while still producing Free (as in speech) Software. Free licenses, like the GPL for example, do not prevent developers charging for software, but when the source code has to be freely available, what’s the point?
Red Hat responded to this dilemma by dividing its distribution into Red Hat Enterprise Linux – the commercial product – and Fedora – the community project – and they even behaved extremely well when CentOS came along as a free/gratis re-spin of their commercial product (now officially part of the Red Hat family).
Red Hat in effect decided not to sell an operating system but rather the services around an operating system, i.e. service contracts. I believe they are doing quite well.
I seem to remember reading an article by Richard Stallman years ago that this is how he envisaged developers making money. This approach, together with the brand licensing that Mark Johnson suggests, is a way the Elementary OS developers could generate income.
Also, despite our (stupid) politicians’ statements about a “knowledge economy” being the saviour of First World civilisation, software developers are not the rare commodity they once were. Perhaps the biggest success of Free Software has been in democratising programming – enabling anyone with the inclination and an internet connection to learn programming from the source code of the best software and its accompanying community. The “knowledge economy” is proving to be the foundation of Third World economies.
Perhaps developers simply can no longer demand the price they think they deserve.
If you have to go to the extent of accusing your users of being rip-off artists, maybe you are doing something wrong. I understand that it takes money, and I donate. A couple of days I donated to OpenBSD to support their OpenSSH work. But right now I feel really good about not being an Elementary OS user.
So, if they are asking for money for their distribution, does this mean they will contribute a percentage of that to all the projects whose software they use to make their distribution?
I’m not going to express an opinion here, just look at their numbers.
0.125% of 2,000,000 downloaders have donated. That’s 250,000 donations.
The most common payments are the default $10, followed by $1.
Let’s be conservative and assume a 51:49 split.
That’s almost $1.4 million.
Hmmm.
1. Lern tow to program, understand OSes .
2. Have nifty ideas. Databases are a cash cow.
4. …
5. Sell everything to Red Hat/Facebook/or soon Microsoft. With the GPL attached.
6. Profit.
Looks like that “cheating the system” phrase has been edited away – good move, since all this uproar simply about those poorly-chosen words rather than the choice to make the default contribution non-zero.
The easiest way to support projects? Buy a subscription of Linux Voice and let those “journalists” take the burden how to share the profit with the community… meanwhile sit back, read the excellent magazine and enjoy the podcast.
This is a difficult issue, we all love free (as in beer) stuff but as has been said developers have to live as well. I now make regular small donations to the projects I use most. I also try and give some time back to the community in any way I can. As I’m not a developer this tends to be through community events such as volunteering at OggCamp, local Raspberry Jams and our local CoderDojo. it’s not surprising that some distributions have to charge a small fee, servers cost money and advertising revenue might not pay all the bills. It’s not too long ago that the only way you could get hold of a Linux distribution was to buy a boxed set of disc’s and a manual. In the age of fast Internet we seem to think everything should be free to download, but should it?
They need more fish power. Oh OK er don’t accuse people of being cheats but ask nice could you donate to help us maintain this please, and we will all be happy.
I have no problem with their download page suggesting a donation, and I’m too not concerned with what their default amount is, in fact I think that this is probably a very effective way to bring in some extra funding.
But:
* The “cheating the system” wording was extremely unfortunate, especially for a FOSS project – if they want to have this attitude then maybe they should just not release it for free (as they point out, they’re not obligated to release it for free. But if they don’t the project will die about 3 seconds later, so good luck with that).
* there should be a single-click option that says “I don’t want to donate just yet”, or something like that. It’s fine if it’s relatively small and below all the other options, and it’s even fine it that download page includes text like “If you like our software, please consider donating some time, we rely on your support”, but it should be a one-click thing – making me explicitly type ‘$0’ is enough of an impediment to accessing the software that I’d simply abandon their download page, go find another distro, and never look back, meaning that the chance that I’ll ever donate immediately drops to exactly 0%.
Re my earlier post…
I was, of course, incorrect by a factor of 100!
Schoolboy error. Red face.
Good job it’s amongst friends!
I might suggest starting a magazine that uses half the profits to fund FOSS projects. Joking aside, the best way is to produce software and then provide optional “value added”, paid for components. e.g. a paid-for manual (Inkscape), a paid-for support (many distros), hardware (Mint), paid-for service or training (e.g. WordPress). Development of FOSS also comes because vendors see a benefit from having a community assisted software development for their hardware projects.
Producing free as in beer software with expectation of making money is hypocrisy. Getting rewarded for doing so is social justice.
They are focusing on personal users, they have to give them something back. Treating them well, making them feel good for using the OS (free of charge or not) is an absolute must. Offending people is not only rude, but also poor salesmanship.
