O
Owen Jacobson
That's extremely poor marketing. I'd instead frame that as:
4. Accept that some proportion of your userbase will subvert your
demo scheme rather than pay for the product.
-o
That's extremely poor marketing. I'd instead frame that as:
4. Accept that some proportion of your userbase will subvert your
demo scheme rather than pay for the product.
-o
R
Roedy Green
A trial is perfectly legit. The program is perfectly useful DURING
the trail and perfectly useful AFTER, so long as a you pay.
I write free software, but I could afford to write better software if
I received money for my efforts, if only to buy the tools to create
software, for education, for books, etc.
I see nothing wrong with insisting on payment for software.
It is no more wicked that insisted on being paid for growing apples.
R
Roedy Green
There is no scarcity, just insisting that people pay their fair share.
It is no different that insisting everyone chip in at a banquet.
If it were free to develop software, then you could insist it be given
away free, but it isn't. Everyone should pay their fraction of the
total cost.
R
Roedy Green
Yes it would . If everyone did that, then the author would get
nothing for his effort and could not produce the next piece of
software.
By your argument shoplifting is ok too.
R
Roedy Green
Even if my freezer is overflowing with moose meat and my fridge with
apples, I am not obligated to give them away to people I don't like
for free.
Why then should I as a programmer be obligated to give you the fruit
of my work?
There are lots of things in my apartment with no value that you have
absolutely no right to take.
I have 50+ free programs (and no pay ones) posted on my site, so I am
into free software big time, but even I have a restriction --
non-military use only. I am completely unwilling to give the fruit of
my work to use for killing, no matter how little financial skin off my
nose it would be.
R
Roedy Green
This is what spinrite demands. It becoming rare. It is much simpler
to find out at trial time if the program is suitable than try to
arrange a refund. I find really annoyed with twits who register my
software then complain LATER they don't understand how to use it.
R
Roedy Green
That is like buying a update. You have no idea what a piece of
software DOES until you take it for a spin. Could you imagine a piece
of meat that would not cook, cut or be swallowed being sold as meat?
"There is no expressed warranty for any expressed use. You could use
it as art if you soak it in formaldehyde."
~ Microsoft Meat TM warranty.
R
Roedy Green
There is a lot of information about Microsoft software available
before you buy. There is almost none on most products. That is how MS
can get away with it.
They are selling their Student edition of Office with trialware.
O
Owen Jacobson
You've made my point for me, so I won't belabour it, but I thought I'd
speak to my use of "extremely". The consumer software market has been
trained, over the last ten years or so, to expect a free trial of some
kind, whether via limited features, nag screens, or time-limited
editions. In that context, opting not to provide a free trial will
simply cause potential customers to go somewhere else, and if they
can't, will at the very least leave a (possibly unjustified) poor
taste in their mouth.
-o
R
reckoning54
No, you're the crazy one.
None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.
R
reckoning54
You are not making sense. It costs the hydro company money to provide
electricity to my household, and part of that cost scales in
proportion to my usage of electricity.
If I use non-network-connected software on my computer in the privacy
of my own home, it costs someone a trivial amount in bandwidth
somewhere (and that someone need not be the software's author or
vendor) to supply my copy, and no ongoing costs that scale in
proportion to my usage of that software.
The only entity that DOES have ongoing costs that scale in proportion
to my usage, besides me, is the hydro company, IF I use the computer
more that I would have otherwise, and the same would happen if I used
it to play Solitaire more instead!
Put another way, whether I use that software for three days or thirty
or three hundred does not affect the costs involved in providing me
with a copy. The marginal cost, to them, of one more day of usage by
me is zero, given that it doesn't hit servers of theirs with requests
whenever used.
R
reckoning54
And if I "fix" it to keep working, how is that any skin off his nose,
given that I do it with my own resources in the privacy of my own home
and do not, by doing so, add to his expenses?
That's bullshit and I've already explained as much. The author has
property rights in his copies. I have property rights in mine. The
author has property rights in his computer hardware. I have property
rights in mine. He has no property rights in MY things. I have no
property rights in HIS.
Exactly the same as our respective property rights in our respective
homes and in a chair or other furnishing in each home, including in
the event that my chair was made by copying the design of his. My use
of my chair does not diminish the availability to him of his, in this
instance, after all.
