"free as in speech but not as in beer"

[suitedaces]

[stupid question]How do "paid for" open source projects work? If source code is available, what's to stop people from using that for free?[/stupid question]

[Sourcery]

I suppose it works as such that a company can choose to pay for development of an open source project, knowing that anyone can take the code afterwards... A form of charity to poor developers with great ideas I guess...

/Kristian

[ZankerH]

A Free commercial project is only obliged to provide source code to paying customers.

PS, couldn't we stop using the "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" phrases already? I thought the distinction between free and Free is perfectly clear.

[Tibuda]

You only have to provide the source code for those buying it, not for everyone on the internet. The source should be part of the "pack".

[Excedio]

A Free commercial project is only obliged to provide source code to paying customers.*snip*

Then what is stopping the paying customer's from releasing the source after they have aquired it? I'm far from being an expert on this, so forgive what may have been a really silly question.

[Tibuda]

Then what is stopping the paying customer's from releasing the source after they have aquired it? I'm far from being an expert on this, so forgive what may have been a really silly question.

It depends on the license, but usually nothing.

[suitedaces]

Then rather than "how does it work", "how can it be profitable"?

[Excedio]

It depends on the license, but usually nothing.

Then I guess the purpose of selling Open Source software would then be defeated, depending on the license.

Probably would be better, in this situation, in asking for donations.

[Keyper7]

I thought the distinction between free and Free is perfectly clear.

Ha! You wish.

[Excedio]

*snip*I thought the distinction between free and Free is perfectly clear.

Without looking it up, do you know the difference between deaf and Deaf? ;-)

[ZankerH]

Then what is stopping the paying customer's from releasing the source after they have aquired it? I'm far from being an expert on this, so forgive what may have been a really silly question.

If the licence is GPL, nothing, as long as they attribute it to the person/project they bought it from. That's the beauty of it - what other, proprietary licences consider "piracy", the GPL recognises for what it really is - altruism. People who want to support the author will still buy it. And besides offering a commercial item for free, this also allows forks, which are very useful.

[sledge73]

I would think that not everyone has the patients or no how to compile from source, therefore they would rather pay than be frustrated.

Thats my take on it anyway.

[Xbehave]

Support, without a valid redhat license you can't get redhat support, and if your servers are important then it's worth it to pay for support in case anything needs fixing quickly. The same applies to Novell and Sun. I think redhat and novel also sell some non-oss software with RHEL/SUSE, so while you can copy all the OSS stuff you can't copy the non-oss stuff (often enterprise system management stuff)

[ZankerH]

I would think that not everyone has the patients or no how to compile from source, therefore they would rather pay than be frustrated.

Thats my take on it anyway.

Again, commercial Free projects are only obliged to provide source code to paying customers.


Support, without a valid redhat license you can't get redhat support, and if your servers are important then it's worth it to pay for support in case anything needs fixing quickly. The same applies to Novell and Sun. I think redhat and novel also sell some non-oss software with RHEL/SUSE, so while you can copy all the OSS stuff you can't copy the non-oss stuff (often enterprise system management stuff)

Paid support has nothing to do with this topic. The OP was specifically asking about the availability of source code from Free commercial projects.

[Xbehave]

Paid support has nothing to do with this topic. The OP was specifically asking about the availability of source code from Free commercial projects.
There is nothing to stop a paying customer redistributing the software, however the way companies make money is support, so it has everything to do with this topic. The lack of first party support is what prevents many people using centos instead of RHEL.

[forrestcupp]

If you're talking about the GPL license, the only way to sell your software without worrying about someone releasing it free of charge is to only prey on ignorant people who don't know that it can be released free of charge.

Sometimes people are willing to pay for your work, and not directly for the software itself. It might be worth it for someone to pay for software that has been packaged for them and made to be easily installed.

If you're wanting to sell the software and not the support for the software, GPL is definitely not the way to go.

And beer is not free; it costs a lot of money.

[earthpigg]

i can't think of any off the top of my head, but some things are released under a Free Software license for Linux, and as proprietary software with a price tag for Windows.

generally, anyone that submits code to such projects signs a waiver granting the vendor the right to do this prior to the code being accepted.

edit: here ya go... (http://gcompris.net/-Download-)


GCompris 8.3 and above. It runs on windows 2000 and above. Once activated, it includes all the activities found on GNU/Linux.

