Why software is free of charge?

[tinfoil-hat]

Hi, my relatives asked me at christmas why Linux and opensource software doesn't cost anything and I cloudn't give a good answer. How would you explain someone that has zero technical knowledge this question? Also they asked me why developers code software and what they are living from

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I think you need to tell them the whole story behind Linux, GNU and free software movement, history of it and how it all begun.
Because it is this history that led to modern day meaning of free software and why millions of people do it for free today.

 

[osprey]

Hi, my relatives asked me at christmas why Linux and opensource software doesn't cost anything and I cloudn't give a good answer. How would you explain someone that has zero technical knowledge this question? Also they asked me why developers code software and what they are living from

Linux, the kernel, and most distributions don't cost money because Linus Torvald's stipulated that the kernel be free in his original release of it. He released it with the following condition:

This kernel is (C) 1991 Linus Torvalds, but all or part of it may be
  redistributed provided you do the following:

        - Full source must be available (and free), if not with the
          distribution then at least on asking for it.

        - Copyright notices must be intact. (In fact, if you distribute
          only parts of it you may have to add copyrights, as there aren't
          (C)'s in all files.) Small partial excerpts may be copied
          without bothering with copyrights.

        - You may not distibute this for a fee, not even "handling"
          costs.

See: https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/9/25/161

Thereafter, he applied the General Public Licence Version 2 (GPLv2) which embodied the same conditions. The GPLv2 also came out in 1991 (see the GNU website).

As to why the kernel was made free and open source, Linus comments:

it was always about giving source code back and keeping it open, not about anything else.

One can speculate about the motivation for his free gift of linux, and perhaps reference his many videos and writings. Nevertheless, there are a few ways of viewing the free aspect.

One could be a purely functional one. In this guise, making linux free with the following stipulation in the GPLv2, will in all likelihood produce a better functioning linux:

if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
rights.

Another motivation for the designated "free of cost" aspect may derive from the scientific tradition. In that respect, for the non-technical questioner who is asking, a relatively obvious analogy is the way in which scientific progress is made for humanity by those scientists, researchers and investigators involved who freely publish their findings and results which are free to access in journals and other publications and thus serve and potentially benefit people the world over. Not all such developments are free or freely accessible, but so much is, and linux can be seen as part of that available tradition. Making such things free can perhaps be seen as a moral choice in favour of progress for all.

In relation to the developers and others who contribute to the kernel, they come from numerous walks of life. Some work in employment that actually provides them with time to work on linux projects, others contribute from their free time. Lots of companies sponsor individuals and teams to work on linux projects. The Linux Foundation is a source for information on these things. In the commercial world, assisting linux developers may have more of a functional motivation, but in the end result which is freely available, there is an inherently moral aspect to "the good" in relation to free sharing of progress.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

@osprey
Not bad, but lets not rule out GNU because it's them who started first, their philosophy page has a few good links to read:
Philosophy of the GNU Project

R. Stallman compared free software with proprietary one (e.g. GNU and MS) in one video something along the lines,
it's about sharing candies with your friends instead of keeping them all for yourself.

 

[Fanboi]

Well Linux is funded. Just about every appliance from routers to smartphones have a Linux kernel (tailored, ofc). So it's a corporate asset. Developers are often paid.

GNU (the part that makes it thought of as Linux instead of, say, Android) is ttechnically the OS. It gets donations and funding as the FSF is an NPO.

Developers and maintainers here a often reap the benefit of adding crediblity to their names by working with large free software products. So this is an investment, kind of like an internship w/o the stipend.
So they may not get paid directly for this case, but between adding serious clout to their resumes (ongoing, you need to stay up-to-date in programming like you do in IT or Fashion) and elevating the salary at their current job, it's good ROI.

Many free projects are sponsored, and like with Linux, hire paid programmers.

For components of a bigger whole, drivers to utility scripts to applications, many devs code for themselves, because they need hardware working on their chosen unsupported platform, because they need a software that does X and every existing software lacks that feature or no such software exists. I've written more for me than anyone. In a lot of cases, more confident coders make their code open source. This benefits them because other people are now doing bugfixes for them, adding features for them, etc.

Important note: Most free software can and is sold. At least GPL and MIT licensed software, which is the dominate the free software scene. Now paid Support becomes a big one. RHEL, Oracle Linux, Ubuntu are but a few examples. Also, with sime software, the source is free, but the prebuilt system is not. Or there's a Linux-based firmware/OS running on a device, especially embedded, and you pay for the hardware, what runs it, in this case a free OS, is part of production costs. GPL'd stuff requires these companies to "give back to the pu lic" anything they build on GPL software.

