The Illusion of Free Software
There is no such thing as free software. Period. It does not exist. Certainly not in this world where everything seems to come at a certain price. There is no such thing as a free product or a free service. Forget about it. The following comes from that Schwarzenegger movie called “Commando”, but it fits very well with the idea of “free” software: Somewhere, somehow, someone… is going to pay.
So they say it’s free software? Take a good look again. I’m sure you’ll find that somewhere, somehow, someone is actually paying for it. It might even be you! Yep, but ya just don’t realize it….yet. You see, it’s all about the business model. There can be many various ways you can choose to do business. But at the end of the day, someone is going to have to pay for it one way or the other, if you want to keep doing business. Some people may choose to tell their customers their product is actually “free”…..but that they need to pay for the service, or in other words, to be able to use it. Other people just charge a certain amount for their product……and that’s it. These are just two examples. And I don’t have a problem with either one of them. It’s just that the first example often gets abused by people to fool their customers. People always seem to like the idea of “free” stuff. And perhaps you can’t blame them, but it can get them into trouble when they later get confronted with the costs to be able to use their “free” product. This can cumulate to quite some cash after a while. And this is when, if they didn’t know about it before, they get introduced to the concept of Total Cost of Ownership. And if they already knew about it, they get to really know about it.
Take Google for example. Right now all of their services are “free”. That’s right, you can log onto the Internet and just start searching stuff on Google, use Gmail and many other Google services without paying anything. But is it really free? If it was, how would Google be able to make enough money to keep their servers running? How would they be able to make enough money to pay all those Ph.Ds? It’s not free, someone is paying. And in Google’s case, their advertisers are paying for it, and indirectly, you are too. You see, Google’s product isn’t search, or email or other services. Their product is viewers. And that’s what they are selling to advertisers. And every time you search for something on Google, you’re helping them, and in fact, working for them, to sell their product. So the fact that you think you’re using a free product is just an illusion.
Some mobile phone providers give their customers a “free” cell phone. Others throw in various other stuff like a “free” MP3 player, a “free” DVD player etc. Do you honestly think it’s free? Do you believe they are really giving away free stuff just because they want you as a customer? If you believe so, you’re naive, and chances are you’re often very happy in the world you live in. No my dear reader, it is not free. As soon as you sign up for their service, they’re making money on you and without you realizing it, you and many other customers are going to be paying for all the “free” stuff you got from them. In fact, they are going to be making muuuuch more than just the costs of the free stuff you got from them. And there are many more examples like this, I’m sure you can name a few yourself.
No business is going to be giving away things for free; you can bet they will be making money off of it somehow, somewhere. And someone is going to be giving that money to them.
Take Sun for example. Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO of Sun, would like nothing else than for you to believe that Sun is giving away free software and hardware. He writes:
Free is a compelling price to drive adoption. Best of all, it’s not subject to bizarre multipliers based on the number of cores or threads on a computer’s microprocessor.
And as much as my friend Linus helped change the world of operating systems, something tells me Postgres and MySQL are going to have an interesting blowback effect on the database marketplace – and JES (stay tuned for a momentum update) will bring the same to web application platforms.
After all, why spend money when the free stuff is setting performance records.
So tell me, Mr. Schwa…may I call you Jonathan? – thanks, so tell me, Jonathan, if nobody spends a single dime on all of this “free” software, one way or the other, how exactly are you going to keep that business running? How exactly does Sun make enough money to be able to pay you every month? What? Oh, you make money selling services based on the “free” software? Aaaah…I see. So that’s how people pay for your software. Do you think it’s really free software when you expect people to pay for the services? And he went on to say:
Do I worry about enterprises or corporate customers taking OpenSolaris and not acquiring a subscription to someone’s (hopefully our) service contract? No, not in the least. Do you really think a hospital, or an air traffic control authority or a Minister from an African nation would run their institution on unsupported software? No. No way.
I’m sorry, what? I thought you said a while ago: “After all, why spend money when the free stuff is setting performance records”. So do you think that the Minister from that African nation who is, like you said, likely to buy support for their “free” software, is not spending money doing so? Because I don’t understand why you ask “why spend money?” when you’re saying they will be spending money anyway. I’m confused.
Anyway, you see my good reader, how people can easily get fooled into thinking they are getting free stuff. Linux is just another example. A lot of people are going to want to make you believe all that open source software is free. It’s not. You’re going to be paying for it one way or the other, and often much more than their alternatives. How do you think Red Hat is making all that money right now if Red Hat Linux was really free?
You know, in an ideal world, most people would actually stop and think about it some more when someone tells them they can give them something for free. Especially when you know normally you’d have to pay for it. But not in this world, instead people often jump at any opportunity where they have the impression they are getting a good deal and free stuff. And a lot of people and businesses are abusing this.
Do you think customers will worry if businesses are able to make enough money to support themselves, when they can get free stuff from them? Most of them probably don’t even think about continuity. They don’t realize that if they don’t pay (enough) for the product, the manufacturer won’t be able to make enough money to be able to keep making the product and to support it. Frankly, they don’t even care about that or don’t realize it. The customer is always going to want to pay as little as possible, and they won’t care if they screw you over. They don’t realize that in the end, they’re going to lose as well.
In the world we live in, nothing seems to be free. Not even freedom is free. Everything comes at a price. And so does software. The sooner you realize this, and keep remembering it when you see the “free” software ads, the sooner you’ll be able to benefit from that knowledge. Just remember: Somewhere, somehow, someone is always paying.
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