Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Tue, Mar 08, 2011 at 09:21:58AM +0100, 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). Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it! -- The Free Software Foundation http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html [the user] may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee. -- The GPL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html#section4 Cheers, Chris. --- http://mccormick.cx ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Tue, 22 Mar 2011, Charles Henry wrote: It's an impossible question to answer without having much time to waste, so don't try too hard :) Ok. :) ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
I thought I'd pose a question to you, for academic curiosity. For example, in my current line of work, cluster computing, there's a lot of possible funding models for supporting maintenance, and they all have different ~unintended consequences. (ex) You lose customers, waste cycles, delay research schedules, and they all have some other costs associated. Economics just works that way. But in general, I wonder what produces the best outcomes for software development. It's an impossible question to answer without having much time to waste, so don't try too hard :) Could a open-source project with a funding model lead to better code than a professional solution? Could you just dangle some cash on the end of a string and the cats will just herd themselves? On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.cawrote: On Sat, 19 Mar 2011, Bernardo Barros wrote: Hello , Mathieu! Well, I did not refer to implementation of new features, but the maintenance of that code that already works, fixing bugs. Ok, so, basically, buggy software gets rewarded for requests to fix bugs. Bugless software is not rewarded : it does not pay. Therefore we are encouraged to put enough bugs in there so that we get money. Nevermind the high-reliability ideals. (Of course, don't let my comments prevent you from contributing money. I'm just trying to say that some assumptions about funding may encourage the wrong things and cause strange compensations.) ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
I think that free software business models definitely lead to better code. I am now working with the Google Android IM app, which was programmed by a software company, then later open sourced. The code works, but is a nightmare to figure out, things like 3 overlapping data structures for the account info for no good reason, lots of additions to the code with no refactoring, etc. .hc On Mar 22, 2011, at 6:27 PM, Charles Henry wrote: I thought I'd pose a question to you, for academic curiosity. For example, in my current line of work, cluster computing, there's a lot of possible funding models for supporting maintenance, and they all have different ~unintended consequences. (ex) You lose customers, waste cycles, delay research schedules, and they all have some other costs associated. Economics just works that way. But in general, I wonder what produces the best outcomes for software development. It's an impossible question to answer without having much time to waste, so don't try too hard :) Could a open-source project with a funding model lead to better code than a professional solution? Could you just dangle some cash on the end of a string and the cats will just herd themselves? On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca wrote: On Sat, 19 Mar 2011, Bernardo Barros wrote: Hello , Mathieu! Well, I did not refer to implementation of new features, but the maintenance of that code that already works, fixing bugs. Ok, so, basically, buggy software gets rewarded for requests to fix bugs. Bugless software is not rewarded : it does not pay. Therefore we are encouraged to put enough bugs in there so that we get money. Nevermind the high-reliability ideals. (Of course, don't let my comments prevent you from contributing money. I'm just trying to say that some assumptions about funding may encourage the wrong things and cause strange compensations.) ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list The arc of history bends towards justice. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Wed, 23 Mar 2011, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote: I think that free software business models definitely lead to better code. I am now working with the Google Android IM app, which was programmed by a software company, then later open sourced. The code works, but is a nightmare to figure out, things like 3 overlapping data structures for the account info for no good reason, lots of additions to the code with no refactoring, etc. And what were you going to say after that ? What is this a sign of ? What allows to generalise from this anecdote ? (lots of other anecdotes put together ?) ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
works, but is a nightmare to figure out, things like 3 overlapping data structures for the account info for no good reason, lots of additions to the code with no refactoring, etc. that's funny, data structures in pd is quite underdeveloped, and apparently there are no signs of becoming better. I've just been looking at ircam's ftm library, and it's really much more complete, mature and powerful. don't know if this serves as a good example, but when I saw the words data structures it sounded ironical to me :) ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Mar 20, 2011, at 1:32 AM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote: --- On Sat, 3/19/11, Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca wrote: From: Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca Subject: Re: [PD] The economics of Open source To: Bernardo Barros bernardobarr...@gmail.com Cc: pd-list pd-list@iem.at Date: Saturday, March 19, 2011, 8:34 PM On Sat, 19 Mar 2011, Bernardo Barros wrote: Hello , Mathieu! Well, I did not refer to implementation of new features, but the maintenance of that code that already works, fixing bugs. Ok, so, basically, buggy software gets rewarded for requests to fix bugs. Bugless software is not rewarded : it does not pay. Therefore we are encouraged to put enough bugs in there so that we get money. Nevermind the high-reliability ideals. (Of course, don't let my comments prevent you from contributing money. I'm just trying to say that some assumptions about funding may encourage the wrong things and cause strange compensations.) The points you raise have a lot to do with a clear and sustainable long-term funding model for Pd, and probably nothing to do with any specific individual's actual donation in and of itself. Any reasonable way Bernardo decides to fund Pd will no doubt be a good thing. :) I say if anyone wants to sponsor the work of someone, then its really a matter of who they want to sponsor. That is fair. I don't think I should get a cut if someone else is sponsored to do Pd-related work. Actually now that I write that, I'd say that even implementing a _bad_ funding model regarding Pd isn't such a big deal at this point. If the only way for the general public to fund Pd was to donate to a bug squashing fund, it's quite unlikely that enough money would be generated to create an incentive for corruption. At most there would be a big enough pot to squash a bunch of existing bugs, after which whoever is in charge of the effort could say, Hey, we squashed a lot of bugs, now let's encourage people to donate to other things, too. -Jonathan On the idea of a general fund for people to donate too, I thought it would be nice to have Pd-extended have a donate nag button, and all that money would go to the next PdCon. The more money that PdCon organizers have means the more people they can sponsor to come, the more events possible, etc. .hc Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism.