| Linux Users, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is! |
by John Murray
It's good to see that Linux, and open source software in general, is continuing its steady progress. And while it might not be ready for every desktop, for an ever increasing number of us it already has everything we need. Some governments have been looking closely at Open Source, and Linux now has the backing of some industry heavyweights. There have been several notable desktop-software releases lately (OpenOffice 1.0 and Mozilla 1.0 to name but two), and Microsofts' increasingly desperate attempts to maintain its flow of revenue have helped make Linux/OSS more attractive. Not everything is rosy however, as even the bigger Linux/OSS companies struggle to make a profit, while others have gone belly-up. Even some well known Linux-aligned websites are finding it tough to survive. And as long as Linux occupies such a tiny proportion of desktops we remain vulnerable to attempts to squeeze us out altogether. While products like Windows XP are quite useable now that the instability and so on of its predecessors has gone, the prospect of a computing environment totally controlled by just one company that puts its own profitability above everything else is rather depressing. The implications of .Net (esp. Hailstorm), and projects like Palladium remain to be seen.
The survival of the commercial Linux/OSS software and distro builders is important to the success of the alternative platforms, though I think it may often be underestimated. Some significant projects are supported by commercial firms, plus they have the incentive to take on those rather dull but nonetheless important projects that would fail to interest the volunteer hackers. Just take a look at any of the modern desktop distros from Mandrake, SuSe or RedHat for example, to see good quality tools that help make Linux more acessible to the non-geek (non-interested?) user. Plus we now have apps like Open/Star Office, Evolution and RealPlayer that let us work with proprietary formats that have become de-facto standards. It seems to me that the companies working on these sort of projects might do even better if weren't for the apathy of so many users, and that's what this story is about.
Linux users in general have a reputation for being reluctant to pay for software, and I guess that's understandable; we've never really had to pay for anything. The odd thing about this is that so many Linux users/hackers claim that money isn't their main motivator, and sometimes view others who are money-motivated with suspicion. The obvious question then is this: If money is so unimportant, why is it so damn hard for us to part with it? It's not a lack of generosity; many freely give countless hours of their time to various projects. It just seems like we have a problem parting with cash . . .
When I first started playing with Linux, I used to be quite happy (smug, even) with the fact that I had software installed that would cost several thousand dollars to replicate with proprietary stuff. Sure, some of it was pretty rough around the edges, but hey, it was free, and (mostly) stable. The stuff we use now is generally much more polished and mature, but it is still free. Now, I'm not rich, and I have a mortgage, kids to feed and educate and so on but I'm not living in poverty either. I could quite easily contribute a few hundred dollars a year (but hadn't) without sacrificing anything. How many other users are just like me? Hundreds of thousands? A million or more? Could the people that develop our favourite distros and other software be missing out on three or four hundred million dollars per year of funding?
A few weeks ago I decided to play around with WineX. I had some Windows apps and games I wanted to run, and rather than set up a Windows partition, I thought I'd try WineX. I'd been reading good things about it, so I went to the website, where I found I could get the current CVS snapshot for no charge, or get three months access to binary packages for $15 or so. Because it was only a trial, I just got the files from the CVS tree. It took me a few hours to get it configured properly, but when I did it ran at least some of the apps perfectly. A few days later, I was browsing through one of the Linux newsgroups when I saw a posting from someone asking for WineX binaries, because he'd been having trouble building them. Someone else replied with something like: "WHAT? You mean to say you own enough hardware to run this stuff, yet you won't pay 15 bucks for binary packages? Get real." That made me think. I'd recently spent several hundred dollars (without flinching) on upgrading hardware, yet I had opted to spend several hours fiddling with code rather than part with fifteen bucks. How many others, I thought, are doing the same thing? How much money are the developers missing out on because of the stinginess of people like me? How much are we holding back Linux/OSS progress with this attitude?
