Winpdb - A Platform Independent Python Debugger Tip of the Day
Tip the author of this program 
Would you ever leave a restaurant table without tipping the waiter?
Would you ever pause to enjoy street music without tipping the players?
Would you ever get out of a cab without tipping the driver?
If you don’t think Winpdb is worth a cent or a minute of your time, why use it?
You learn things your whole life, including how people of free software ask for money.
Would you tip a waiter who tells you, after bringing dinner, “don’t be an ignorant, tip me”?
Would you tip a cab driver who tells you “the fare is this, but don’t be an ignorant and tip me at the destination”?
Would you tip street players who shout at you “tip me”?
Donations should be entirely benevolent, I think. If you want money for your software, simply charge a payment for it.
OBS: I will follow your advice and I’ll stop using WinPDB - which is a good product, in fact. The attitude to push for donations is bad, since it is contrary to what free software really means.
My piece of advice: you’d better drop the GPL label from your software.
Marius,
Where I live if you leave a table at a restaurant without leaving a tip you might just get a piece of these people’s mind and it won’t be pleasant.
In 3 years Winpdb got 2 donations but was downloaded 40,000 times from this website alone. A polite invitation for donation was advertised several times for months on end without any effect. I guess people were literally blind to it.
Free Software was never about having a Free Beer, but unfortunately this is how the “General Public” has come to see it. Even among developers there are many who feel money is some kind of abomination as if somehow Free Software will be ideally pure if no money is ever let to contaminate it.
“There is a good reason for users of software to feel a moral obligation to contribute to its support. Developers of free software are contributing to the users’ activities, and it is both fair and in the long-term interest of the users to give them funds to continue.” - Richard Stallman
However, the little button he envisioned that allows people to easily contribute funds back to software developers and artists is never being pushed.
People got used to the role imposed on them by corporates of being a mindless consumer instead of being a responsible member of a community and so they happily consume their happy hour free beer and they don’t even leave a tip at the bar.
I call this phenomena General Public Ignorance.
Nir,
I don’t think you’ll have much success trying to guilt people into giving for your work. My advice would be, if you’re in financial trouble, make the donation button bigger and make it explicit that you are in dire need. They’ll be much more willing to help than if they’re confronted with a mean-spirited tirade.
Andreas
Perhaps a different approach to soliciting donations (which many free software projects have discovered is of little use) would be to offer some added value for those that care to donate.
This could take the form of a downloadable manual (as Stani has done for SPE) or you might consider writing a book where you retain copyright and offer it for sale. I believe that either of these approaches would be more successful than pushing for donations.
This post is not about generating guilt, my financial situation nor pushing people into donating.
This post is about the relationship between Free Software developers and users. I believe it is time that it evolved.
A particular person may have a wonderful reason for not tipping such as:
* I don’t like tipping.
* I don’t like tipping people who ask for a tip.
* Your software saved my day but I can’t afford a dollar since I need it for the coffee machine down the hall.
* The dog ate my credit card.
* Money is a sin.
* I am blind.
However, when 9999 out of 10000 people ignore a direct request to tip a project they find useful to their activities, I have no explanation for their collective behavior, that would not offend you.
Why on earth would you mindlessly tip a waitress that gave you 5 minutes of her time to bring you coffee but refuse to tip a complex project like Winpdb that took a man year to develop and just saved you 5 hours of hair pulling?
Imagine a world where tipping Free Software is a norm and where even corporates support developers of Free Software they use, as an essential part of their public reputation.
In such a world there would be an explosion of Free Software. Just reaching some degree of very modest sustainability would trigger that explosion.
Is this impossible? Is it any more far fetched than having a Free Operating System seemed 25 years ago?
Everyone loves to talk about the FOSS world in terms of community. What community is that when most of its software is Open Source written by corporates and where users behave as mindless product consumers?
25 years ago the Free Software movement emerged to bring freedoms to users of software. It is time that users rise to create a real community of Free Software.
I call Free Software developers to post the same Tip of the Day on their website. Make your users angry. Make them open their eyes and change.
Your “tip of the day” may not be polite, but we — those among the 40,000 who have to be really glad that you provide Winpdb (because it saved our day and not just once) and have not donated yet — are in no position to complain.
Winpdb is a terrific program.
I will donate ASAP.
Suggestion: make the “donate” button bigger and tell people to think of how much would have they paid to solve the problems that Winpdb solved for them.
Perhaps many people tip in a completely different way: by writing free software of their own, and giving it away for free.
Did you tip the author of your favorite editor? Of Python? The people who authored the CSS and HTML standards? The guy who wrote up the first HTTP draft?
I’m not saying that you don’t deserve a tip or two. But I find that the analogy between service-oriented workers and goods-oriented workers to be flawed by the simple basics of economics. Alas, you provide a product, in this case, Software, not a service. If I handed out candy for no reason with no sign up for a charity, would people be expected to tip me? It probably wouldn’t occur to them. The paradigm is simply different.