- retired U.S. Army general, William Odom ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On 03/19/2011 02:59 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote: --- On Sat, 3/19/11, dmotdinaudi...@simplesuperlativ.es wrote: Still I believe Ardour has had limited contributors to the code, so if they wished to band together as a copyright collective they would be well within their rights to create a commercial fork for evermore, leaving us with what we have at present. I highly doubt they'll be doing that: http://ardour.org/node/4044 Yeah, was only a hypothetical if anyone there ever got desperate for a stream of revenue. Other large open projects don't have that option as the number of contributors makes it incredibly difficult to be flexible with copyright, one contributors staunch oposition to relicensing would pretty much result in stalemate unless their contributions could be completely rewritten without legal threat (Ugly). Paul Davis has obviously carefully considered his options and I wouldn't want to argue on his behalf. And if he can make his tool run to the demands of commercial studios, and charge them bucketloads for support, he might just have an open tool with a fantatical userbase and a revenue stream to compete with the other (niche) industry leaders. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Fri, 18 Mar 2011, Bernardo Barros wrote: 2011/3/18 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: already. Then the only way to get a reward for having done work that hasn't been asked for, is always in terms of how much it will get people to offer you money for future work. Perhaps there ought to be a donation system for work that has been already done ? But it ends up being something very similar, given that the maintenance of existing software also counts as future work . I don't understand what you mean. Future work is future. It's not like rewarding past efforts. A past effort doesn't imply feature requests going to the same person and implementing those features doesn't constitute a reward for past efforts. Another related thing: I'm a little reticent when it comes to donating to software under the BSD license and the like, considering that my donation could end up being an investment in private corporations at the end. Any investment in free software is an investment in all corporations that use free software, regardless of how they use it. Very few corporations that use free software make proprietary forks. Proprietary forks aren't the only way corporations can use free software. If PureData + extensions will adopt a Donation System, I'd suggest to differentiate donation for GPL and BSD work, so we could donate just for the GPL'ed territory. Ok, so, suppose you donate 100 $ to the Pd Community's GPL side, how much money should go to each developer ? Make a list of developers, and how much money each will get. ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
2011/3/19 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: I don't understand what you mean. Future work is future. It's not like rewarding past efforts. A past effort doesn't imply feature requests going to the same person and implementing those features doesn't constitute a reward for past efforts. Hello , Mathieu! Well, I did not refer to implementation of new features, but the maintenance of that code that already works, fixing bugs. If I contributed financially to a project, I think some maintenance to fix bugs make much sense, and is both a compensation for a great and big effort in the past but also (hopefullly!) minor (not major new features!) corrections that will be made in the future . ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
2011/3/19 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: Any investment in free software is an investment in all corporations that use free software, regardless of how they use it. Very few corporations that use free software make proprietary forks. Proprietary forks aren't the only way corporations can use free software. Ok, so, suppose you donate 100 $ to the Pd Community's GPL side, how much money should go to each developer ? Make a list of developers, and how much money each will get. Here I have to correct myself! I meant that I would be reluctant to donate my money to pieces of code that could possibly be used in proprietary code (no mean business/commercial, forgive my mistake). How the donation will be spitted, that's up to the donator and the main developers to decide. I would like to choose witch sub-projects I would like to donate, or if I would like to contribute to the whole project sharing in direct proportion to the contribution of each hacker. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Sat, 19 Mar 2011, Bernardo Barros wrote: Hello , Mathieu! Well, I did not refer to implementation of new features, but the maintenance of that code that already works, fixing bugs. Ok, so, basically, buggy software gets rewarded for requests to fix bugs. Bugless software is not rewarded : it does not pay. Therefore we are encouraged to put enough bugs in there so that we get money. Nevermind the high-reliability ideals. (Of course, don't let my comments prevent you from contributing money. I'm just trying to say that some assumptions about funding may encourage the wrong things and cause strange compensations.) ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Sat, 19 Mar 2011, Bernardo Barros wrote: How the donation will be spitted, that's up to the donator and the main developers to decide. I would like to choose witch sub-projects I would like to donate, or if I would like to contribute to the whole project sharing in direct proportion to the contribution of each hacker. Ah. But how do you measure the proportion of money that should go to each project of the pd-community ? And how do you measure the proportion of money that should go to each developer in a project ? Take for example pd-vanilla : Miller gets what percentage of the donations ? ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
2011/3/19 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: And how do you measure the proportion of money that should go to each developer in a project ? Take for example pd-vanilla : Miller gets what percentage of the donations ? I don't know. Let the donator choose? ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On 2011-03-19 15:34, Mathieu Bouchard wrote: Ok, so, basically, buggy software gets rewarded for requests to fix bugs. Bugless software is not rewarded : it does not pay. Therefore we are encouraged to put enough bugs in there so that we get money. Nevermind the high-reliability ideals. That seems to have been Apple's modus operandi since day 1. Martin ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Sat, 19 Mar 2011, Bernardo Barros wrote: 2011/3/19 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: And how do you measure the proportion of money that should go to each developer in a project ? Take for example pd-vanilla : Miller gets what percentage of the donations ? I don't know. Let the donator choose? How would the donator know how to be fair ? ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