To take advantage of this demo, download the file gcompris-X.X.exe. Save it on your hard drive and double click on it. Then follow the instructions (next, next, ...)

meanwhile, GCompris is licensed for us under the GPL, hosted on sourceforge, and the full version is in our repos.

[Bachstelze]

i can't think of any off the top of my head, but some things are released under a Free Software license for Linux, and as proprietary software with a price tag for Windows.


Also XChat, but someone who downloads the source can very well build a Windows binary with it and redistribute it for free. If the license forbids that, it's not Free Software anymore.

[alphaniner]

Paid support has nothing to do with this topic. The OP was specifically asking about the availability of source code from Free commercial projects.

I disagree. The ability to make a profit off of something other than the product itself has a lot to do with the viability of open source in a free market.

Hark, the OP:


Then rather than "how does it work", "how can it be profitable"?

[Bachstelze]

I disagree. The ability to make a profit off of something other than the product itself has a lot to do with the viability of open source in a free market.

This thread is not about "the viability of open source in a free market". The OP asked a precise question.

[Tristam Green]

Hold the phone, are you actually insinuating that capitalizing the word "free" denotes another meaning? I actually liked it better when you lot were using the Latin meanings to describe, rather than attempting to inject the English lexicon with an unnecessary proper noun :(

[earthpigg]

Hold the phone, are you actually insinuating that capitalizing the word "free" denotes another meaning? I actually liked it better when you lot were using the Latin meanings to describe, rather than attempting to inject the English lexicon with an unnecessary proper noun :(

i use free as a proper noun when referring to Free Software. GCompris is a Free program, for example, regardless of it's price tag for Windows.

but i generally do not expect any but the most attentive readers to pick up on it or understand it without proper context.

sometimes when i feel like being arrogant and pedantic, i'll loudly proclaim that some gratis utility for Windows is indeed not Free and then cite the 4 software freedoms to a bunch of people not 'in the know' :D

[alphaniner]

This thread is not about "the viability of open source in a free market". The OP asked a precise question.

Yes, and then the OP decided to broaden the question:


Then rather than "how does it work", "how can it be profitable"?

[Tristam Green]

i use free as a proper noun when referring to Free Software. GCompris is a Free program, for example, regardless of it's price tag for Windows.

but i generally do not expect any but the most attentive readers to pick up on it or understand it without proper context.

sometimes when i feel like being arrogant and pedantic, i'll loudly proclaim that some gratis utility for Windows is indeed not Free and then cite the 4 software freedoms to a bunch of people not 'in the know' :D

Somewhere in there you answered my question. Suffice it to say it includes the word "pedantic".

In regards to the support being a part of the equation, I am of the affiliation that it very much is. I realize that support and licensing are two separate animals, but software assurance is a great way for money to be made.

Namely, I can provide you the source code if you pay for the software initially, and there is nothing stopping you from redistributing any changed version of my code, but say I have an automatic update function that connects to my servers, that is only available as outlined in my license to paid licensees - you cannot get updates to my software if you are on a redistributed version, and are therefore in violation of my license.

Licensing in general is not fun :(

[alphaniner]

Licensing in general is not fun :(

Licensing in particular is not fun either.:p

[Tristam Green]

Licensing in particular is not fun either.:p

Too right. We have a guy here whose general role is essentially devoted to license maintenance. I do not envy him.

[samh785]

A Free commercial project is only obliged to provide source code to paying customers.

PS, couldn't we stop using the "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" phrases already? I thought the distinction between free and Free is perfectly clear.
But then the people that pay for the product and receive the source code can distribute it freely to anyone they wish (free of charge). I think that this is the issue being brought up by the OP.

[Simian Man]

The FSF people love to say that you can sell GPL'd projects for profit, but the flat out truth is that you really can't. If a customer buys a GPL'd project there is exactly nothing to prevent them from handing it out to everybody who wants it for free. So you can really only sell it exactly once.

Now there are some cases when selling a project exactly once is a feasible way to make money. If the software must be tailored to that one customer, and they are willing to pay enough for it, then you are good. But that's not really the common case.

There is another model where you sell your project, along with source code, but restrict what the customer can do with it. For starters they sure as hell can't give it away. This is a common model for proprietary tools and libraries for example the Gamebryo and Torque game engines use this model. But this isn't really open source.

