The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

Re:The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders by ThrowawayR2 on Friday November 20, 2020 @10:39AM (#25161456)

> "I came out of that workshop convinced that the primary reason companies like FOSS is because it's generally available at no cost. Not because it reduces long-term dependencies on external parties, not because it improves software development methodologies, and not because it's an essential liberty. But simply because of the cost."

This was, or at least should have been, known from the beginning; I've certainly been saying it since the '90s. When people were proclaiming FOSS to be "free as in beer and free as in speech", it was pretty clear that most people stopped listening after the first four words.

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Re:The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders by dalke on Friday November 20, 2020 @02:33PM (#25163985)

Yes, most FOSS business models of the 1990s were based on secondary effects. Like "people will pay you to add features / support the software / integrate your software in their system."

I deliberately did NOT use that model. Rather, you pay $$$ and get commercial software, which happens to be under a FOSS license.

In other words, I wanted to see what happens if it's not "free as in beer". If you are willing to pay for software, will you pay more, or less, for a FOSS license instead of a commercial one?

Turns out, people don't care - they want the cheapest one. At least, my customers' willingness to pay more for a FOSS license doesn't match my economic risk for selling under a FOSS license.

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