Specifically, the *only* function missing from the non-donation OSX version of Ardour is support for AudioUnit plugins on the Mac. I have no problem with the Ardour model of distribution, and AFAIK you can still use your package manager in almost any Linux distro to avoid even being asked to help support development. Ardour is one of the best things coming out of the world of free software for audio production happening right now, and is well worth any support you can give. I just want to clarify this Ardour stuff since it keeps coming up. Paul David wrote in comments on CDM recently: this is not 100% true. For the OS X prebuilt versions, if the inflow of cash for the month is low (I typically wait till the 15th, and if its not 50% of the goal, there’s typically going to be a problem …), then I disable the “pay nothing” download. This flips back at the end of the month. However, none of this changes the basic fact that you never *need* to pay for Ardour, since the source code is always available for free at all times. The work involved in creating a working binary, however, especially on OS X, might give you pause to realize that paying something for the prebuilt version is a good deal. this is not 100% true. For the OS X prebuilt versions, if the inflow of cash for the month is low (I typically wait till the 15th, and if its not 50% of the goal, there’s typically going to be a problem …), then I disable the “pay nothing” download. This flips back at the end of the month. However, none of this changes the basic fact that you never *need* to pay for Ardour, since the source code is always available for free at all times. The work involved in creating a working binary, however, especially on OS X, might give you pause to realize that paying something for the prebuilt version is a good deal. So, talking points: 1. Pre-built Mac OS X versions are available for download free. A bit like a public radio pledge drive here in the US, the free download is delayed each month to encourage donations. 2. It is not correct to say, even on a day when that binary is behind a paywall, that Ardour is not free as in beer. You can indeed build from source - afaik including with the AU support - it's just a pain; see above. 3. All Ardour downloads for Linux are available free of charge, full stop. It's in most repositories, and incidentally, on distros like Fedora and Ubuntu those are generally the best, latest stable build. I'm not necessarily endorsing the same model for Pd, but it's worth observing. And the larger music community does need to get the message that freedom isn't free, as it were. I love the donationware project idea; if there's one that fits our community, I'd be happy to promote it on createdigitalmusic. And while it's not entirely ready for primetime yet, I'd love to see more libpd projects that are themselves under a free license but use app store (lowercase) distributions to charge money. In fact, as far as I know you can still GPL a patch for an iOS project, for instance, just not the surrounding code. You can GPL the whole thing on Android. I know Paul hasn't himself been entirely enthusiastic about donationware on Ardour; having a distribution outlet that explicitly charges is likely to be less confusing to users, where appropriate. And these outlets are proliferating, and not always with the kind of restrictions Apple has imposed. (Who knows, maybe someday the Ubuntu Store will be ready for primetime.) Peter ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
--- On Sat, 3/19/11, Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca wrote: From: Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca Subject: Re: [PD] The economics of Open source To: Bernardo Barros bernardobarr...@gmail.com Cc: pd-list pd-list@iem.at Date: Saturday, March 19, 2011, 8:34 PM On Sat, 19 Mar 2011, Bernardo Barros wrote: Hello , Mathieu! Well, I did not refer to implementation of new features, but the maintenance of that code that already works, fixing bugs. Ok, so, basically, buggy software gets rewarded for requests to fix bugs. Bugless software is not rewarded : it does not pay. Therefore we are encouraged to put enough bugs in there so that we get money. Nevermind the high-reliability ideals. (Of course, don't let my comments prevent you from contributing money. I'm just trying to say that some assumptions about funding may encourage the wrong things and cause strange compensations.) The points you raise have a lot to do with a clear and sustainable long-term funding model for Pd, and probably nothing to do with any specific individual's actual donation in and of itself. Any reasonable way Bernardo decides to fund Pd will no doubt be a good thing. :) Actually now that I write that, I'd say that even implementing a _bad_ funding model regarding Pd isn't such a big deal at this point. If the only way for the general public to fund Pd was to donate to a bug squashing fund, it's quite unlikely that enough money would be generated to create an incentive for corruption. At most there would be a big enough pot to squash a bunch of existing bugs, after which whoever is in charge of the effort could say, Hey, we squashed a lot of bugs, now let's encourage people to donate to other things, too. -Jonathan ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC -Inline Attachment Follows- ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On 03/18/2011 02:12 AM, ailo wrote: Ardour is open source, which means anyone can add to it or fork it and start making their own version of it. open source doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for a download. it means that if somebody gave you the binarier, they have to give you the source code too, and allow you to do things with it. mfgasdrt IOhannes signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On 03/18/2011 10:03 AM, IOhannes zmölnig wrote: open source doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for a download. True. The licenses in Ardour makes it impossible for them to charge for each copy of the software, though. They could insist to charge for one download, but then the software could be made available elsewhere for free. On the Ardour website they are not forcing you to pay for a download, just asking you to. -- ailo ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
They're saying that some functionalities are missing if you don't pay. I haven't answered yet but this thread is very interesting. Thank you all for sharing your insights. Pierre 2011/3/18 ailo ailo...@gmail.com On 03/18/2011 10:03 AM, IOhannes zmölnig wrote: open source doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for a download. True. The licenses in Ardour makes it impossible for them to charge for each copy of the software, though. They could insist to charge for one download, but then the software could be made available elsewhere for free. On the Ardour website they are not forcing you to pay for a download, just asking you to. -- ailo ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
its true , sorry that I had it wrong, On 03/18/2011 12:09 PM, ailo wrote: On 03/18/2011 10:03 AM, IOhannes zmölnig wrote: open source doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for a download. True. The licenses in Ardour makes it impossible for them to charge for each copy of the software, though. They could insist to charge for one download, but then the software could be made available elsewhere for free. On the Ardour website they are not forcing you to pay for a download, just asking you to. I thought they would charge something for osx version, but thats also free! I support the ardour project with a subscription because I do all movie-postproduction with ardour (or now with mixbus since that came out on linux recently) and I really like the project. it develops very fast to a very powerful DAW. the ardour financial model works very well I think, but for this specific project. I d say every project needs to find its unique way to finance itself.. you can hardly find a general rule how it works or should work. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On 03/18/2011 01:39 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: They're saying that some functionalities are missing if you don't pay. No functionalities are missing to my knowledge. ' The reason to why there are different licenses is because different people have contributed, as is usually the case with any big open source project. Just look at the Linux kernel. That is a monstrous project, involving all kinds of licenses. To my knowledge, Ardour is not only partly freely available. It's fully freely available. It is almost purely, a GPL based project, like most GNU / Linux open source projects. If you are interested in investigating the meaning of the licenses, I suggest you download the full source of Ardour. Then look up each license for each bit of code to see what they mean. -- ailo ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
You can edit the amount in the box below to *any* amount you wish, If you are downloading a ready-to-run version, and choose to pay nothing, you will get one that is missing some handy functionality. (from their website, Download page). Pierre 2011/3/18 ailo ailo...@gmail.com On 03/18/2011 01:39 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: They're saying that some functionalities are missing if you don't pay. No functionalities are missing to my knowledge. ' The reason to why there are different licenses is because different people have contributed, as is usually the case with any big open source project. Just look at the Linux kernel. That is a monstrous project, involving all kinds of licenses. To my knowledge, Ardour is not only partly freely available. It's fully freely available. It is almost purely, a GPL based project, like most GNU / Linux open source projects. If you are interested in investigating the meaning of the licenses, I suggest you download the full source of Ardour. Then look up each license for each bit of code to see what they mean. -- ailo ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
Personally, I find: You can edit the amount in the box below to any amount you wish, If you are downloading a ready-to-run version, and choose to pay nothing, you will get one that is missing some handy functionality. Continuing development, bug fixes and support can only happen if there is money to support those activities. Please become one of the many downloaders who help support the future of Ardour! .. to be a bit cryptic. So, from my viewpoint it's open for interpretation, until someone proves there is in fact a difference between a non-paid and a paid version of a download intended for Mac. As for Linux, there is no ready-to-run version on their site, so I would assume that is not a part of the deal anyway. Also, the source can be compiled on any system, even mac. The point of the fact is that the program is still in larger parts GPL (the parts written by Ardour), which means it belongs to the public, so even one paid download would still become free as soon as the next person made it available to be downloaded for free. On 03/18/2011 02:24 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: You can edit the amount in the box below to *any* amount you wish, If you are downloading a ready-to-run version, and choose to pay nothing, you will get one that is missing some handy functionality. (from their website, Download page). Pierre 2011/3/18 ailo ailo...@gmail.com On 03/18/2011 01:39 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: They're saying that some functionalities are missing if you don't pay. No functionalities are missing to my knowledge. ' The reason to why there are different licenses is because different people have contributed, as is usually the case with any big open source project. Just look at the Linux kernel. That is a monstrous project, involving all kinds of licenses. To my knowledge, Ardour is not only partly freely available. It's fully freely available. It is almost purely, a GPL based project, like most GNU / Linux open source projects. If you are interested in investigating the meaning of the licenses, I suggest you download the full source of Ardour. Then look up each license for each bit of code to see what they mean. -- ailo -- ailo ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
I agree that this is quite cryptic. I think i've read somewhere that the functionality that's missing has to do with the plugins. In Ubuntu's repositories there's only a pretty old version of Ardour available. I don't know what the deal is... Pierre 2011/3/18 ailo ailo...@gmail.com Personally, I find: You can edit the amount in the box below to any amount you wish, If you are downloading a ready-to-run version, and choose to pay nothing, you will get one that is missing some handy functionality. Continuing development, bug fixes and support can only happen if there is money to support those activities. Please become one of the many downloaders who help support the future of Ardour! .. to be a bit cryptic. So, from my viewpoint it's open for interpretation, until someone proves there is in fact a difference between a non-paid and a paid version of a download intended for Mac. As for Linux, there is no ready-to-run version on their site, so I would assume that is not a part of the deal anyway. Also, the source can be compiled on any system, even mac. The point of the fact is that the program is still in larger parts GPL (the parts written by Ardour), which means it belongs to the public, so even one paid download would still become free as soon as the next person made it available to be downloaded for free. On 03/18/2011 02:24 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: You can edit the amount in the box below to *any* amount you wish, If you are downloading a ready-to-run version, and choose to pay nothing, you will get one that is missing some handy functionality. (from their website, Download page). Pierre 2011/3/18 ailo ailo...@gmail.com On 03/18/2011 01:39 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: They're saying that some functionalities are missing if you don't pay. No functionalities are missing to my knowledge. ' The reason to why there are different licenses is because different people have contributed, as is usually the case with any big open source project. Just look at the Linux kernel. That is a monstrous project, involving all kinds of licenses. To my knowledge, Ardour is not only partly freely available. It's fully freely available. It is almost purely, a GPL based project, like most GNU / Linux open source projects. If you are interested in investigating the meaning of the licenses, I suggest you download the full source of Ardour. Then look up each license for each bit of code to see what they mean. -- ailo -- ailo ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On 18/03/11 21:46, Pierre Massat wrote: I agree that this is quite cryptic. I think i've read somewhere that the functionality that's missing has to do with the plugins. In Ubuntu's repositories there's only a pretty old version of Ardour available. I don't know what the deal is... Distributions have their own timetables and priorities, the versions they include are not determined by Ardour. A version of Ubuntu is based on a snapshot of Debian sid, or maybe testing, some time before it was released. That would often be more than a year ago. Lots has happened in Debian multimedia in the last year or so, many more applications are available and there is a lot more attention paid to audio now. The Debian repositories are up to date ... $ apt-show-versions -a ardour ardour 1:2.8.11-3 stable ftp.iinet.net.au ardour 1:2.8.11-5 testingftp.iinet.net.au ardour 1:2.8.11-5 sidftp.iinet.net.au ardour/testing uptodate 1:2.8.11-5 2.8.11 is the current release on the Ardour website, though there are certainly other versions in development. Debian stable has software up to 2 1/2 years old. It does not get updated after it is frozen (about 6 months before it is released) and releases are 2 years apart. There was a new release in the last couple of months. Stable is intended to be a version that does not change and has already been heavily tested ... very useful where high security and a fixed set of software versions are needed, say in a webserver. Sid usually contains much more recent versions of software ... perhaps try one of the rolling distributions (like aptosid, there are several) if you want your distribution to contain recent versions. Simon. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Thu, 17 Mar 2011, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote: One thing about free software funding is that its basically the inverse of the proprietary product model in what you pay for. In a proprietary product, you pay for the work that has been done and turned into a product. For free software, you get the current state of the product for free, so instead you pay for support or you pay for new things to be added to the product. That's what I recommend you pay for, if you are interested in funding some development: think of something you'd like to see improved, and fund that. This means that there is no direct reward for work that has been done already. Then the only way to get a reward for having done work that hasn't been asked for, is always in terms of how much it will get people to offer you money for future work. Perhaps there ought to be a donation system for work that has been already done ? ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
2011/3/18 Simon Wise simonzw...@gmail.com: ... perhaps try one of the rolling distributions (like aptosid, there are several) if you want your distribution to contain recent versions. I'd say go for Arch + ArchAudio in that case. It is and getting better and better for audio/multimedia right now ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
2011/3/18 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: already. Then the only way to get a reward for having done work that hasn't been asked for, is always in terms of how much it will get people to offer you money for future work. Perhaps there ought to be a donation system for work that has been already done ? But it ends up being something very similar, given that the maintenance of existing software also counts as future work . Another related thing: I'm a little reticent when it comes to donating to software under the BSD license and the like, considering that my donation could end up being an investment in private corporations at the end. If PureData + extensions will adopt a Donation System, I'd suggest to differentiate donation for GPL and BSD work, so we could donate just for the GPL'ed territory. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
Specifically, the *only* function missing from the non-donation OSX version of Ardour is support for AudioUnit plugins on the Mac. I have no problem with the Ardour model of distribution, and AFAIK you can still use your package manager in almost any Linux distro to avoid even being asked to help support development. Ardour is one of the best things coming out of the world of free software for audio production happening right now, and is well worth any support you can give. Best, Derek On 3/18/11 3:17 PM, ailo wrote: On 03/18/2011 01:39 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: They're saying that some functionalities are missing if you don't pay. No functionalities are missing to my knowledge. ' ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
Hi Just an idea, but perhaps a sort of fund raising drive for specific projects for PD? Like say a fund raise drive for extra documentation (did gridflow do this once in 05?), some fancy PD coffee table book : ) or development of some new external ect. each project has it's own licience depending on it's aims? On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Bernardo Barros bernardobarr...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/3/18 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: already. Then the only way to get a reward for having done work that hasn't been asked for, is always in terms of how much it will get people to offer you money for future work. Perhaps there ought to be a donation system for work that has been already done ? But it ends up being something very similar, given that the maintenance of existing software also counts as future work . Another related thing: I'm a little reticent when it comes to donating to software under the BSD license and the like, considering that my donation could end up being an investment in private corporations at the end. If PureData + extensions will adopt a Donation System, I'd suggest to differentiate donation for GPL and BSD work, so we could donate just for the GPL'ed territory. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
I like this idea a lot! .hc On Mar 18, 2011, at 11:30 AM, ALAN BROOKER wrote: Hi Just an idea, but perhaps a sort of fund raising drive for specific projects for PD? Like say a fund raise drive for extra documentation (did gridflow do this once in 05?), some fancy PD coffee table book : ) or development of some new external ect. each project has it's own licience depending on it's aims? On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Bernardo Barros bernardobarr...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/3/18 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: already. Then the only way to get a reward for having done work that hasn't been asked for, is always in terms of how much it will get people to offer you money for future work. Perhaps there ought to be a donation system for work that has been already done ? But it ends up being something very similar, given that the maintenance of existing software also counts as future work . Another related thing: I'm a little reticent when it comes to donating to software under the BSD license and the like, considering that my donation could end up being an investment in private corporations at the end. If PureData + extensions will adopt a Donation System, I'd suggest to differentiate donation for GPL and BSD work, so we could donate just for the GPL'ed territory. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On 03/18/2011 11:46 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: I agree that this is quite cryptic. I think i've read somewhere that the functionality that's missing has to do with the plugins. The missing features of ardour from last i checked related to the packaged OSX version and its ability to support the native Audio Units plugins. The crippled version does not allow loading or saving of presets for said format. There maybe a variant of this with VST support. Ardour supports its endeavours through appeals for donations and sponsored feature developement. The OSX version was rushed along with the help of a commercial sponsor. A hardware partner provides a customized commercial Ardour, 'Mixbus', the dsp extensions are to my knowledge closed source proprietary - there is an arrangement to commit open source changes to the base. Ardour itself continues to be completely open-source, and the 'donationware' tag comes from an attempt to put a value on the compiled and packaged binary, which is obviously circumvented by the numerous linux distros which decide to compile and package it themselves. As HCS can probably vouch for, preparing a professional package is still a lot of work! These are the numerous ways that Ardour developers are attempting to recoup the cost of development, which they for better or worse have committed to as a full-time-job. None of these techniques have any relation to the open-source nature of the product, however the open-source nature of the product probably has a bearing on the way they recoup costs. Still I believe Ardour has had limited contributors to the code, so if they wished to band together as a copyright collective they would be well within their rights to create a commercial fork for evermore, leaving us with what we have at present. ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
--- On Sat, 3/19/11, dmotd inaudi...@simplesuperlativ.es wrote: From: dmotd inaudi...@simplesuperlativ.es Subject: Re: [PD] The economics of Open source To: pd-list@iem.at Date: Saturday, March 19, 2011, 4:41 AM On 03/18/2011 11:46 PM, Pierre Massat wrote: [...] Still I believe Ardour has had limited contributors to the code, so if they wished to band together as a copyright collective they would be well within their rights to create a commercial fork for evermore, leaving us with what we have at present. I highly doubt they'll be doing that: http://ardour.org/node/4044 ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
That was an interesting outline of possibilities for getting paid for creative activities. But it left out one of the major forces in the world of Free Software: people doing it because its fun. A lot of hackers like to work on free software projects because they get to write whatever code they want, however they want, and on their own schedule. You could call it the hobby model. .hc On Mar 10, 2011, at 11:23 AM, august wrote: 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 ? ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list 'You people have such restrictive dress for women,’ she said, hobbling away in three inch heels and panty hose to finish out another pink- collar temp pool day. - “Hijab Scene #2, by Mohja Kahf ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On Mar 8, 2011, at 3:21 AM, Pierre Massat wrote: Dear List, 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). Now don't get me wrong : I think i can imagine the amount of work that was necessary to write a software like Ardour from scratch, and i totally understand that the team who wrote it may decide that they should be payed for it. This leads me to ask two questions : 1) What are the economics of open source software, and how sustainable is the model? How does it work for Pd? Pd has been developed over 15+ years, so that seems sustainable to me. There are many different ways it works for Pd. There are people like Miller and the IEM crew who are academics and working on Pd is part of their research. I mostly make money related to Pd by teaching it and using it in freelance projects; I have also gotten a small stream of direct donations over the years, like maybe US$3000 total. I think teaching Pd is a common source of income for Pd people who are artists and/or musicians first. So those are mostly the Pay for a Plus model. 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? I don't have that feeling at all. I've been using free software since about 1994, and the situation has really only improved from what I've seen. There is more money out there for paying people to do free software, and more people writing free software for a living. Things like Kickstarter are a good example. Also many NGOs and governments are starting to realize they get a better deal if they pay people to work on free software than if they buy proprietary software and support. Many grant organzations are requiring that grant-funded work be released at free software. 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? How is it split between the different developpers? For instance, i'm assuming that Miller Puckette should get a fair share of the donations since we're all using Pd vanilla at least, but i use HID a lot in my patches, so Hans should get his share too. 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). Yet i m sure that thousands of people use GEM, and these developpers should be supported as well. In short, how does it work, and how do we make this sustainable? One thing about free software funding is that its basically the inverse of the proprietary product model in what you pay for. In a proprietary product, you pay for the work that has been done and turned into a product. For free software, you get the current state of the product for free, so instead you pay for support or you pay for new things to be added to the product. That's what I recommend you pay for, if you are interested in funding some development: think of something you'd like to see improved, and fund that. .hc [W]e have invented the technology to eliminate scarcity, but we are deliberately throwing it away to benefit those who profit from scarcity.-John Gilmore ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
. I was equally surprized to see that the latest full version of Ardour isn't free (although you can name your price). well, its still free! At least for all linux users (just look in the synaptic and install it..) and yes, for mac you have to pay, but its not much and also, as a mac user, you already decided to pay for a proprietary system, why not also spend some money to the open source world? :) cheers, kris ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
This is not true at all. On 03/17/2011 07:41 PM, blackendwh...@web.de wrote: . I was equally surprized to see that the latest full version of Ardour isn't free (although you can name your price). well, its still free! At least for all linux users (just look in the synaptic and install it..) and yes, for mac you have to pay, but its not much and also, as a mac user, you already decided to pay for a proprietary system, why not also spend some money to the open source world? :) cheers, kris ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list When you go to the download section you can choose if you want to pay or not. Paul Davis is asking you to at least to pay 1$, if you can't afford more than that, but, you don't need to pay anything in order to download the software. Ardour has a model for financing the development, and it seems to be working out for them. I'm happy to see Ardour 3 coming out which will have midi support. Ardour is open source, which means anyone can add to it or fork it and start making their own version of it. -- ailo ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
On 03/18/2011 01:02 AM, ailo wrote: This is not true at all. On 03/17/2011 07:41 PM, blackendwh...@web.de wrote: . I was equally surprized to see that the latest full version of Ardour isn't free (although you can name your price). well, its still free! At least for all linux users (just look in the synaptic and install it..) and yes, for mac you have to pay, but its not much and also, as a mac user, you already decided to pay for a proprietary system, why not also spend some money to the open source world? :) cheers, kris ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list When you go to the download section you can choose if you want to pay or not. Paul Davis is asking you to at least to pay 1$, if you can't afford more than that, but, you don't need to pay anything in order to download the software. Ardour has a model for financing the development, and it seems to be working out for them. I'm happy to see Ardour 3 coming out which will have midi support. Ardour is open source, which means anyone can add to it or fork it and start making their own version of it. Most of the licenses are either GPL or LGPL, anyway. -- ailo ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
