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Free is too expensive (Economist)Free is too expensive (Economist)Posted Apr 1, 2012 18:00 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by shmerl Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
To a world where normal people have usable system and geeks have their toys? Oh, you mean that it killed bunch of losers? Nope, I don't mourn them. They had their chance and squandered it. All in all it'll be good outcome although I'm not sure Google will be able to pull it on desktop.
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Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 18:07 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
No, to a world where direction is defined by money, and interests of a small group which controls it, rather than by the interest of people who use it.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 20:36 UTC (Sun) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
In that case we are facing an unwinnable education problem. It seems fairly evident to me that something far above 90 % of people just don't care about software in this sort of way. They are just dumb users, they have been educated to want shiny things and they want their games and social networking shits and cool applications people are buzzing about. Their own attitudes make them just a resource to be harvested, but they also have money and they are willing to spend it if you just give them something they want for a price they are willing to pay.
Think about it: with money, you can hire developers, while at the same time you grow your own market share, which makes hardware vendors pay attention to you. At some point they are starting to do work for your behalf, because you are important enough to matter. Imagine this: a new GPU chip arrives and instead of spending a few years of pestering the vendor for specifications to write a driver with, the vendor contributes a driver on the same day the thing hits market. Everything becomes easier with market share, but without it, there's a risk of being squeezed out of the game entirely.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 21:46 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
True, there is a need to interest common users as well as manufacturers. That's undeniable. I believe that KDE is doing something of that sort with Plasma Active efforts and the upcoming Vivaldi tablet. But again, KDE is a non profit, and directions are defined by the community. Making such things "for profit" right away introduces a potential risk.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 8:32 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] But again, KDE is a non profit, and directions are defined by the community. I think you don't understand what “non profit” means. It looks like you perceive “non profit” as “someone altruistic who's fighting for the better future” and who's, obviously, “is not driven by money”. Nothing can be further from truth! Here is an example of non-profit organisation. It precedes KDE, GNOME and Mozilla and deals with commercial interests all the time. Nonprofit just means that participants are not planning to ever withdraw profits. They are supposed to be used to further pursue the goal of given non-profit. In a lot of cases these goals are better served when non-profit cooperates with some other for-profit entities - and when you do that you must think about market, about 90% of people just don't care about software in this sort of way, etc.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 16:33 UTC (Mon) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
By "non profit" in this case I don't mean the formal definition, but the fact that the direction of the project is not dictated by interests to gain money (which will inevitably result in conflict with public interest), but by community interests. If it sounds more altruistic than most commercial companies - then it is. Mozilla and KDE are good examples of this. Of course these project need to sustain themselves, and need income. I was talking about what defines the direction of their development.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 5, 2012 13:34 UTC (Thu) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
It's lovely to not care solely about money, but it's awful to be antagonist about money. Even if it were true that money will corrupt even the best intentions eventually, until that happens you fight the good fight. It could take quite long time.
To use an analogy: Bioware used to make great games for over a decade, founded by people who were evidently very passionate about gaming, until EA bought them and apparently destroyed the company and its values from inside. No matter: I think that the world is still better for Bioware's existence, even if it never again made another good game.
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