Yes, but where do they offer solutions to transition (emphasis on transition) from what people currently use to a more open ecosystem?
At least in the software licensing arena, having personally visited a lecture from Stallman, I was left with the impression that he wasn't offering a solution, just a vision of a Utopia without any guidance on how to transition to it -- more specifically, how would we make money from open source software, when currently proprietary software is the default for making money.
> how would we make money from open source software
There are many existing examples, so this is clearly a solved problem already. You charge for support, or for feature requests, and so on. That's how SUSE and RedHat make their money.
The flaw with looking at proprietary software's monitisation is that it usually just boils down to "pay for the binary". This obviously won't work with free software, you need to charge for development rather than access (though you can also use a seat-based model where you only provide support for machines that have valid licenses).
SUSE or RedHat are excellent examples when it comes to monetizing OSS for large businesses. What about consumer software? I do not think OSS will survive monetization when it comes to dealing with individual consumers.
And then there's the question of SaaS. OSS exists but a lot of high quality alternatives are paid. I don't think services like Todoist, Pocket, Evernote etc would exists on the open source model you described.
This is only half the story. Several business models around open source are working and proven (e.g. hardware vendors writing kernel drivers) but there is also a lot of unpaid volunteer work that everyone seems to take for granted. GIMP is one example. And probably a large number of the packages on NPM. Or think about OpenSSL, everyone was just assuming it must be well-funded, while nobody was actually funding it.
That definately is one solution, but perhaps made possible by restricting distribution of software in the first place to get a leg up (see comments regarding improvements and distribution restrictions regarding installer scripts in SLS http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2750). This suggests that it isn't a solved problem, because the initial conversion to an open source model (or free software) with support on the side may have required a different model to start the venture.
None the less, it's admirable, and hopefully a net benefit for everyone.
My point was more about Stallman and co calling foul with regards to software freedom, codifying their own ideal, but not giving directions to reach that ideal. This feels like a safe pulpit to sit upon, where their view isn't falsifiable, useful when they want to say "I told you so", and eventually taking all credit for everyone else's efforts in between to make the end goal possible.
> perhaps made possible by restricting distribution of software in the first place to get a leg up
This is incorrect, you can download the full ISOs for SLE from the SUSE website, with 30 days worth of updates. The source code (and the system required to build it) is all publicly available on https://buid.opensuse.org/. I beleive RedHat have something similar.
I'm also not sure that an interview from 1994 with the creator of Slackware is a good indicator of the current state of distribution business models. Though even in 1994, both RedHat and SUSE were selling enterprise distributions.
Since the past determines the future, the relevant part of the 1994 interview is "... Instead, he claimed distribution rights on the Slackware install scripts since they were derived from ones included in SLS...", which as I understand it, is the restriction of distribution I was referring to (perhaps redistribution is more accurate).
This suggests that the business model benefited from restricting redistribution and modification of the source code, so breaks the assumptions that the business model was purely based on making money from open source, and so doesn't fully support the idea that proprietary software is unnecessary, in the case where we take SUSE as an example of saying it is "already solved".
Given the bang up job we've done so far, I'm not sure people making money off of software has been a net positive for humanity. Maybe it's the idea that money is the only way we can get software that is the problem.
I remember when the internet was mostly people's personal websites that they didn't make money off of, and frankly, the internet was better then. The best websites that exist now started in that era.
Isn't that what the "tragedy of the commons" describes, with the internet being diluted or poluted by content that doesn't add much value?
I think you can probably find a suitable subset of the internet and it still feels like the old days, but then you have to be happy with a much smaller community.
And fair point to regard money from software as a potential net negative, and I just don't have an answer that is objective. There is a lot of software that highlights the creativity of people, and I like it, and am happy to pay for it, and also happy to get it for free. Like paying for books or borrowing them from the library.
> I think you can probably find a suitable subset of the internet and it still feels like the old days, but then you have to be happy with a much smaller community.
I think most people would be happier with a smaller community. Facebook encourages a large number of low-quality connections, which are actually worse than not being connected at all: I don't want or need to interact with my friend's racist cousin I met at a party three years ago or my ex-roommate's mom who always wants to sell me homeopathy supplies. These people are actively detracting from your life.
Those are extreme examples, but even people I might get along with suck up your time. If I am not connected emotionally/socially with someone enough to get their phone number and send them a text occasionally, I probably don't need to give them even a few seconds of my time on a regular basis.