No. Do not put words in my mouth that I never actually said. That is
incorrect. Stop being dishonest.
given that I do it with my own resources in the privacy of my own home
and do not, by doing so, add to his expenses?
That's bullshit and I've already explained as much. The author has
property rights in his copies. I have property rights in mine. The
author has property rights in his computer hardware. I have property
rights in mine. He has no property rights in MY things. I have no
property rights in HIS.
Exactly the same as our respective property rights in our respective
homes and in a chair or other furnishing in each home, including in
the event that my chair was made by copying the design of his. My use
of my chair does not diminish the availability to him of his, in this
instance, after all.
No. Do not put words in my mouth that I never actually said. That is
incorrect. Stop being dishonest.
R
reckoning54
Actually, given that practically all of the world uses alternating current
as their electrical source, no actual electrons would be consumed by your
use of the software. The same electrons just keep moving back and forth
in the wires.
It was figurative. Usable (non-heat) energy is of course what is
actually consumed; that's physics 101.
I wholeheartedly agree. Now if people would quit showing up here with
silly and off-topic requests for people to help them make their stuff
less valuable and more annoying for users ...
But still abusive. And there is nothing whatsoever "legitimate" about
these so-called "license stipulations", save if
a) a written contract was signed in exchange for a copy, similar to a
car lease transaction say in which one has to sign some documents
before one receives the car; and
b) the terms of that contract were enforceable, rather than being
eventually found unconscionable or otherwise void by a court of
competent jurisdiction.
I own any objects that I come into physical possession of (including
any digital objects); that is a matter of my basic natural rights in
my physical property; unless it is agreed in advance that the
transaction by which I obtain an object is a rental, loan, lease, or
similar arrangement. In the absence of such an agreement as a part of
the process of obtaining the object, the object is a standard gift or
sale to which standard implied terms and conditions apply as per the
commercial code in the relevant jurisdiction, and in particular it is
my property after the transfer has occurred.
Moreover, no transfer of digital data makes sense as a rental or loan,
given that data is non-rival. (Physical media, with whatever contents,
may be rented or loaned, but I am well within my natural rights to
make and keep a copy so long as I return the original, barring an a
priori agreement, signed as a condition of receiving the original, not
to do so; and then I would be in breach of contract.)
That is a fiction, and it isn't even a legal fiction; it has no basis
in law whatsoever, as a matter of fact. If money is exchanged for a
container of goods at a store, unless part of this transaction
involved entering into a contract with the store/dealership/whatever
party to some other effect, then the transaction constitutes a sale
and is subject (only) to standard consumer sales laws in the
jurisdiction in which the sale took place, as a matter of law.
Any attempt by a third party (e.g. the manufacturer, not the retailer
or the customer) to impose conditions after the fact is deficient on
its face, other than as conditions under which the manufacturer's
warranty will be honored or similarly. That is, legally, the
manufacturer's sole remedy if they dislike something I do with my item
after I purchased it is to void my warranty.
The potential for additional, UNintended nastiness is indeed another
factor weighing against the use of such awful horrors.
So? If I get it working again, then all the power to me. Warranty may
have expired, but I am certainly not "stealing" anything by continuing
to use it after that point, any more than I am by continuing to drive
my car after its manufacturers' warranty has expired.
This is ludicrous.
The molehill is actually a foothill of a huge mountain of serious
philosophical, political, and property-rights issues. And the nasty
bit of socialist legislation that is involved in the erosion of my
property rights in my hardware and my copies of things is not even
providing for the welfare of ordinary programmers, musicians, or
anything; it is *corporate* welfare, i.e. the unjustifiable kind.
If you decide to try to argue any further, I will insist that you
provide evidence that a significant proportion of musicians,
programmers, book writers, and so forth make the bulk of their money
from copyright royalties rather than from either selling the initial
copy, being hired to code the initial copy, being hired to provide
ongoing support, being paid to provide an ancillary ongoing service
(such as a server or ongoing new content creation) or being hired as a
salaried worker to program computers, or as a consultant of some kind,
or similarly.
Because he's trying to make his own product less valuable, and if he
succeeds he will only have succeeded in obtaining a self-inflicted
gunshot wound to the foot, with collateral damage to who knows how
many other people.
