Thread: Free Software - Money is not the only motivation

Well, I had an argument and I used the example of free software to show that not everything is based on money as a motivation (obviously I was arguing with fans of capitalism). My argument was "Whatever a huge company has built, Microsoft, it is provided by free by people not being paid to develop it". Implying of course Windows vs Linux and MS Office vs OpenOffice.

My opinion behind free software and for forums like this and for anything people do for free is that simply there are motivations alternate to money which are not THAT rare. And we should see them as a bright example (than you all) as people not only working for wealth.

What do you think??

P.S. The argument it self came from somebody asking me "Do you believe in a Universal Health care" and "Who should provide it to the people" after I said yes. My idea is that the government in the end is more suited for the task. Even though it is inefficient, corrupted, unmotivated etc etc still theoretically at least you shouldn't have a "pay to get healthy" equation. Don't ask why I used my example as an argument...

Originally Posted by C_ntua

Well, I had an argument and I used the example of free software to show that not everything is based on money as a motivation (obviously I was arguing with fans of capitalism).

Careful. Capitalism, and I'm a fan, does not preclude free software. On the contrary capitalists everywhere readily embrace it as soon as it is demonstrated as a business model that can actually generate value, monetary or otherwise.

Originally Posted by C_ntua

My opinion behind free software and for forums like this and for anything people do for free is that simply there are motivations alternate to money which are not THAT rare. And we should see them as a bright example (than you all) as people not only working for wealth.

You are essentially correct in my opinion. I would go as far as saying those motivation are in fact the most important ones. The ones that really work. You really want to see this very entertaining presentation of a Dan Pink 'Drive' talk on RSA in January this year. The original one, and more extended, can also be found on the RSA website. Check the animated one first. The original one is 41 minutes long.

Originally Posted by C_ntua

What do you think??

Challenge mastery & making a contribution. These are the two driving forces of free software.

EDIT: Note that you REALLY want to later get some time and see the extended presentation. Those 41 minutes are not the 10 minutes of the animated one for a reason. You'll be give a lot more food for thought.

^^
Google is a company as a private-free Television/Radio station is. That is a different story, even though they provide their service for free they still do it for profit (advertisements etc).

Of course there will be a lot of people having motivations to help projects like Linux and a company cannot usually do anything without a profit even if they wanted to (unless you are the owner) but still the service is provided for free.
Unlike a TV station where indirectly you are hearing an advertisement and later on consuming, using a free software is a completely free deal.

But the point is that there are people that doing it for alternate reasons than money. Not that everybody does it for alternate people. Just a significant amount of people.

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Allow me not to comment on the political site, since I agree that my argument is not the best in this case and it is for another thread. I will want to focus on the free software being a proof of people providing services for free.
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I will check the links later on. Not time now and my 3G powered internet is too slow today....

...unless interviewers are really buying it is experience.

I would call it experience because it keeps you in code. I have met so many developers who do not code at home and only rely on what they do at work to maintain their skills. Very few attempt to learn new technologies or expand on existing ones. So if someone is sitting across the table from me in an interview and they list any type of outside experience it shows me one thing: they program most likely because they like to or have a passion for it. To me that speaks volumes about the person and possibly that they may be more willing to go the extra mile to complete projects since they have obviously done it in the past without any or with very little compensation.

It does sound strange but professional experience and programming have an inverse relationship. The less experience you have the more you program and the more experience you have the less you program. I do not think this is true with personal experience and/or open-source project experience. On an open-source project there is a very good chance you programmed a lot more and submitted more code than on any professional closed source project. There is the question of quality but good open-source projects usually have decent quality control coupled with code reviews. I think documentation is usually sorely lacking on open-source projects but I guess you could say that about some professional ones too. Plus there are a wide range of freely available tools that can help any type of project with UML, coding standards, revision control, code reviews, test automation, etc. Just as in any type of project a professional one has no more chance of success or failure as an open-source one.

That being said I'm still a capitalist at heart. Based on my previous statements you can see that I'm not against open-source but I do not believe it is a viable business alternative to what we currently have. At some point someone has to pay the bills and that is the consumer of the product. If you really step back and think about it most open source projects are funded by companies in a matter of speaking. If employee A works at company B and is working on open-source project X and uses any of their finances to buy tools or other items for the project then in essence company B actually funded part of project X b/c without funds from company B in employee A's bank account...he/she could not work on project X. So while company B did not directly fund project X they did give employee A the spending and purchasing power to fund it. Isn't that what going to work is all about? Purchasing power?

As a business model capable of generating revenue, open source seems to only have been viable for corporation and not for individual gain. The ability to sell open source software has proved disastrous on a small scale. Financial viability comes instead when a business firm is established around it, and it charges for sales, support and maintenance of their software. A typical capitalistic endeavour.

On those grounds I'm sometimes critical of certain open source projects that seems nothing much more than a perfect method for gathering sharecroppers, whose work goes unrewarded in financial terms, but where the company can draw a sizable amount of money.

Sometimes I wonder how much really great code is sitting on people's hard disks, wasting space, because they can't get money for it...

I'm not so sure there is that much great code sitting on people's hard drives. Defining 'great code' would also be an interesting pursuit b/c I would imagine with all the viewpoints we have here on this forum we all have vastly different opinions about what 'great code' is.

