Isn't free software a problem if I want to sell my software? Like, I make a software, release it with thr source code for 10$ and claim it to be free software. Then some jackass can come in, copy the super cool code I made, change it a little, and release it for free. That would be gay, right?
Free software
Samuel Thomas
Lucas Cruz
No. See Redhat, grsec
Sebastian Hernandez
not because all economics knows that "you don't sell free software you work around it"
you sell support (witch is btw more fructifiant than just sealing a product them tell your customers to suck balls)
That's why windows is beginning to sell software with monthly subscriptions and it will be even worse than before because not only the software won't even be free/libre but you will rent it.
And it will be even worse (again) when they will offer the same thing but you need a required connection just like with the new adobe creative cloud the software won't even be in control of your own computer anymore.
The same thing is appearing with web-assembly.
You'll have a navigator and that's all, you will loose complete control over your computer and what it computes.
James Turner
Well said
Camden Collins
Sell your labor instead.
Because your business model is stupid.
Jose Hughes
typo at the beginning
no, because
Aiden Smith
If you want to sell software then it is a problem. If you want to build business around your code then it is not a problem.
That can happen, but nothing is stopping you form merging those improvements into your code and making some more improvements and selling your even cooler version.
Josiah Cox
No.
For assembly generated by GCC and MSVC++, only difference is the variable names aren't there (but sometimes they are if the PDB is left over). Converting assembly back to C or whatever, or just figuring out what it does, isn't hard, but it's a bit tedious. However, most TRADE SECRETS (TM) are a few lines of code, or you can figure out how they work by guessing what the 20 functions involved do (for example with debugger, by seeing what arguments are passed to them and what changes after they return) instead of figuring out the exact meaning of the assembly in each of them.
Most faggot programmers will tell you that they can just read source code like English and figure out what it does. Thus reverse engineering is super slow. They couldn't be more wrong. Actually understanding code requires global analysis of the program, which is tedious. You can't trust variable names because they simply don't tell you what the program does, they only give hints. Most faggot programmers don't understand this either, which is literally a clinical symptom of autism. If you're trying to get the "trade secret", you don't need to fully understand the code. You just need to skim it. This is where reverse engineering isn't much slower than reading source.
Reverse engineering *is* slow when you want to know *exactly* what the program does, to the point where you can maintain it. However, as said above, it's also very slow to do that even if you have the source code. Reading some new source code for the first time actually still is reverse engineering, the only advantage is that you have a higher level language, which is an overstated advantage. Common practice by forkers is to just take some code and modify it, and never fully understand it. People do this all the time and the result is pure shit.
If you're using .NET or Java, there are decent decompilers and there's little to no difference between the decompiled code and source code aside from the local variable names being wiped (which typically have little to no value anyway, especially for most shitcode). As a matter of fact, almost all code that isn't C or C++ is trivial to read and modify even by a novice, often the source is just included in some shitty binary file and ran by an interpreter.
For 99% of software, you just use it a few times and you already know how it's implemented and how to implement it yourself. You wouldn't even be asking this question if you were writing a non-trivial application (except if you're one of those codec script kiddies [codecs can be non trivial applications] who don't understand fuck all about software engineering, and whose software is full of vulns).
The guy would have to maintain it and know what he's doing to the point where it's not an unstable piece of shit. That's _extremely_ rare. See hardware. Nobody likes chink knockoffs.
except law
Matthew Young
Isn't proprietary software a problem if I want to sell my software? Like, I make a software, release it with a proprietary EULA for 10$ and claim it to be proprietary software. Then some jackass can come in, crack the super cool program I made, change it a little, and release it for free. That would be gay, right?
Anthony Price
This is really the problem with this line of thinking. How does the 1s and 0s I copy make me any different from "some jackass" that copies some other 1s and 0s?
When you think about it, proprietary software is the shady model. It's also the un-American one, which is ironic for its own reasons. It creates Monopolies, unhappy developers, and by extension, unhappy people. The part that unhappy people can't see is the enormous, undeniable network security vulnerability that proprietary software enables. You have airports still running Windows 3, because normies were duped into thinking closing a software's source is somehow good. Don't expect them to know anything about obscurity through security and why that's bad.
Anyways, make yourself useful and sell your support. Like everyone else is saying.
Ryder Gray
Also, I wanna add, that with your model, there's only so many times before you can redesign a GUI before normies get sick of it. That's really the only way to convince someone to buy a new version of your software, unless you're purposefully withholding certain features for a new version or different license. Technology is at a point to where there's no excuse for that, and indeed industries are leaving proprietary solutions because of unwelcome GUI changes. Kinda makes you think about what you're actually selling to people.
Jaxson Adams
With Open Source software, you can ship source code but restrict users from changing and sharing it.
But why would you do that? Get a more ethical job. IMHO everyone who wants to make profit on costs of the users freedoms deserves to get bankrupt.
Angel Rivera
It is a problem, but not impossible to overcome. There are a few strategies you can take.
- Just sell it anyway. People can rerelease it for free, even without changing it, but that happens to expensive proprietary software too. The only difference is that it's now legal to do that so it can be done more in the open. Examples are Synergy, Krita Gemini and Frogatto.
symless.com
store.steampowered.com
frogatto.com
- Ask for donations. If your software is popular enough you can get a lot of money this way. For example, the developer of qutebrowser, a niche browser with vim keybindings, collected more than €7000.
indiegogo.com
- Find people willing to pay you to work on your software. Richard Stallman made money this way in the early days of GNU. Companies would hire him to improve his own software with the features they wanted. He could charge a high rate because he could do it faster than anyone else, since he already knew the code, and the companies let him release the improvements as free software because they were only interested in using it internally and didn't mind if it was available to others.