I glanced up at my bookshelf, and to the row of books on various languages and other computing related subjects. The bottom shelf overflowed with computing magazines. That's when it really hit me; I'd willingly shelled out thousands of dollars on hardware and books over the years, but had contributed next to nothing to the software people. I've been using Linux and Open source software for years, and over that time have installed at least a dozen or more distros. How many of those were boxed sets from the distro builders? . . . only one actually. That distro, an Applix suite and a couple of Loki games were the only software for which I'd paid real money in years. Maybe a couple of hundred dollars in total over four years - less than many Windows users would pay for a single app.
I was lucky enough to be born in a relatively affluent country, and my job pays sufficiently that there is usually a bit left over after paying for the necessities. I realize there are many, many more who are not so lucky, and that these people have much more important things on which to spend their money. For these people, Linux/OSS's low or zero cost is a wonderful thing, and no-one would expect any payment from them. But those that do have a disposable income might ask themselves these questions:- How much is Linuxs' success worth to you? Imagine a world where documents are in an open, shareable format, and where web developers don't automatically assume everyone uses IE.
- Are there any particular projects that you would really like to succeed?
- Would you like to execise some control over the way Linux evolves?
- Would you like the number of Linux users to be high enough that we can no longer be ignored by much of the industry?
- How much have you spent on hardware, books, magazines and so on? And how much have you spent on non-proprietary software or the people who support it?
- Are you comfortable with a computing world dominated by a single company that continues to behave badly despite years of legal action, and who continually make changes for no other reason than to extract more money from their customers? This is the same company that wants to control the Internet...
- If you had to replace your OS/ software with proprietary stuff, how much would it cost? (yeah, I know lots of proprietary software is grossly overpriced....)
- How much could you afford to contribute (monthly, yearly, whatever) without significantly affecting either your own or your families lifestyle?
So, where do you start if you decide to spread some cash around? Who do you give it to? That's entirely up to you, but you might want to consider these points:- Do you have a favourite distro? Helping them out would be a good start.
- Do you know of a particularly useful piece of software that is still under development?
- Is there a website or other non-software project that is important to you?
- Can you get your hardware from a supplier that supports Linux/OSS?
There are other ways of course, but basically you just have to think about which bits are most important to you, and then either support them directly, or the companies that sponsor that project. Obviously you're going to have to do some research. Some projects have systems in place for online payment, if not you might have to contact them to work out the details. The great thing about contributing to these projects is that we, the contributors, are the ones that reap the benefits . . .
Are you involved in a project that could utilise some funding from users? Make it easy for them to contribute from your website. I'd particularly like to see some way of making one-off payments, as not everyone likes to sign up for subscriptions. And don't hide a tiny 'contribute' button down on the bottom corner of your homepage as if it's an embarrassment - be proud of the fact that people like what you do so much that they will pay voluntarily (though I've read that some potential corporate customers can be unnerved to see vendors asking for donations).
I've heard some people express the opinion that for Linux to become popular, it would have to be dumbed-down or diluted somehow. There's no reason why Linux can't become prettier, easier, and more intuitive without losing any of it's existing power, flexibility or security. Plus I suspect the hard-core hacker distros will always be around, and there's always the DIY distros . . .
Have I put my money where my mouth is? Well, I've started anyway. I've signed up for Mandrakes' Users Club, and also for some ad-free Slashdot pages, and I'm looking at a couple of other sites. I've also subscribed to WineX, and I'll continue to get hardware bits and pieces from a Linux specialist whenever possible. I've still spent less than half my yearly budget, but now that I'm getting used to the idea of spending money on software, I'm sure that won't be a problem ;-)
I hope I've convinced some of you to spend some money too; if you've been doing it all along you deserve to feel smugly self-satisfied , and even gloat a little :-) And if you can't afford to contribute any money, that's fine, hopefully there's some free software available that's useful to you. Of course, anyone with some spare time can help out in lots of other ways, but that's another story . . .
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