No, it's worse; he's actively trying to subvert peoples' property
rights. Enough of that going around and it's Stalinism time again, and
*he* killed *millions*.
R
reckoning54
I wish *nobody* would implement *any* of these schemes. "Schemes" is
just the right word; think of a bunch of shady characters with
toolkits and semiautomatics scheming to knock over a bank. Only this
bank contains not your money but your property rights and hard-won
freedoms; if they succeed, it turns out we didn't win the Cold War
after all.
R
reckoning54
Because software is a non-rival good. Who has a copy and who does not
is not a zero-sum game unlike for "almost all products".
R
reckoning54
The attempt to tell me what *I* can and cannot do with *my* copy of a
bunch of bits and bytes is not legit, particularly given that what I
do with that copy does not diminish its availability to anyone else,
unlike say if I failed to return a library book and therefore they had
one less to loan out to others.
A lot of the tools and information can be had for free, and the most
important part of programming education is experience, which requires
spending time coding rather than spending money. As for receiving
money for your efforts, nearly all money earned by computer
programmers is one of:
a) A salary, for ongoing coding, ongoing support, or other ongoing
services involving programming or knowledge of a particular
program's internals;
b) A fee paid for developing or modifying something for a specific
client, i.e. they pay you to code something and you code it, and
there's some contract negotiated that provides a payment schedule,
deadlines, and what-have-you;
c) Consultancy fees.
Free software creates a widely available portfolio that actually
advertises your credentials for all of those, and additionally may
directly create a market for support or other ongoing ancillary
services in connection with the software in question.
Of course, yours is not precisely "free software" in the strictest
sense, due to the no-military-use restriction you attempt to impose on
users.
Neither do I. If you'll read my posts carefully, you'll find that I
never objected to someone e.g. offering a disc with software or a
download or something in exchange for money. I objected to various
nasty, property-rights-infringing behaviors aimed at destroying all
competing alternative sources. Such user-hostile and market-hostile
behavior is provably unnecessary (and therefore unjustifiable); Red
Hat is able to make money selling discs with software despite doing
absolutely nothing to restrain the market from providing other sources
of the same software besides paying Red Hat for a disc bearing a copy.
Red Hat is also able to make significant amounts of money providing
ancillary services, for which it is reasonable for them to charge
ongoing fees because providing those services incurs ongoing costs.
Indeed. I wholeheartedly agree. What is wicked is when an apple-grower
tries to burn down every other orchard in the world but his so that
nobody else can grow their own and avoid paying him when they want an
apple.
Speaking of schemes and villains, I seem to recall one of the James
Bond movies from the mid-80s involving a chip-maker trying to destroy
Silicon Valley with an earthquake, after building a plant outside of
it, in a scheme to corner the market on microchips. (Of course, in
reality chip factories exist in many places around the world, and a
lot of the manufacturing 20 years later is in Japan, China, and South
Korea.) Of course this was immediately seen as evil and Bond went and
put a crimp in the jerk's dastardly plans.
Shame nobody does the same when subtler schemes are developed to rob
us of our property rights, a tiny piece at a time, in a scheme to
corner various markets and create a government-subsidized corporate
welfare for a few big industries. But this is going on, as documented
at numerous blogs, including Copyfight, Against Monopoly, Question
Copyright, and even Techdirt. I'd go so far as to argue that Mike
Masnick and David Levine should be required reading for anyone
influencing information and technology policy in government.
R
reckoning54
Ridiculous. He's insisting that he should get paid over and over again
for doing a piece of work just once, unlike say a stonemason who has
to lay more bricks to make more money. Furthermore, he's attempting to
destroy other peoples' property, namely, their copies of the software
he authored.
Sure it is. At a banquet, if you eat one of the food items, that item
is unavailable for anyone else to eat, and the operator's costs rise
rapidly in proportion to the amount of food provided. This is
emphatically not the case with software or any other form of data,
particularly not when the distribution is viral rather than from a
central repository.
Software copies are inherently free; software development is not. It
is best not to confuse the two.
The way to achieve that is to create an escrow account that people can
pay money into; if a target amount is reached, the money is used to
develop the software, which then becomes available to everyone. Those
who paid get it sooner than if they hadn't, and may be given extras
(such as signed gold-plated CDs or whatever). If the target looks like
it will never be reached, the money is returned to the investors with
whatever interest it had earned and the software doesn't get made.