Maybe this add something to the discussion (so I hope): from platoniq and openp2pdesign groups http://www.youcoop.org/en/goteo/p/7/financiacion-colectiva-para-proyectos-de-codigo-abierto-primer-capitulo-open-hardware/ cheers husk On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Pedro Lopes pedro.lo...@ist.utl.pt wrote: FLOSS is not an economic model, it's a set of licenses (and of potential future licenses with the same basic characteristics). I agree with you Mathieu. Furthermore I leave this quote, that helps to pave a clear understanding In the context of free and open-source software, free refers to the freedom to copy and re-use the software, rather than to the price of the software. The Free Software Foundation, an organization that advocates the free software model, suggests that, to understand the concept, one should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 2:03 AM, João Pais jmmmp...@googlemail.com wrote: 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? How is it split between the different developpers? For instance, i'm assuming that Miller Puckette should get a fair share of the donations since we're all using Pd vanilla at least, but i use HID a lot in my patches, so Hans should get his share too. 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). Yet i m sure that thousands of people use GEM, and these developpers should be supported as well. In short, how does it work, and how do we make this sustainable? As said by someone else, whoever you send money to, gets it. There's no bank account, or anyone controlling who is getting what. Since Mr. Puckette has (what seems to be) a nice job, I wouldn't worry much with him, but more with other younger developpers who are much busier working in Pd nowadays. If you want to share your wealth, these people should be more in need. João Pais ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- Pedro Lopes (MSc) contact: pedro.lo...@ist.utl.pt website: http://web.ist.utl.pt/Pedro.Lopes / http://pedrolopesresearch.wordpress.com/ | http://twitter.com/plopesresearch ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- when Art become pratical we call it technology. When Technology become useless we call it Art www.estereotips.net ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
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? How is it split between the different developpers? For instance, i'm assuming that Miller Puckette should get a fair share of the donations since we're all using Pd vanilla at least, but i use HID a lot in my patches, so Hans should get his share too. 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). Yet i m sure that thousands of people use GEM, and these developpers should be supported as well. In short, how does it work, and how do we make this sustainable? As said by someone else, whoever you send money to, gets it. There's no bank account, or anyone controlling who is getting what. Since Mr. Puckette has (what seems to be) a nice job, I wouldn't worry much with him, but more with other younger developpers who are much busier working in Pd nowadays. If you want to share your wealth, these people should be more in need. João Pais ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
FLOSS is not an economic model, it's a set of licenses (and of potential future licenses with the same basic characteristics). I agree with you Mathieu. Furthermore I leave this quote, that helps to pave a clear understanding In the context of free http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software and open-source software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software, *free* refers to the freedom to copy and re-use the software,* rather than to the price of the software*. The Free Software Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation, an organization that advocates the free software model, suggests that, to understand the concept, one should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 2:03 AM, João Pais jmmmp...@googlemail.com wrote: 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? How is it split between the different developpers? For instance, i'm assuming that Miller Puckette should get a fair share of the donations since we're all using Pd vanilla at least, but i use HID a lot in my patches, so Hans should get his share too. 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). Yet i m sure that thousands of people use GEM, and these developpers should be supported as well. In short, how does it work, and how do we make this sustainable? As said by someone else, whoever you send money to, gets it. There's no bank account, or anyone controlling who is getting what. Since Mr. Puckette has (what seems to be) a nice job, I wouldn't worry much with him, but more with other younger developpers who are much busier working in Pd nowadays. If you want to share your wealth, these people should be more in need. João Pais ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- Pedro Lopes (MSc) contact: pedro.lo...@ist.utl.pt website: http://web.ist.utl.pt/Pedro.Lopes / http://pedrolopesresearch.wordpress.com/ | http://twitter.com/plopesresearch ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
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 ? ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
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 ? ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
Hi, A brief summary Mathieu ... I appreciate every day of this community ... and of course, we are pd ... Beeest regards José 2011/3/9 Mathieu Bouchard ma...@artengine.ca: 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 ? ___ | Mathieu Bouchard tél: +1.514.383.3801 Villeray, Montréal, QC ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- http://arselectronicachile.blogspot.com http://comunicacionnativa.blogspot.com/ http://www.myspace.com/santorcuato ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
[PD] The economics of Open source
Dear List, 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). Now don't get me wrong : I think i can imagine the amount of work that was necessary to write a software like Ardour from scratch, and i totally understand that the team who wrote it may decide that they should be payed for it. This leads me to ask two questions : 1) What are the economics of open source software, and how sustainable is the model? How does it work for Pd? 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? 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? How is it split between the different developpers? For instance, i'm assuming that Miller Puckette should get a fair share of the donations since we're all using Pd vanilla at least, but i use HID a lot in my patches, so Hans should get his share too. 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). Yet i m sure that thousands of people use GEM, and these developpers should be supported as well. In short, how does it work, and how do we make this sustainable? Pierre ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
