Re: [LAU] Payment In Kind Experiment

>From: drew Roberts <zotz@email-addr-hidden>
>
>Payment In Kind Experiment or Funding Musical Free Software Development
>
>Was: Re: [LAU] A year of Linux Audio revisited - would like to know your
>oppinion
>
>New ideas at the bottom, quote for context.
>
>On Wednesday 12 December 2007 06:49:08 Pieter Palmers wrote:
>> Chris Cannam wrote:
>> > On Wednesday 12 December 2007 05:50, Robert Persson wrote:
>> >> Here is a good explanation of how groove quantise works in protools:
>> >> http://www.audiomidi.com/classroom/protools_corner/ptcorner_63.cfm
>> >>
>> >> For some really fancy midi stuff going way further than groove quantise,
>> >> you could take a look at some of Ntonyx's products, such as
>> >> StyleEnhancer and StyleMorpher. If Rosegarden could implement some of
>> >> those features that would be very useful for composers.
>> >
>> > Groove quantization is one of the oldest outstanding feature requests in
>> > the Rosegarden tracker, submitted by me in 2002:
>> >
>> > http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=633259&group_id=
>> >4932&atid=354932
>> >
>> > Unfortunately, as for so many features, this has simply never percolated
>> > to the top of my priority queue, or stack, or whatever my brain uses, and
>> > nobody else has ever shown much interest in coding it. And sadly I only
>> > have eight hands and three heads and there are only 132 hours in the day.
>>
>> IMHO this remark gets to the heart of the problem. As a human being we
>> have limited resources. I personally have to settle with one head, 2
>> fingers and 24hrs in a day. The fact that humans also have to eat, and
>> that food is seldom available 'for free' makes that some part of our
>> resources are allocated to surviving. Oh, and having 'a life' also
>> consumes an astonishing amount of these resources.
>>
>> There is no way around the fact that one has to eat, and that that
>> doesn't go well with writing free software in the 'free beer'
>> interpretation. Which seems to be the main reason why people turn to
>> Linux. I've done a quick check on the cheapest offer from Cakewalk
>> (Project 5) that might have all functionality that came up in this
>> thread, and it is 100euro here. If all Rosegarden users were to pay
>> Chris 100euro, I think Rosegarden would have more features than 'Project
>> 5', or maybe even Sonar.
>>
>> The catch 22 seems to be that we currently attract a lot of 'free beer'
>> attention. But in order to get really professional software, you need
>> time, and time = money. So in order for the programs to become more
>> professional, we need people that are willing to pay for them. Which we
>> don't seem to have.
>>
>> You could think of it this way: suppose you have a Linux tool that has
>> 20% of the functionality of an the equivalent Win/Mac tool, you could
>> argue that it's worth 20% of the money. Now add all tools you use on
>> Linux and try to estimate this '20%' value of your software collection.
>> IMHO that's what you would have to be prepared to pay. Of course I know
>> that this is a rude extrapolation, and that 20% of the functionality
>> usually doesn't get you anywhere. But to be honest, I think most of the
>> tools are more near 80% of the 'competing software's functionality.
>>
>> To give you another idea, from my personal pet project (FFADO):
>> we are registered on the ohloh site
>> (http://www.ohloh.net/projects/8040?p=FFADO), and one of the things they
>> do is scan your code repository and use some industry standard way of
>> value-ing the code (COCOMO). In the FFADO case they end up with a value
>>
>> > $1.000.000. In other words, if you were to have a commercial company
>>
>> develop the code, it would cost you 1M$. But hey, pick me, I'll do it
>> 'for free'... Rosegarden is also present on ohloh, and is valued more
>> than $2M.
>>
>> I admit that these numbers are large extrapolations and have limited
>> applicability, but they do provide some reference.
>>
>> The only project that seems to be able to break this circle is Ardour.
>> I'd say that that is due to the fact that Paul didn't have to worry
>> about his survival for the time it took to bring Ardour to a critical
>> level. I.e. a level that was high enough for people to start paying for
>> Ardour as soon as Paul's self-funding approached it's limits.
>>
>> For myself I can say that I'm spending an incredible amount of time and
>> energy into coding open source, and that there is not that much in
>> return. Well, there is the respect from fellow coders, gratitude from
>> users, even free hardware (lucky me). But that doesn't pay the bills. So
>> I have to go out and spend time at 'something that someone actually pays
>> for'. And hence it takes 3 years to reach the functionality that comes
>> 'out of the box' on another OS. If I would be sure I can earn a decent
>> living with writing 'free' software, I would seriously consider it. But
>> alas...
>>
>> Note that this is not really a reaction to the original blog giving an
>> overview of the current Linux audio status, but more an attempt at
>> expressing my view on why this is as it is, and why it's IMHO not very
>> likely to change soon. It's like the Ableton guy said at LAC07: "I'm
>> pretty happy with the we-sell-shrinkwrapped-boxed-software model, and I
>> don't see a reason to change that.". Read: "why would we give it away if
>> people seem to be willing to pay for it?".
>>
>> 2 cents for discussion,
>>
>> Pieter Palmers
>
>Nice write up.
>
>I have had this or a very similar thought recently in another context. So here
>is my first attempt to develop it some for this context.
>
>We have people writing music making software and people using the same
>software to make music.
>
>So. What can we do?
>
>1. Every software project that wants to could offer a version for sale that is
>basically identical to the one available gratis. Hey, perhaps with an
>autographed manual or a certificate of support to hang on the wall, or
>perhaps to get your name in a "funders" list in the code.
>
>2. Request for coding help.
>
>3. Request for support in the form of Free Music.
>
>3.a. Please send us music using a Free License that you made using our stuff.
>If you don't have any originals of your own, here is where you can find some
>to do your own take of and send in. We can include this as a showcase of our
>stuff.
>
>3.b. Help us put together a CD of such Free Music that we can sell and let the
>proceeds support the project. ***
>
>*** This may just be the key idea. Now we get funding not just from the
>limited number of people who use Free Software to make music, but from the
>much wider number of people who are willing to buy music.
>
>If anyone wants to discuss these possibilities further, I would be most happy
>to do so. A brainstorm in making 3.b. effective would be welcome.

a very interesting idea, drew. indeed, it is probably necessary to leverage resources outside of the software users, since our user base is so small. a key question, to my mind, is how to make something like this look desirable for folks at large -- the simple fact that it has been made using free software doesn't in any way make it music that anyone might be interested in purchasing.

another thought which i've been entertaining is to direct a certain percentage of any personal profits made using free software back to the software authours. it seems to me only reasonable that, if i am making money with these tools, some of that money is a result of the work of the respective coders. it's difficult to come up with any sort of rigourous algorithm to assess how much each application contributed to the final profits, but i think it's time (for me, personally) to implement some fuzzy instance of that principle, anyway. unfortunately, as alluded to above, even if we ALL did that, the user base is probably not large enough to fully support the coders.

best.

-- 
.pltk.
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