This is precisely how a lot of R&D is done -- investors chip in and a
product is developed. Only the scheme described above is much less
risky for the investors, assuming the escrow account is managed by a
trusted party such as a respected and accredited bank.
R
reckoning54
No, it wouldn't.
I am sitting in a chair right now. I have had it for more than thirty
days. My using it for longer than thirty days hasn't cost its
manufacturer anything. They have no costs that scale with my usage of
the chair, you see.
If everyone kept their chairs in good condition and population
stabilized, chair manufacturers might no longer be able to sell
replacement chairs, and could not produce more.
So what?
In such a world, chair manufacturing is clearly not needed anymore. In
our world, buggy whip manufacturing is not needed anymore. Should the
internal combustion engine have been outlawed, or all of them
sabotaged, to try to keep buggy whip makers in business?
You may attempt to operate a profitable business; but there is no
entitlement to actually succeed, only to try. Business ventures fail
to make money all the time. It's a fact of life, and it can't be
changed without taxing everybody to death in one manner or another to
provide some sort of corporate welfare.
And as Red Hat has demonstrated, it is not necessary to try to
sabotage your own product or to try to restrict others' free use of
and copying of that product in order to profit. It IS necessary to be
business-savvy, but that is true in most industries. If it became
truer in the software industry than it is today, we might see some
quality improvements and less of various forms of shady dealing and
corruption, too!
I suggest you read a whole lot of Techdirt's archives before
continuing this debate.
No! It is not! Shoplifting means the store has one less of something
that it cost them money to obtain. My jailbreaking this guy's
intentionally-crippled crap wouldn't mean that he had one less of
anything, by contrast.
It might impact his future sales; doubtful, though, as I would
probably not pay him either way. However, potential future sales are
not entitlements such that one has been robbed if they don't
materialize. If they were, then operating a burger joint across the
street from a McDonald's would be "shoplifting" because it could
prevent the McDonald's from selling as many burgers in the future.
The difference is simple. Suppose McDonald's makes and sells 100
burgers if I do nothing. If I shoplift one burger, McDonald's sells
only 99 but still makes 100, so they incur the cost of one extra
burger they didn't get to sell. If I compete with them and one person
buys a burger from me instead of from McDonald's, they sell 99 but
also only make 99, and they incur the cost of zero unsold burgers, the
same as if I did nothing.
Of course, if I compete effectively enough, they may go out of
business (unlikely though that may seem!), but them's the breaks.
Welcome to the real world.
R
reckoning54
I've never claimed otherwise. It's sneaking into my place in the dead
of night to do something to cause spoilage of MY apples and meat, in
the hopes that I'll then buy some of yours to replace what was lost,
that violates my property rights and constitutes vandalism.
You're not. But if you choose to do so, the copy you give me becomes
mine to use as I see fit, the same as if you choose to give me an
apple. I might eat it; I might also plant the seeds and start my own
orchard. That might mean I have no reason to buy apples from you at
some later date, but there's no foul play in that. There is, on the
other hand, if you steal the seeds from me or do something similar.
I don't see how this is at all relevant.
Such is your right; freedom of transaction. They might obtain copies
from people other than you, though.
If they obtain copies from you, despite your wishes otherwise, then an
interesting situation exists. Since you don't require them to contract
with you to the effect that they aren't military in order to receive a
copy from you -- instead, they can just download a copy without
affirming any agreement to you as an advance condition of doing so --
their use might be perfectly moral. If you did provide a mechanism on
your site to make them contract to the effect that they aren't
military before the download would occur, and they lied, then you
would have a complaint against them for fraud. If they got a copy from
a third party, no foul by them. You could try to enter into a contract
with downloaders not to furnish copies to the military themselves, and
to only furnish copies with a similar contract. Then there's a breach
of contract on the part of the supplier (but not the military) in the
above scenario. That supplier might have breached a contract with you,
but might have breached a contract with another supplier other than
you. It's quite possible for you to have no legitimate complaint with
anybody, even then, it would seem.
R
reckoning54
That's an indication of shoddy industry standards, not the need for
draconian restrictions on others' property rights.