Great question. I'm really interested in this as well. Should be interesting to see how it plays out in the list =P... I've always presumed that all the devs are overflowing with academic funding and are bug tracking while sipping cocktails by the pool. On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 7:21 PM, Pierre Massat pimas...@gmail.com wrote: Dear List, 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). Now don't get me wrong : I think i can imagine the amount of work that was necessary to write a software like Ardour from scratch, and i totally understand that the team who wrote it may decide that they should be payed for it. This leads me to ask two questions : 1) What are the economics of open source software, and how sustainable is the model? How does it work for Pd? 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? 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? How is it split between the different developpers? For instance, i'm assuming that Miller Puckette should get a fair share of the donations since we're all using Pd vanilla at least, but i use HID a lot in my patches, so Hans should get his share too. 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). Yet i m sure that thousands of people use GEM, and these developpers should be supported as well. In short, how does it work, and how do we make this sustainable? Pierre ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- Richie ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
1) You're seeing one model of the economics of free software in action on the Ardour website. Click the link to the news page and there's a status bar that shows the amount of donations given per month relative to the amount it would take to fund full- time development of the software. Then you click download and have a box where you can type in any amount you'd like to pay to download the latest stable version. I know the term gets tossed around a lot, but I don't think free software has much at all to do with free beer. Free beer is delicious, mindless, quickly consumed and then gone. It's something you take (and-- hopefully-- don't give back). It derives its potency from people's (current) inability to make more of it without exerting a burdensome amount of effort (which would then negate its freedom from cost). Free software is a bunch of bits with a marginal cost of zero (i.e., once you have one Ardour tarball, the amount of money it takes to produce another Ardour tarball is zero). However, the cost of producing the software is not zero, so you are faced with the seemingly odd situation of being nudged to pay for something that you can copy, distribute, learn, change, and distribute-with-changes for free. But the whole point is: do you believe that the best way to develop software is for people to be able to read, run, copy, change, and distribute it freely? If so, then Paul has a crawl next to the entry box that shows the current prices people pay for proprietary DAWs, and you can choose accordingly (or proportionally within your means, or whatever you want to do that you think will support and sustain that development model). Or you can just pay $0 and contribute to free beer. It's by no means the only model, nor the predominant one. Probably the people who develop the software you'd like to donate to can tell you more about their models. 2) Absolutely not. Look at the software repository in Debian-- it's all free of charge (including Ardour, btw). Also, Debian itself is free of charge. Pd, Supercollider, ChucK, Jack, Fluxus, Blender, etc. --- On Tue, 3/8/11, Pierre Massat pimas...@gmail.com wrote: From: Pierre Massat pimas...@gmail.com Subject: [PD] The economics of Open source To: pd-list pd-list@iem.at Date: Tuesday, March 8, 2011, 9:21 AM Dear List, 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). Now don't get me wrong : I think i can imagine the amount of work that was necessary to write a software like Ardour from scratch, and i totally understand that the team who wrote it may decide that they should be payed for it. This leads me to ask two questions : 1) What are the economics of open source software, and how sustainable is the model? How does it work for Pd? 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? 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? How is it split between the different developpers? For instance, i'm assuming that Miller Puckette should get a fair share of the donations since we're all using Pd vanilla at least, but i use HID a lot in my patches, so Hans should get his share too. 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). Yet i m sure that thousands of people use GEM, and these developpers should be supported as well. In short, how does it work, and how do we make this sustainable? Pierre -Inline Attachment Follows- ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
delurk On 8 Mar 2011, at 08:21, Pierre Massat wrote: Dear List, 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). Now don't get me wrong : I think i can imagine the amount of work that was necessary to write a software like Ardour from scratch, and i totally understand that the team who wrote it may decide that they should be payed for it. This leads me to ask two questions : 1) What are the economics of open source software, and how sustainable is the model? How does it work for Pd? I don't know about Pd, but as someone that has worked with Open Source all my life, the most common model is selling support and consultancy. Provide a rock solid product and become the authority on the area it covers, and everyone will pay to listen to you. 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? If anything, it's the complete opposite, Open Source has never been so strong, and it's never been easier to contribute, thanks to places like Google Code or GitHub (especially GitHub, as far as I'm concerned). Cheers, Pedro /delurk ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] The economics of Open source
Hi, A couple of years brought to Chile to Richard Stallman, I participated in some way with GNU and I realized that most developers live lectures and workshops, of their works. The option to donate is very good, although I do not think it should be sufficient to engage only the development, most of those who post here have jobs in universities and occasionally give talks about Pd, Arduino, Processing. There is also an ethical commitment to the creator, musician and teacher, who impregnates the community. Some of your questions resolved them coming this year to study programming and systems, along with helping Pd, we can develop our own systems and not rely on an event like what is written in connection with Ardour. It is a big issue, especially for South America, which does not carry (except in cases such as Wiring), and where we depend on good way to what develops out. Best regards José 2011/3/8 Pedro Figueiredo m...@pedrofigueiredo.org: delurk On 8 Mar 2011, at 08:21, Pierre Massat wrote: Dear List, 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). Now don't get me wrong : I think i can imagine the amount of work that was necessary to write a software like Ardour from scratch, and i totally understand that the team who wrote it may decide that they should be payed for it. This leads me to ask two questions : 1) What are the economics of open source software, and how sustainable is the model? How does it work for Pd? I don't know about Pd, but as someone that has worked with Open Source all my life, the most common model is selling support and consultancy. Provide a rock solid product and become the authority on the area it covers, and everyone will pay to listen to you. 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? If anything, it's the complete opposite, Open Source has never been so strong, and it's never been easier to contribute, thanks to places like Google Code or GitHub (especially GitHub, as far as I'm concerned). Cheers, Pedro /delurk ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- http://arselectronicachile.blogspot.com http://comunicacionnativa.blogspot.com/ http://www.myspace.com/santorcuato ___ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