So there are some financial incentives for devs working on free projects. Notwhistanding GoFundMe & co.

That all said, as @osprey mentioned, there is the "public good" aspect. Many people are as passionate about coding as any scientist. I mean most devs for smaller projects have day jobs. Some people just enjoy coding and tech and the free stuff is a by-product of passion... or some people are passionate about free software and learn to code so they can contribute.

 

[Freepoorman]

Also they asked me why developers code software and what they are living from

Creating free software also because some software that the dev needs or would like to use doesn't exist.. and why go through the trouble of selling it when you could gain more users by offering for free? This will help get all the bugs ironed out sooner and make you a better programmer faster.

 

[JamesLopez]

Linux, the kernel, and most distributions don't cost money because Linus Torvald's stipulated that the kernel be free in his original release of it. He released it with the following condition:

This kernel is (C) 1991 Linus Torvalds, but all or part of it may be
  redistributed provided you do the following:

        - Full source must be available (and free), if not with the
          distribution then at least on asking for it.

        - Copyright notices must be intact. (In fact, if you distribute
          only parts of it you may have to add copyrights, as there aren't
          (C)'s in all files.) Small partial excerpts may be copied
          without bothering with copyrights.

        - You may not distibute this for a fee, not even "handling"
          costs.

See: https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/9/25/161

Thereafter, he applied the General Public Licence Version 2 (GPLv2) which embodied the same conditions. The GPLv2 also came out in 1991 (see the GNU website).

As to why the kernel was made free and open source, Linus comments:


One can speculate about the motivation for his free gift of linux, and perhaps reference his many videos and writings. Nevertheless, there are a few ways of viewing the free aspect.

One could be a purely functional one. In this guise, making linux free with the following stipulation in the GPLv2, will in all likelihood produce a better functioning linux:


Another motivation for the designated "free of cost" aspect may derive from the scientific tradition. In that respect, for the non-technical questioner who is asking, a relatively obvious analogy is the way in which scientific progress is made for humanity by those scientists, researchers and investigators involved who freely publish their findings and results which are free to access in journals and other publications and thus serve and potentially benefit people the world over. Not all such developments are free or freely accessible, but so much is, and linux can be seen as part of that available tradition. Making such things free can perhaps be seen as a moral choice in favour of progress for all.

In relation to the developers and others who contribute to the kernel, they come from numerous walks of life. Some work in employment that actually provides them with time to work on linux projects, others contribute from their free time. Lots of companies sponsor individuals and teams to work on linux projects. The Linux Foundation is a source for information on these things. In the commercial world, assisting linux developers may have more of a functional motivation, but in the end result which is freely available, there is an inherently moral aspect to "the good" in relation to free sharing of progress.

It’s pretty amazing how this model has created some of the most powerful software we use today, like Linux itself or tools like Blender and VLC. Personally, I think it’s a great balance of community-driven collaboration and personal freedom!

 

[kc1di]

This page is about the most concise I've seen there are many other that offer more details but this gives the basic histroy of the movement.

https://softwarelogic.co/blog/exploring-the-history-of-linux-a-timeline/

 

[Brickwizard]

Well it's better than the normal comment from a non-user of "well, if it's free, it can't be any good"

 

[gvisoc]

I will try to be as brief as possible while addressing this part specifically

why Linux and opensource software doesn't cost anything

That's an oversimplification and that's why, in the case of free software, it's usually specified that is free as in free speech, not free as in free beer. And that's why many people is beginning to use the Spanish word "libre" as in free(-dom) as oposed to "gratis" as in "free beer". This means that there's room for paid-for free software.

The case of open source may be different because it is more often than not a subset of tools or systems a corporation had to develop that then decide to release as open source. In free software that can be also the case, but the most well-known projects such as Linux and GNU were built in the academia or hacker labs environments.

In a nutshell:

• Free Software professionals live from:
  • sponsors (individuals, governments, institutions and corporations). The case of the kernel is notorious, as there may be maintainers that are actually employees of sponsoring bodies, e.g., an employee of IBM / Red Hat can be 100% dedicated to maintain part of the Linux kernel or some modules.
  • donations (same as before),
  • professional support services.
• Open Source professionals can relate almost 100% to the above with very minor differences depending on the license.

