Please excuse me if I interpreted that in the wrong way and if it sounded too angry.
No worries
😉 We're here to talk and discuss. That's what forums are all about.
You weren't sounding angry to me,... I was sounding angry about having to pay again, for a technology that already exists for 20 years in scanning software, now put in a new jacket, of a billion dollar company selling it.
I can also be wrong in lots of things.
It's up to you if you can let me know other insights, to show me the world can be different out of that box, but still habitable.
🙂
Why do so many people want anything for free?
Did you think about the time the author needed for development and still needs for improvements? What do you think he should feed his family with? The thanks and likes on Facebook?
No plumber, teacher, you name it is working for free, why should somebody else?
You want to get paid for your work as well, don’t you?
I understand your point of view very well.
However, being paid is a very broad concept.
And yes, there is free open source software that has been made by paid developers.
But after being paid for this, does he, or his company needs to be paid another time after they already been paid thousands of times by selling the same product worldwide?
I’ll get to your examples of a plumber and teacher later on, to show that not everyone is being paid the same way, or should do it for free.
But first, a bit more understanding in concepts as labour, hobby vs paid, profit on profit, ethical questions, spreading knowledge or freeware doesn’t do any harm,..
For example. 4 persons making soup.
One does it in a restaurant kitchen, being paid by the chef. The second one is preparing the soup as a volunteer for an NGO giving care to poor or homeless people. The third one is visiting her sick mom and preparing soup for her in her kitchen, and the last one is making soup for herself to eat alone.
They all worked one hour doing this. 4 hours labour in total. But for our government, only 1 hour counts: the one of the first person, because that hour of labour can be taxed.
Question: should all 4 persons being paid? Because they all worked the same amount of time, the same job.
No, some do it for free.
So to answer your question “you want to get paid for your work as well, don’t you?”:
>> are you paying your mom when she cooks a meal for you? I’m not talking about paying the ingredients, but she’s doing labour for you.
Where’s the line between hobby and a paid job:
Some people are doing it as a hobby. A musician playing recreatively for his own pleasure versus a paid session musician in a studio.
A street musician playing free, but being paid “as you wish” when people passing by giving a coin, or a musician booked by management to play in a concert hall where people are asked to buy a ticket before they can hear anything. (later more about hobby vs paid)
These are all differences in view on how you wish to be paid. Or what you want to pay for.
Some guy I know with an apple tree in the garden has free apples each year. Wether he wants it or not, his product is there, growing by itself.
If he doesn’t eat all the apples by himself, he has a choice to:
- throw away the apples, feeding animals with it, or giving it away to friends and family, for free.
- selling the apples (100% profit)
When people pass a shop’s showcase with 2 buckets: one with free apples and one for $ 4, most customers will have weird doubts for the free bucket and will pay for the other bucket instead. Not knowing that these are exactly the same apples. It has been tested in customer experiments before.
To get to your example: you used a plumber and a teacher as example. Both are working and paid by task or by hours.
A teacher, working in paid employment, paid by the school per hour, no matter how many students he has in his class. Think about having 10 students the first hour, and he has 20 students the second hour, he would be paid more the second hour?
You can compare it with private teachers teaching at home or in private rented rooms, like a private guitar or yoga teacher, where students have to pay per session, is a different. They give the same hours of labour, but get paid differently.
Now, the plumber, when my plumber installs me a sink, I pay him for his work and I can use my sink the upcoming months. I’m not paying for him each coming month when I use that sink. I only pay for his hours of work and the materials he used.
For LightRoom, you will have to pay a subscription, each month, while the value of making the software and service is already paid thousands of time by now.
Furthermore, I pay the plumber, I use the sink. Now, if my daughter or mother wants to wash her hands and use the same sink, they don’t have to pay the plumber another time for this. This is the case with a lot of software that already has been paid so many times. Should I use the word profit again already?
Now, to go more to the point with this background, you’ve seen I’ve already written the word “profit”.
A developer programs something and after it’s ready, it’s being sold.
A painter paints a painting and after it’s ready, it’s being sold. Once.
The difference is that the developper can sell it twice, oh no, unlimited times.
When a company sells products for a price that is enough to pay his employees, it’s fair, but companies want profit, to grow, for the shareholders, or just to make profit on profit. That’s the reason why the products are being sold at so much higher rates than the value of these products. Unlimited times, in this case.
Another difference is that a painting needs to be made again and again and again, from scratch. While software is being made from knowledge, technologies, inventions, systems already made in the past, that get used and reused again and being built on top of the other and mostly not from scratch. Certainly if it’s all being shared, like open source freeware.
Open software has the advantage that it’s not about one company that steers how users can work with their software, where these users even need to pay for it too.
Open source is about users that have needs where a group of engaged developers works for, all together. And yes, you can get paid by it as developer, for a fair amount to have a living, and not to make profit on profit on profit like capitalistic companies do.
Paid 'free' software.
I already mentioned the concept of “hobby” versus ‘paid’. Some developers doing nerdy stuff at home as a hobby, they can contribute for free to open source software in their free time, and they can even join paid opportunities.
A lot of open source is being funded by universities, by projects sponsored by NGO’s, by companies who want their own software tailored for them as it’s not existing yet in the “private market” and have this shared for free afterwards because they think it’s good for the society or community that can make use of this too. They can change it, build upon it, make it better, redistribute,... The ethical wisdom to share and not to keep for yourself. So now there are poor families where kids can have access to software that is free of use, to develop their skills for later use when they grow up. Learning skills shouldn’t be kept for the rich only.
Another good explanation about free software:
“Why is free software important? Richard Stallman - in INT's ENLIGHTENMENT MINUTES”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPPikY3uLIQ
There’s so much more to find about this subject when you google “reasons why to use free software” or “why should software be free” and questions like that.