Then they can nicely ask for money. Say with every update of Pantheon, a little message – “Hi guys, thanks so much for using Elementary OS – you’re the best! Last quarter it cost us £XXXX to create it, would you mind chipping in?”, with “Donate” and “Not this time” buttons. Also newsletters, even podcast (I learnt about LV from the podcast before issue 1 and it made me subscribe before the magazine was out, mostly because the podcast was so good) and if they can create a great wiki and forum, even better.
I know all this is hard to do, but getting money without engaging people is even harder. Trust me, I’m a sales advisor 😀
Elementary does offer quite a bit more than most Ubuntu respins. It’s polished and slick, has it’s own well designed desktop environment ,runs fast and you can tell that talented people have put a lot of time and effort into it. A very high quality distro. Despite this, it just wasn’t my cup of tea and I’m glad I didn’t pay to try it. I would however recommend it for others to try.
As far as the “cheaters” comment, it sounds to me like someone poorly chose their words in moment of frustration. I get it. Anyone wanting a real guilt trip should try downloading and installing Elive without making a donation.
Distrowatch just listed a distro called Rebellin Linux that has an interesting approach. If the website is to be believed and it’s not some kind of scam (and I don’t have any reason to believe it is at this point) it’s a free download and install, and a one-time fee of $15 for tech support by email. It seems like the idea is a micro version of RedHat and Canonical. Charging for the software itself seems less legitimate in a way. How much are the developers standing on the shoulders of giants and putting a shiny bow on it. Free software and contract support seems much better.
Just remembered that parted magic a disc management and rescue distribution has moved to a purchase or subscription model $9 for the latest release but for those who benefit from this software (proprietary equivalents are far more expensive) is this much to pay to possibly save many $10’s or even $100’s rescuing lost data. Sure you can get other distro’s that do the job but many of these are terminal based and not all of us are that confident using these tools at the CO.
first and formost, i work hard for my money and no one gets a cent until they prove they have earned it. im not gonna pay a cent for anything unless i can try it full featured and complete- this goes for anything. im tired of the android, ios and other developer masses automaticaly assume that they are owed money for typing on a keyboard. the dev field is massively overcrowded and could stand a good mowing like my lawn in june.. get over yourselves. if you want to charge, then charge. i am assuming that the 1 percent who pay are the ones who actually feel the product is worth it- learn this lesson, shock me and make it worth it. otherwise, i can get along without it.
While I don’t feel that elementary OS served it’s cause well by calling its users “cheaters” I can understand their frustration about having such a low donation rate. But if they want to go the route of being a pay distribution they should just declare it right up front and tell users that they need to pay a fixed amount to download the distribution. And I’m pretty certain that the use of elementary OS will drop down to almost nothing. While the desktop does offer a consistent environment (as long as you’re using apps designed for it) it’s still a re-spin of a older version of Ubuntu LTS and doesn’t provide all that much more than Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin Linux or any other the other Ubuntu-based spins. While I’m not opposed to buying Linux – I have boxed copies of Mandrake, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, TurboLinux, Corel Linux and CalderaOpen Linux sitting on my bookshelf, but ultimately the marketplace has shifted away from these kinds of products to free distributions. If you look at the most popular distros shown at DistroWatch.com I would bet that almost all of them are ones you can download for nothing. My local Micro Center stopped selling boxed copies of Linux years ago and I doubt that we’re going to be moving back to paying for a operating system other than Windows for some time to come.
If the elementary OS developers need to make money on their distribution they should belly up to the bar and ask for it – the community of users will vote on whether or not they’ll willing to support the distro by plunking down their hard-earned cash. My guess is they won’t. The elementary OS distribution doesn’t provide as much out of the box as Ubuntu or Linux Mint (not even an office suite) and yet they think they should be paid for having a much slower release schedule (it’s done when it’s done) and a interface that isn’t any easier to use than Unity, Cinnamon or Mate.
BTW – as long as elementary OS continues to post “100% Free” at the bottom of their Luna homepage and make the comment that “elementary OS is completely free, both in terms of pricing and licensing” it’s hard to imagine that people who download the distribution are “cheating” the system.
If I have to pay for it – it’s NOT FREE,,,
We have to find indirect ways of funding. The traditional of money up front is not going to work. The music business is slowly learning this lesson, by the way of attempting to destroy the internet in the process and trample on democratic principles.
I don’t think that there will be a single solution, but many and varied. Donations, selling support services, selling training, brand licensing, and probably many more are needed.
I am involved with a voluntary group, Reading Repair Cafe, and we are constantly looking for funding, there is no one solution, but many a varied bits of money that help this happen.
I like the mechanism to donate bitcoins to comitters of a project provided by BitHub (https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/). See also: http://www.aaronmbrown.net/blog/2014/12/some-thoughts-on-getting-paid-for-a-pull-request/.