I assure you I'm not hiding anything noteworthy on my hard drive. I've always been suspicious of a few gurus here hiding some great code but I have no proof of it.

Originally Posted by Bubba

That being said I'm still a capitalist at heart. Based on my previous statements you can see that I'm not against open-source but I do not believe it is a viable business alternative to what we currently have. At some point someone has to pay the bills and that is the consumer of the product. If you really step back and think about it most open source projects are funded by companies in a matter of speaking. If employee A works at company B and is working on open-source project X and uses any of their finances to buy tools or other items for the project then in essence company B actually funded part of project X b/c without funds from company B in employee A's bank account...he/she could not work on project X. So while company B did not directly fund project X they did give employee A the spending and purchasing power to fund it. Isn't that what going to work is all about? Purchasing power?

At one degree it can though. For example you can have an equation like
MS Windows Developer - MS product = Developing for free - Free software
I am not against MS nor is the salary as a developer near equal to the money you pay for the product, just using it as an example to show that in the end if the product is free and the work is free you can replace the money part without needing anybody to pay for you.

But, I do NOT find the above as an alternative to capitalism. Just an alternative to private property***. The idea is that you contribute for free, you provide services in which you will also benefit for free. You don't need to put a price on your service and a price on the product.

As for Cognitive Surplus: The Great Spare-Time Revolution it is really interesting and I totally agree. I will keep this phrase "When Deci took people who enjoyed solving complicated puzzles for fun and began paying them if they did the puzzles, they no longer wanted to play with those puzzles during their free time". Money are simply not the only motivation human beings have. Smart businesses today don't rely only on a good salary as a matter of fact to keep employees. A good company will rely on a good working environment which will also motivate employees to succeed without necessarily a bonus. Where I work the working hours are 9-5. I can tell you that we stay until 5.30-6.00 every day without being paid extra for overtime when we have a lot of work. Our motivation is to do our job well. If you add money for overtime, then I would work overtime for the money. My motivation suddenly changed. So if I didn't need the extra money, but preferred the time, I would leave at 5.00. It is "leaving a job incomplete" versus "throwing away money". The first makes me more guilty, thus it is a bigger motivator provided that the salary is generally generous from the beginning.
Of course this wouldn't work for every type of job. For a non-interesting job where employees work only for the money you have no alternatives.

EDIT: Finally got to see the RSA: Animate video and it agree on what I said above giving my work as an example. Very Interesting indeed (thanks Mario F.)
Unfortunately it took like an hour to load for me here so I won't see the 41m version soon...

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***Let me give you a little bit my train of thought on how I view capitalism and where free software is an alternative:
Capitalism for me is when you need concentrated resources in order to do something. An alternative to capitalism is when you don't need concentrated resources. Resources are not necessarily money.
So if you have a big company with a lot of stocks and thousands of people owning like 100$ of stocks so you have like a million of people owning the company is that capitalism? If you didn't have capitalism and the government had the company which government belonged to those millions of people through taxes then you would have the same economical model. Now, in todays typical government that company would be assigned to be run by a few individuals. So let me ask you this. Which is actually more capitalistic in the end? The company run by million of people with stocks or a company run by a few elected from the millions? Didn't communism as it was manifested rely on maximum capital since all the resources belonged to the government? On the other hand todays capitalistic America actually spreads the wealth, divides it. So the term "capitalism" for me doesn't really tell me anything. It is mostly a term that combines a lot of other terms, a package of terms. Which I don't like at all, because you might as well combine those sub-terms to something else.
Of course I am using capitalism as a term of a capital being the essential part. The meaning of the word has a different meaning today, not that clear one, so my point is that the word doesn't really tell me a lot of somebodies ideas.

Let me use the word free market. Is free software against a free market? Again I would say no. Free market is mostly about antagonism. That is its key point. Free software apply to that since you can have a lot of software doing the same thing. The best will survive in the end. You are free to develop or use whichever you want. So free software for me complies with the free market.

Finally, let me use the term of private property. Here for is where free software doesn't comply. The free and open source is exactly the opposite. The code can be used by anybody. As an alternative of private property is where I would most likely use the example of free software. The motivation is not to "own" something. You are not "this is mine". This belongs to everybody that wants to use it and I will use their code as well. That is very different from private property.

Concluding: If I could divide the meaning of capitalism into "free market / antagonism" and "private property" I would say that on the private property is where free software is an alternative.

>> Is free software against a free market? Again I would say no. The best will survive in the end. ... So free software for me complies with the free market.

Allow me to reply with respect to the economics: Price is merely a system of supply and demand. You can only undermine competitors by offering something for free, trying in vain to go against the market. If the product is a program that facilitates a service that is also offered for free, you are basically doomed to market forces if you own and operate both ends of the business. Other free, open source software and freeware is a lot harder to explain by the same point (probably just because I'm only pretending to be an economist). There are bound to be exceptions based on how popular something I don't use is, but the rule seems to be that for relevant freeware and free open source software there is an active business interest. Either the organization offering the work is also generating ad revenue to cover operation costs or they are owned by other organizations with variable business plans.