The way to make money with open source, as someone earlier pointed out is support.

[samh785]

the way to make money with open source, as someone earlier pointed out is support.
+1

[phrostbyte]

You can look at Trolltech and MySQL's business models, they actually make (in the case of Trolltech, made) money FROM their software directly and not just on support.

The trick is to release your software as GPL (usually the software in question is a library), and thus only GPL projects can link to it for free. You then offer a license for proprietary developers which costs money. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been made this way, so it's no joke.

[phrostbyte]

Here is another example of that, for some reason the original site is down:

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:VFyfwVAsduoJ:www.alhem.net/Sockets/+C%2B%2B+socket+library&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a



This is a GPL licensed C++ class library wrapping the berkeley sockets C API, and therefore works on most unixes and also win32. The library is in use in a number of real world applications, both commercial and open source.

Then if you click on the Buy link you'd get this:

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:E67Yzy848qcJ:www.alhem.net/Sockets/license.html+http://www.alhem.net/Sockets/license.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a



The C++ Sockets Library is licensed under the GNU general public license (GPL). As such, all software using it must also be released as open source under the same license. Read more about the GPL at www.gnu.org.

With the alternative license agreement presented on this page it will be possible to use the library in your closed-source application.

Of course this alternative license agreement costs money, so the author is able to generate revenue from his work.


This business model only really works with libraries (software which is designed to be used in other software). It will not work for applications for instance like Tux Racer or something.

[lykwydchykyn]

This business model only really works with libraries (software which is designed to be used in other software). It will not work for applications for instance like Tux Racer or something.

With a bit of modification, it works for applications: consider StarOffice. Sun adds some proprietary bits to OpenOffice, offers support, and sells it as a proprietary application.

Also, Sun can license the OpenOffice code to third parties who want to create applications from it.

It's not quite the same as the QT model, but close (since both models depend on copyright ownership and dual licensing).

[Pasdar]

These two phrases should be nominated for the most stupid phrases in the English language: "free as in speech but not as in beer"

How about people raise their language awareness and just call it proprietary or free software. One word means license protected software (the code is owned and may not be touched) and the other that the software requires no fee. So in case of Ubuntu we have opens-course and free software.

[Tristam Green]

These two phrases should be nominated for the most stupid phrases in the English language: "free as in speech but not as in beer"

How about people raise their language awareness and just call it proprietary or free software. One word means license protected software (the code is owned and may not be touched) and the other that the software requires no fee. So in case of Ubuntu we have opens-course and free software.

Preach it, brother.

[koenn]

Now there are some cases when selling a project exactly once is a feasible way to make money. If the software must be tailored to that one customer, and they are willing to pay enough for it, then you are good. But that's not really the common case.

The way to make money with open source, as someone earlier pointed out is support.
Those are the most obvious, and the oldest - 20th century style.

Recently you can see a new, and imo a much more intelligent appoach : don't try to make money on the software, make money on what you can do with the software.
There are several approaches.
a/ sell services - sell web hosting instead of trying to sell copies of & support for apache,mysql, php, drupal, ...

b/ sell solutions and expertise - and you can afford to give away the software
If you're an expert in document management, build your business round consultancy and project coordination in this field - and throw in the software for free.
Alfresco seems to be going this way.
IBM has been doing this for a decade (using both open source and proprrietary software)

c/ build end user apps or web services on open source infrastructure (eg what Oracle does, or Youtube and Google)

Essentially, your business is about adding value to commodity free / open source software - you make money on the added value, not the commodoties.

[earthpigg]

*snip*

a/ sell services - sell web hosting instead of trying to sell copies of & support for apache,mysql, php, drupal, ...

b/ sell solutions and expertise - and you can afford to give away the software
If you're an expert in document management, build your business round consultancy and project coordination in this field - and throw in the software for free.
Alfresco seems to be going this way.
IBM has been doing this for a decade (using both open source and proprrietary software)

c/ build end user apps or web services on open source infrastructure (eg what Oracle does, or Youtube and Google)

*snip*



d/ include advertisements in some form with your product, and count on the fact that only a minute number of people will use forks that don't include the advertisements. example: firefox (with google as default search) vs pick-your-firefox-fork.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation