It's largely true though, how is it not? Free is either a loss leader for something else that's paid, like a demo, or you're the product. However I agree that paid users are still often a product.

Paying apple doesn't stop them from selling ads on your phone, same with samsung smart tvs etc.

Free software where the user is not the product is not an exception. The number of free dev libraries, Linux software, specialized software like audio plugins (Eg VCVRack, Max4Live, Reaktor, etc) is huge. Maybe in easily commercialized areas like iOS apps the vast majority of free apps monetize users, but outside of that this phrase has far less relevancy.

Well I guess I meant free software by capitalist profit seeking entities like corporations.

That isn't accurate. Let's look at Linux. Yes you can download it and compile it yourself but typically you would download from a website that tracks you. You would get a distro that typically has a business model. Yes, there's debian (and others) but even they have sponsors that pay the salaries of people working on the software.

The free portion are things that are already written. Services are the thing that costs money and they include features, hosting, adapting, etc. Those aren't free.

Maybe I'm cynical but I see things that are technically free all residing within environments that aren't. I don't have a problem with that, I'm OK with commercial interests. They pay my salary. But we need to be realistic about the scope of free and how financially viable would it be to be "free".

I am not sure I follow you. If I download a Linux distro from a website that is using Google Analytics, I am still the product? That is not even remotely correct. We are not discussing tracking or sponsorships here, or even whether people who write free software have financial incentives. In very many cases free software _is_ the product, not the people who download and use it.

Yes. Tracking data has value so you are the product to the company providing the hosting.

Yes. The code you're downloading is free. Just like the words of Shakespeare are now free. But you need to read those words off of something. That "something" sometimes includes tracking. Why would a commercial company offer this for free?

Sometimes it's indeed charity. But we have no way of knowing it. Sometimes the value is analytics which they can use to fingerprint and follow you across other properties they have.

You are saying that if someone takes free software and sells it (or distributes with the intention to monetize that service through ads) then that makes software not free? I disagree.

In the context of this discussion, there is a clear distinction between developers/companies that build truly free products vs free products that are intended to be monetized through selling user data or showing ads.

A service that tracks and sells user data in exchange for free downloads is a different product, has nothing to do with the original code/product that it might be distributing.

That was very specifically NOT what I said. What I said was that this person *might* be using tracking and monetization methods that would flip the value proposition by leveraging your details and privacy.

The thing is that you have relatively limited ability to know the level of tracking that companies use.

I'm *not* saying that paying for software solves this problem. I'm saying that "free" isn't as simple an answer as yes or no. It's more nuanced.

In that case I misunderstood you. Sure, we can’t always know all tracking details of closed source software, or even open source software with telemetry or some other tracking enabled.

The developer could be using harvested data for monetization. Or not. That’s a bit too speculative and borderline conspiratorial to be discussing.

I released free software myself, my friends have done the same - without any user tracking or ads. So anecdotally I can tell with confidence that free software does exist. Is all free software really free (as in not monetized by the developer in some hidden way)? No, not all.

I did too. But I put it on github which makes collaboration easy.

What does github track?

I don't know. I don't pay for it and I get a lot for free. I'm not switching to doing everything on my own private servers, etc. I live in the modern world. But I think we need to be conscious of who is footing the bill and their motivations to do so.

I think I responded to this concern in my previous comment.

Basically you are conflating free software as written and released by a developer with a completely separate service (eg Github) that is used to distribute this free software. Both the software and GitHub are free to the end user, but GitHub is likely harvesting user data for monetization.

As I said before, this does not make the original software not free. In this specific case distribution/download is not free. That has nothing to do with whether the user is the product or the code is the product for the developer.

> Paying apple doesn't stop them from selling ads

Nobody called Google evil back when they just sold ads based on the keywords you typed into search.

It's not the ad part that is evil, it's the relentlessly spying on everyone's life part.

I don't think ads are evil nor is being a product inherently awful. It can be a great worthwhile trade to be the product if you're getting enough recompense. Like Lebron James is a product for the NBA but I doubt he's complaining much about that.

You don't have to relentlessly spy on everyone's life to sell ads, however that is the business model Google has chosen.

Their mission is to organize all the world's information, so i think they have a different set of values than you.

Their mission is now to spy on everyone as much as possible and leverage that data to make a profit.

How does organizing all the world’s information generate profits?

Especially ironic given that it's often proponents of free software (free as in both) that repeat this soundbite.

If you show up at a social event often enough, someone is going to ask you to bring something.

>We really need to stop repeating this

We really don't, since it's been beautifully illustrated through Google's actions over the years.

My favorite example is Google bragging to it's advertising customers that they were buying a copy of everyone's credit card transaction data, which could be used for ad targeting.

>Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no...

> We really don't, since it's been beautifully illustrated through Google's actions over the years.

You've proven that it should be changed to "If something free is Google's, you are the product".

Free things I'm benefiting from right now (right as I write this): Hacker News, Firefox, Linux, a keyboard a friend gifted me, a video of a guy talking about the color brown, the electricity paid by my landlord. I also just took out the trash which will be picked up, for free, by the city.

I'm the "product" of none of these things. They are paid for, indirectly, just as pretty much everything is. Just as for example, your volunteering time is paid for by your other actions in life allowing you to give this time away.

So what we should maybe change it to is closer to: "If something is free, it's just fucking free and there can be a host of reasons as to why so stop thinking in soundbites and employ critical thinking instead of being cynical about everything."

From your perspective, a more charitable rewriting of the phrase should be "If a product or service that sounds like it should cost money is free, and it's obvious the product or service is not something being made available through gift/barter/mutual aid, then you might be a part of the product's revenue generation strategy."

The electricity and trash are bad examples to bring up. You're paying for those with increased rent and municipal taxes.

Open source projects like Firefox and Linux are sort of counter-examples, except they're backed by nonprofits. If a nonprofit is giving something away, there's actually a decent chance that they don't have surreptitious motives. Same for a friend giving you something, that's not really a "product" in the sense of the saying.

I'd say that HN actually falls into the category of productizing its users. The reason HN exists is to attract talent to Y Combinator, and to get an audience for the companies they fund. It's a productive relationship that has created a great forum, but HN doesn't just exist for goodness' sake.

The phrase makes people think that if they are paying then they're not the product. The price the user pays is not always monetary.

A better phrase might be, "If you are the product then who is the customer?"