> And fair point to regard money from software as a potential net negative, and I just don't have an answer that is objective. There is a lot of software that highlights the creativity of people, and I like it, and am happy to pay for it, and also happy to get it for free. Like paying for books or borrowing them from the library.
I'd be happy to pay for good internet too, but unfortunately there are few businesses willing to do this. Ad sellers won the race to the bottom on price (a strange game--the only winning move is not to play) by simply being "free" to users. This works because of short-term thinking: users don't think ahead to how ads will affect their lives, and content providers don't plan to grow a business slowly the way a for-pay business grows.
> I was left with the impression that he wasn't offering a solution, just a vision of a Utopia without any guidance on how to transition to it
Stallman quit his job to write an entire free software operating system and essentially dedicated his entire life to it. What more do you want?! I don't even want to imagine a world without Richard Stallman.
That doesn't really offer a solution for those of us that need to get paid. The choice he may have made to quit his job and write free software is anecdotal and simply won't generalise to everyone.
Stallman judges those that write proprietary software, calling this type of software immoral, and yet doesn't offer guidance to get from the current situation to a better situation. Without realistic and generalisable guidance, it is simply self righteousness on his part,
the same as any extreme idealist.
> That doesn't really offer a solution for those of us that need to get paid.
If you have anything at all to do with software you're "getting paid" by using the wealth of free software that makes up GNU Linux, OS X, etc. Free software constitutes a powerful non-scarcity-based model that is extremely good for productivity. Just because he doesn't kowtow to standard capitalist race-to-the-bottom models doesn't mean he's not "realistic".
Why should he come up with a solution to help you get paid? If you're making a living unethically it's not up to me to figure out a way for you to do it ethically. In any case, there are plenty of other people who have figured out how to do that and there isn't the slightest reason to believe that all software being free means nobody would get paid to write it.
He owes me nothing but he's not offering credible proof that his way is applicable to anyone but himself.
And as for calling something immoral which is the result of someones hard work and doesn't impact them if they choose not to use it, simply sounds like sour grapes and self righteousness.
> do they offer solutions to transition (emphasis on transition) from what people currently use to a more open ecosystem?
A comment I made two weeks ago that is pertinent to this discussion:
Niche market software, used by a limited number of highly specialized professionals, is somewhat incompatible with the open source economic model. When a piece of software is used by very many users, and there is a strong overlap with coders or companies capable of coding, say an operating system or a a web server, open sources shines: there is adequate development investment by the power-users, in their regular course of using and adapting the software, that can be redistributed to regular users for free in an open, functional package.
At the other end of the spectrum, when the target audience is comprised of a small number of professionals that don't code, for example advanced graphic or music editors or an engineering toolbox, open source struggles to keep up with proprietary because the economic model is less adequate: each professional would gladly pay, say, $200 each to cover the development costs for a fantastic product they could use forever, but there is a prisoner dilema that your personal $200 donation does not make others pay and does not directly improve your experience. Because the userbase is small and non-software oriented, the occasional contributions from outside are rare, so the project is largely driven by the core authors who lack the resources to compete with proprietary software that can charge $200 per seat. And once the proprietary software becomes entrenched, there is a strong tendency for monopolistic behavior (Adobe) because of the large moat and no opportunity to fork, so people will be asked to pay $1000 per seat every year by the market leader simply because it can.
A solution I'm brainstorming could be a hybrid commercial & open source license with a limited, 5 year period where the software, provided with full source, is commercial and not free to copy (for these markets DRM is not necessary, license terms are enough to dissuade most professionals from making or using a rogue compile with license key verification disabled).
After the 5 year period, the software reverts to an open source hybrid, and anyone can fork it as open source, or publish a commercial derivative with the same time-limited protection. The company developing the software gets a chance to cover it's initial investment and must continue to invest in it to warant the price for the latest non-free release, or somebody else might release another free or cheap derivative starting from a 5-year old release. So the market leader could periodically change and people would only pay to use the most advanced and inovative branch, ensuring that development investment is paid for and then redistributed to everybody else.
At least in the software licensing arena, having personally visited a lecture from Stallman, I was left with the impression that he wasn't offering a solution, just a vision of a Utopia without any guidance on how to transition to it -- more specifically, how would we make money from open source software, when currently proprietary software is the default for making money.