Pierre,
These are very interesting and specific questions you have asked.
I'm pretty sure there will be widely varied responses. How to pay
for the development of free software is a major gaping hole between
two viable logics, one that says you need to horde your own labor for
personal gain (and so as not to be exploited), and another that says
you grow more wealth collectively if you share with others. There is
a ton of literature on the theory, but I find little on the practice.
Who is doing what?
I just now discovered the following recent articles from the free
cultural forum and thought I'd pass it along:
http://fcforum.net/sustainable-models-for-creativity
In it they outline in not too many words various economic models for
sustainable cultural (software included) development.
best -august.
> On Tue, 8 Mar 2011, Pierre Massat wrote:
>
> >I was trying to get Ardour to work last night and i came accross
> >the forum on their website. I must say i was quite shocked to see
> >how many posts were about money. I was equally surprized to see
> >that the latest full version of Ardour isn't free (although you
> >can name your price).
>
> "Name your price" is actually a characteristic of the download site,
> not the software.
>
> >From what I read, Ardour remains FLOSS nonetheless.
>
> >1) What are the economics of open source software, and how
> >sustainable is the model?
>
> FLOSS is not an economic model, it's a set of licenses (and of
> potential future licenses with the same basic characteristics).
>
> You use the license as a tool to come up with an economic model of
> your choice, but there are many possibilities, both with a pure
> FLOSS license (which is the case of Ardour), and with a hybrid
> approach (involving proprietary licenses in some way).
>
> >How does it work for Pd?
>
> There is no such system for the Pd community. Each developer has
> his/her own "economic model", which usually means something
> noneconomic like donating plenty of time for little return.
>
> >2) I get the feeling that open source developpers used to think
> >that the idea of free (free beer...) software was cool, but 10 to
> >15 years down the line (that is, now) they're beginning to realize
> >that they can't keep on doing this forever. Am I wrong here?
>
> It possibly happens to *lots* of people, but it doesn't make the
> FLOSS movement getting any smaller.
>
> >I have been considering making a donation since i've been using Pd
> >extensively for a few years now. But could someone tell me exactly
> >how it works? Who gets the money?
>
> The person who gets the money is the person you send it to.
>
> >And i never use GEM or Gridflow (cause i have no need for it at
> >the moment), so i don't see why part of my donation should go to
> >Mathieu or GEM's author(s).
>
> What makes you think that GEM's authors and I are somehow not
> contributing anything significant to Pd-vanilla ?
>
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