You're viewing a single thread.
I thought not, but just last week there was a discussion about someone asking about buying the "Pro" version of their distro, which have them access to... free open source software they could have just downloaded. Had a big (polite) argument with someone about the ethics of this
Distros (ZorinOS) are doing this crap. Shysters will always find a way to fleece people.
I personally donβt mind at all if open source projects want to sell a βproβ version for businesses, as long as itβs still open source. Selling priority troubleshooting and dev attention to issues to businesses seems like one of the less offensive ways to fund open source projects in a capitalist society, imo
I also don't mind if they are "selling" nothing, or just a supporter icon. As long as they are transparent that that is all you are getting.
That's pretty much it, right? ZorinOS Pro gives you some more desktop layouts, more wallpapers, and what they call "Zorin Installation Support service". Basically like buying a hat in a free game.
But the "Advanced productivity tools" one is a bit misleading, apparently it's stuff anyone can install from the store it just pre-installs some unnamed apps for you.
I don't mind selling some cosmetic stuff to fund development, the app thing is a bit shady though.
Agree. I wouldn't even mind it if they were more open about what they're actually doing, as picking a well working set of apps from the sea open-source apps can have value.
That said, if you read through that site it feels like they want to appear like it's them who created all that software.
Or for server software it can be funded with support contracts.
Isn't this basically how Fedora and RHEL are? RHEL is paid for giving you support, updates, etc. While Fedora is FOSS. You just install it and they don't care what you do with it.
Yes! I completely agree. The distinction is, to me, utterly important: they aren't selling the software, they're selling the service. Hell, if they want to sell the option to get your bugs fixed on demand, great! That's enormously different than taking millions of developer hours spent creating OSS, sticking a label and name on it, and then reselling it as if you made any real contribution to the OSS community.
how the hell do you make something both open source and paid??
The way I was specifically talking about was for the project to be fully open source, but with an optional paid service aimed at businesses that ensures priority attention to bugs and feature requests. Iβve also seen open source projects with paid binaries, most commonly for iOS where it costs the devs money to keep an app on the app store so users can compile it themselves for free or pay for the (still open source) precompiled app. Open source and paid donβt have to be mutually exclusive, although the culture of free like freedom and free like free beer is great and I hope we never lose that.
Dude, I remember a time where buying your distro was the default behavior. There's nothing shady about it.
I bought SUSE Linux once upon a time. It was a physical CD and the packaging that I paid for. Maybe a little support was bundled, probably not. That was a time when the internet was slow for most and not an option for others, wifi wasn't ubiquitous (and if it existed, good luck getting the proper drivers loaded without internet), live distributions weren't really a thing yet, booting from usb was finicky and unreliable, and the install CDs would have the entire OS and basically all the software you could want to install bundled. These would have been the days before the fall of Napster and the rise in other "Linux ISO sharing tools". Ubuntu would even mail you like a half dozen physical CDs and some stickers just for asking and promising to share them in your community.
There's nothing wrong with buying the physical things or paying for support. That's not what this meme is showing though.
Shysters will always find a way to fleece people.
I was discussing this, not the meme.
I've never bought a distro. I've paid someone for the CD and shipping, way back before ISOs and internet speeds at home made downloading it practical. But never have I "bought" for Linux. Every CD I got I could legally copy and give away; or charge for the service.
With few exceptions, what you were paying for the media, the effort of burning and shipping, and shipping. Even with companies like Redhat, what you paid for with Enterprise was service and support, not the software.
I seem to be having this argument frequently lately. Taking someone else's work, that they gave you for free, putting your own logo on it and then selling it to people is one of the most unethical things that isn't illegal that I can think of. Selling support services is entirely fair. Selling compute, bandwidth, and space, entirely ethical. But profiting off other's generosity? How do you justify that? Even if you're not a socialist or communist, taking a painting someone gave away and then turning around and selling it is disgusting and amoral. You've added no value; you're purely profiting on someone else's work.
Packaging the software in a distro with an installer and a custom DE adds a lot of value.
I'm not familiar with Zorin specifically, but freely distributing source code and charging for binaries was one of the earliest monetization strategies for GPL code.
Yeah... for the authors. That's fine. You downloading my FOSS, packaging it and selling it is slimy carpet-baggery.
Yet, when Microsoft, Apple and every other proprietary software house do it with permissively licensed code, I don't see anybody complaining.
The declaration of intent by the author is the license. If they don't want commercial redistribution of their work, do like Futo. Otherwise we'll all start taking crazy pills and demand people adhere to an imagined restriction that isn't written anywhere.
That's the thing with ethics: they aren't generally written anywhere. That's where being a decent human being comes in.
Doing exactly what an author intended with their work is very ethical indeed.
Well, that's disappointing to learn.
I have gotten popup ads for Ubuntu Pro on stock Ubuntu install.
The difference is that Ubuntu Pro is free, and the ads are only 1 line in the terminal
Pop-up ads are loathsome. It's nagware. We need to bring back that term, because that's exactly what we used to call this shit, and that's exactly what it is.
There is a popup ad when you first install the update that introduces this feature.