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Call me old-fashioned, but... I kinda liked it back in the day, when Microsoft made proprietary software, the Community made free software and everyone's "cui bono" was quite easy to answer - even those corporations involved in FLOSS did have a clear way to finance themselves.

Now, we have Microsoft coming into open source, seemingly making projects better and offering more and more "free" stuff.

You know.

"Free" Windows 10.
"Free" SaaS Office.
"Free" "Private" Repos on Github.

In general - what happened to clear and concise "I give you money, you give me stuff" capitalism like we had it in the 2000s?

I'd rather pay 20 bucks for a game on Steam than get it "free" and with ads or microtransactions - yet, many games, especially mobile, don't even offer me that option. It wouldn't be that hard now, would it?

The same goes for software. That Canonical would need to fuck their users over after Ubuntu One went to shit was obvious - they didn't offer the kind of commercial/enterprise OS'es that Redhat or SuSE sell.

What people seem to forget is that everyone needs to make a profit somehow. You don't get "free" stuff. Even the volunteers in the Open Source Community get something out of it - an opportunity to pad their CV at least, if nothing else.

Nowadays, software manufacturers have the same legitimacy as the "free" financial "advisors" you find at banks - and who could be dumb enough to trust them? Oh yeah: Almost the entire fucking society is who.

But then again, sell something and noone will want it - because they all want it for free, with annoying, privacy-invading ads or with equally annoying microtransactions, or financing based on commission - so you don't only pay ONCE, you pay until you realize you got fucked over and quit.

Capitalism used to work until all those idiots stepped in. How the fuck don't people realize that there's no free lunch in life? When have we stopped being functional people and turned into idiots.

Even worse: Those idiots think that they're entitled to something! They, who volunteered to become merchandise instead of customers, think that they have rights! Do cattle have rights? Nope. They get their "free" hay everyday and I get to buy beef, that's how it works. Moo!

Hell, they are surprised when they get fucked over by bank salespeople or their data stolen by corporations, intelligence agencies or something... What did they expect, goodwill?

Can we please make Adam Smith mandatory reading in school?! I mean, give people a chance to understand capitalism? The nonexistent "goodwill" of traders in general?

Comments
  • 6
    The other reason for micro-transactions is that in many cases they make more money than flat sales or subscription services. As soon as corporations discovered this many of them will not offer the purchase outright option because they want more.
  • 2
    because...... Gatekeeping people with prices kinda discourages people from buying stuff nowadays. Freemium stuff is kinda free but shoves you with microtransactions and shit. It's a psychological thing i guess
  • 3
    @Cappuchino I know - people are easy to manipulate (said the pentester with a special interest in social engineering). Like I said - if you don't pay for your goods, you probably are the merchandise.

    But still, it pisses me off. I want to pay for stuff, the nice and fair way. I'm paying for gas, for my bike, for my clothes, my computer, my beer, like everyone else. Why can't people realize that software isn't created by magic but by work as well (and work needs to be paid)?

    I guess that's re-education and some classic conditioning, so maybe less "moo" and more "woof" and kind regards from Pavlov.
  • 2
    @ilPinguino I guess more people can access it and can pay for more perks on it if they even can. Take freemium mobile games for example. It got big in Asia because Asians don't really have credit cards to pay for these. But if they do though, man they'll pay for literally anything.
  • 2
    "thanks" google
  • 2
    I agree aside from one point - most of us open source developers genuinely do it just to give something back, rather than for the CV.

    It *used* to be a really stand out feature on a CV, but these days it's become so widespread it doesn't really add much. Certainly not worth the effort you'd put in for good contributions if that was your only aim.
  • 2
    I think its due to the entry age decreasing. Nowadays you have very young (compared to older generations) gaming. Parent's wont shell out cash the whole time for them to play so the appeal of free-2-play services are very high at a time where any form of "privacy" is really not cared about at all.

    If you tell an 11 year old he can play the newest flappy birds premium game for free if he watches a few ad's he will agree immediately. The behaviour then carries into your adulthood.

    Take it from me, someone who is younger than most of the people on DR, I used to love free-2-play because my parents refused to buy me anything and working would only get me 1 or 2 AAA games. Once I started working with a steady income its turned completely around now I hate the privacy intrusions and all things free-2-play because I have the money to afford to buy it myself
  • 1
    >> Nowadays, software manufacturers have the same legitimacy as the "free" financial "advisors" you find at banks - and who could be dumb enough to trust them? Oh yeah: Almost the entire fucking society is who. <<

    Are you implying they had any "legitimacy" at some point? That makes no sense.

    We just need to realize that this is not a Software change. That change happened somewhere else, software is just copying what general retail/services are doing. It worked well for them, and certainly would work well for software.

    You are definitely overestimating the impact of Free and OS Software here, software is just copying the rest of the economy. It wasn't GPL that made everything a subscription or microtransaction. It was simple competition, and would have happened in similar fashion even if FOSS had never existed.
  • 1
    @dejaime I never said that I blamed FLOSS - quite the opposite, there are commercial FLOSS projects, think Fedora. Hell, Stallman himself sold emacs back in the day, making five figures with it. It's freedom, not communism, after all.

    FLOSS doesn't neccessarily mean free of charge, it just means "once you buy my stuff, I'll hand over the source code and let you do your thing".

    It's a general problem with society - most people expect they can get something for free without anyone willing to make cash. The problem, as I said, is that if something's free to you, it's quite possible that something shady is going on and in the end, you're paying more for it than if you had been billed in one chunk. Think about the commissions and fees for that "free" financial advice from banks (they literally ruined some people), think about in-app purchases, think about ads that sling malware.
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