Arguably, if you're the creator of free software and has recognition as part of the common goods, you could create a non-profit to formalise the activity and pay yourself a salary from all the grants and donations.

 

[gvisoc]

(and of course, many or arguably most of the free software / open source contributors or authors begin doing it on their spare time, after or before a 9 to 5 job).

 

[KGIII]

it's usually specified that is free as in free speech, not free as in free beer.

To add to this, that's not a new thing. That was baked in and assumed with even the first version of the GPL. Free, as in gratis, is NOT a part of it - and never has been. That there is are so many free, as in cost, programs is just the icing on the cake.

The code is free. After that, it depends on the authors. Up until GPL 3 (which isn't as widely popular) you could even have some of the code be free and some of it be proprietary. The GPL 3 has some stipulations where it declares that anything it touches must also be free and that's just not going to work for many projects, including the kernel.

The Free Software movement, including RMS, has never been about 'free as in beer'. (I know. I was there!)

 

[osprey]

To add to this, that's not a new thing. That was baked in and assumed with even the first version of the GPL. Free, as in gratis, is NOT a part of it - and never has been. That there is are so many free, as in cost, programs is just the icing on the cake.

The code is free. After that, it depends on the authors. Up until GPL 3 (which isn't as widely popular) you could even have some of the code be free and some of it be proprietary. The GPL 3 has some stipulations where it declares that anything it touches must also be free and that's just not going to work for many projects, including the kernel.

The Free Software movement, including RMS, has never been about 'free as in beer'. (I know. I was there!)

@gvisoc wrote:

it's usually specified that is free as in free speech, not free as in free beer

The idea that "Free, as in gratis, is NOT a part of it" contrasts with Linus' statement reproduced in post #3 above where he writes:

You may not distibute [sic] this for a fee, not even "handling" costs.

The GPLv2 which Linus embraced shortly afterwards however takes another view:

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price.

One can conceive of a dependency between the freedoms associated with software licenced by the GPLv2 and freedom of cost ... if the software is free of cost, then it can become available for anyone to freely use and modify it and take advantage of the freedom which is not associated with price. Freedom, however, is a naturally constrained concept. One only has freedom that is enabled by the context. Absolute freedom is not available. The GPLv2 enables freedom with the software up to a point, whereupon compliance is required:

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

 

[gvisoc]

The idea that "Free, as in gratis, is NOT a part of it" contrasts with Linus' statement reproduced in post #3 above where he writes

The position of a single author doesn't redefine the movement.

 

[osprey]

The position of a single author doesn't redefine the movement.

Perhaps my post #13 wasn't clear enough. It was merely pointing to a contrast, as mentioned, not something that defined the movement. Linus clearly embraced the GPLv2 shortly after his original sentiment which I had mentioned in post #3. The quote of yours which I included was consistent with the GPLv2 which was relevant to the subject matter of my post which is why I included it. I hope there was no misunderstanding of my intention which was intended to be descriptive, not judgemental.

 

[bob466]

windoze users are brainwashed in to thinking "free" isn't any good but us Linux users know better.

 

[gvisoc]

@osprey No problems at all, I was overly brief because I am currently commuting and typing on a phone with sausage fingers... what can go wrong.

I was intending making the additional point that, despite the movement defining a word in a specific meaning, you as the creator of a software still holds the copyright and can impose all extraordinary clauses that you deem appropriate.

For example, you can forbid charging for a software or its distribution and that's completely fine, but we must make it clear that it doesn't imply all the rest of free software shall be free of charge. It's just your particular choice for your specific project.

 

[KGIII]

It was merely pointing to a contrast, as mentioned, not something that defined the movement.

The free software movement began well before Linux was released. If you narrow it down to just the Linux kernel, sure... That was a choice made by the actual owner (the author, in this case) made. I am referring to the whole movement (and incarnations with it, specifically the GPL). Individuals can make some decisions, so long as they fit within the GPL. Otherwise, there are other licensing options available - such as the MIT License.

The code is free. They're not obligated to give you binaries or support. Depending on the project (and license) they're not even required to give you the entirety of the source. For example, and while no longer an issue, selling disks with free software on them was a revenue stream for some people/companies.

If we go back to the roots, it was the 'Free Software Definition' which would later be revised and called the GPL, tied in with the GNU project. After that, you have the BSD license. That's more permissive and often used for commercial software. I want to say that was in the late 80s, just a couple of years after RMS got started.

 

[tinfoil-hat]

this thread turned out more interesting, than i thought