- Charge for support. This can be very effective if your software is interesting to large companies and you have the manpower for it.
Alexander Mitchell
I bash freetards all the time (for good reason) but free software is something to aspire towards.
Stallman the autistic jew is the only one that walks the talk though, probably because he's a nutcase. I hate all the hypocritical freetards which is most of them.
I use Windows 10 because it suits my practical needs, I don't need to hear how horrible it is from someone that's full of shit.
Luke Young
That's fair enough I think, but not all of us are ultra-left wing. I think anyone, of any ideology, can see the practical and secure aspects of free software and that those people are smart enough to discern it from a particular right/left ideology.
I take a very "free software is very competitive" stance specifically for the purpose of debunking this misconception right out of the gates.
People have a tenancy to liken things they don't understand to thinks they can understand, and for this example, free software appears to be obviously left to proprietary's right -- and that's wrong for many reasons.
Ultimately you will use what works for you, like you do, but I think it's important to be as honest as you can to others about this argument. I'm not saying you aren't honest, I just think your post is good and telling of a deeper argument to be had about free software.
William Allen
As an addendum: I think that free software often times has the wrong representatives. I feel the same way about gun advocates being universally crazy on record. I feel that as a practical human being that I must be the voice for something, because my argument makes more sense and holds more practical value.
People in the right wing, such as myself perhaps, should be more vocal to discourage these misconceptions, because again normies are simplistic people, and will take everything ultimately as a right vs. left arugment.
Jonathan Gray
How is law stopping you from porting changes from fork to main repository of some free program?
Both are under same permissive license.
Michael Wood
You're a faggot and you use NSA/Windows (10).
Dylan Scott
If you use a permissive license the fork could be proprietary.
Carson Powell
you also get the reputation for developing it. in an information economy attention has value (it's better to have your stuff pirated than ignored)
you could sell support, use of your infrastructure, advertising (though if it's annoying enough someone will make a fork without this)
or you could accept donations, maybe in exchange for adding specific features (for example, if you donate enough i'll add encryption)
Jonathan Rivera
Why are tech people so rude
Brody Perez
You can sell subscriptions for updates and compiled binaries, you can sell support, you can sell license exceptions.
Isaac Gonzalez
This board attracts people with autism for some reason (not autism in the chan insult kind if way, I mean genuine autism)
People with autism tend to have issues expressing themselves emotionally and usually appear to have signs of sociopathic personality disorder, which is why people with autism tend to not have any friends
Jaxon Wood
this works both ways. if you spend all your time on a computer not socialising you don't level up your interpersonal skills
Jacob Wilson
If you honestly think Windows 10 is somehow a practical necessity, you aren't qualified to talk about what level of freetardery is acceptable. Did you also use Windows 8? Even normies didn't bother with that shit unless it came preinstalled. I use an isolated Windows 7 box and everything you can imagine works on it. Even on XP everything worked until I stopped using it, which was when it stopped getting security patches. It's not actually clear whether I would have saved more time by just disabling updates and reinstalling every time it gets malware or doing what I'm doing now.
-posted from my firecuck app on my gentoo personal computer
Elijah Rivera
Put it on your CV
Landon Sanders
Of course it is.
Grayson Garcia
Get out of your basement for a few minutes if you can still make it up the stairs.
Jack Anderson
not really
just sell a condensed product via something like paid binaries or CDs (see: Red Hat, Novell/SuSe, 'community oriented' distros like Linux Mint, virtually every iD Software game before Carmack left)
I recently heard that the development team on Mount and Blade: Bannerlord is making the entire backend of the game open source, while the main game still requires purchase of their product. It's somewhat like OpenMW or whatever open source re-implementation where the actual game title is (legally) required still.
Nathan Powell
The problem is free programmers make things so bloated and convulted that nobody could steal them or have the energy to maintain it. Then you end up with things like vim or emacs for what should otherwise be just a simple text editor.
Honestly the only point in being libre or free or having any philosophy is to inflate your own ego. If you love programming as a hobby and want to make tools for people, then just make them. If you want to make money, then sell it.
Robert Johnson
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Jose Sanders
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Grayson Scott
Same problem appleis to the arts. Filming a movie costs fortune. Copying it not so much.
Also, THIS:
Proprietary software suffers from the same caveats as free software.
The only way to make sure your program won't be cracked is to run a SaaSS.
They rely on the customer not redistributing the software through means of an additional agreement. That didn't bode well, so I doubt that counts.
That's source-available software. Open-source and Free software require that you let others share the source.
Noah Morris
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Nathaniel Young
This is some hardcore projecting. What's ur fursona, user :3
Ethan Watson
God
Colton Harris
If your software gets reasonably popular some asshole is going to put it up gratis somewhere, but the same thing is going to happen with proprietary software as well, so what's the loss? The only difference is that with Free Software you forfeit your right to have it taken down, but in practice even if you have the right to take it down you will be be just rolling a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down again.
Here is an analogy: since we have hardware stores and you can buy all the plumbing material and equipment yourself, why are plumbers still needed? After all, you could just do it yourself, or if you know "some guy" he can do it for really cheap. The answer is that most people are not plumbers, they may know a few tricks or have basic competence, but they are not full-fledged plumbers. So just because everyone has the means to do a plumber's job that doesn't mean they can actually do it. Similarly, not everyone is a programmer. It's easy to forget that when you only surround yourself with programmer type people.
They are not, it was just a rumour.