I speak from being an American growing up in American society. Your traditions may vary.
I enjoy your product, as I do hundreds of other open source products. I tip when I give back a product of my own, or spent time on IRC supporting products that already exist by helping people use them. In fact, I should expect tips on IRC more than anything, since that is a service I am providing for free.
Jon,
I provide you with a service just as a bartender provides you with a service. He endlessly works all night to keep the bar clean and pour your favorite beer - a product - and you happily drink it even if it will later give you a headache. I endlessly work for 3 years to maintain and develop Winpdb - a product - which you use to reduce your headaches (http://winpdb.org/about/#comment-35679)
In my country (Australia) there are almost no tips, so I could very honestly answer “yes” to all of your questions. I personally object to tipping in cases (1) and (3), since IMHO it is objectionable to require additional payment beyond the advertised price (again due to my background). (2) is far closer to what free software is. With (2), I have always found it objectionable that (in some circumstances) people force their services on me and then expect me to pay them for it (say for example I am sitting in a train and someone comes and plays, I am forced to listen to it whether or not I like it, and then am expected to pay). That does not apply to software I have chosen to use, but never mind.
As a free software author myself I am quite willing to label this post objectionable. I have never asked for donations myself, and have no compunction about not making donations to others, and using software under its license as I expect people to use my software under its license. You may argue my position is not right, and I don’t care whether you do or not. It is at least consistent with the rest of my life and the society that I live in. Should I choose later to ask for donations, I would then very likely consider what software I should make donations for.
Incidentally, I view Richard Stallman as neither a prophet nor a moral guide, so quoting from him will not magically change my opinion.
You have saved hours of my sanity and for that I’m grateful. I would gladly pay except for the experience of a self-funded start up failing and a few other unpleasant things have left my financial reserves in an extremely precarious state. I know this doesn’t count for much but, you are on the list of people to donate to when money does come in.
like you, I have open source projects that have the potential for being revenue sources. What I’ve learned in the processes that you need to provide something more than the base product to get people to cut loose with their money. I make money on them by installation and maintenance. I don’t quite get enough money to fund my time for bug fixes etc. But, I’m forever hopeful.
Another option, instead of a tip jar, is to sell support tickets. Since I am incorporated, I can take money from the corporation and purchase support tickets. The expense would be tax deductible (cost of doing business) and I would have an easier time convincing my “CFO” to spend the money. This mechanism would also make it easier for corporate users to send you money.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Let’s hope the 2009 is a better year for all of us.
I have just downloaded winpdb and will have a play with it. If it turns out to be useful (and from a cursory search it does appear to be the only major python GUI debugger for Windows), I will come back and leave a tip.
I accept that this is software you have put substantial effort into developing and have chosen to provide freely under the GPL, which I applaud wholeheartedly. I believe you have the right to beg, cajole or rant as much as you like on your website, though I doubt it will make you a significant amount of money. It must be quite galling to have so many people use your code without bothering to tip you, and I can certainly see where your comment is coming from.
However, speaking as somebody who has arrived at your site fresh from google, without any background knowledge, I feel I ought to point out that your rant does make you look like a bit of a jerk (which I’m sure you’re not). I mention this purely by way of advice, not complaint, since from the next article down on your page it appears you are looking for work. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of it, nobody likes to be accused of being “ignorant” by a complete stranger. Following that insult up with a request for employment really doesn’t make a good impression.
Anyway, I hope you find both a good job and a decent stream of income from your software. I suspect your best chance of the latter is to follow the advice of Neil Darlow above.
Q: Would you ever leave a restaurant table without tipping the waiter?
A: Yes.
Q: Would you ever pause to enjoy street music without tipping the players?
A: Yes.
Q: Would you ever get out of a cab without tipping the driver?
A: Yes
(FYI: I don’t live in the USA where tipping seems to be more usual)
FWIW
Q: If you don’t think Winpdb is worth a cent or a minute of your time, why use it?
A: I don’t use Winpdb; I just bumped into this website.
[...] reciente cabreo de un programador me ha animado a dejar por escrito lo que pienso sobre la cultura tan en boga del “todo [...]
You are not taking in account different cultures.
In my country we do not tip waiters, drivers and so on, moreover, asking for a tip is considered very very mean.
Winpdb looks like a good tool, but I will not download it because the ‘comlpain for few tips’ at the the top of the page sounds mean to me.
I would suggest something like this: “If you realize that Winpdb is a useful tool, what about rewanrding the author for many hours spent for your joy?”
Regards.
David,
Since what I really want is for the community of Free Software users and developers to change, I believe provoking you to open your eyes and think would only do you good.
The cultural difference between Europe and Australia is not relevant. What is relevant is the difference between the culture of mindlessly tipping a waiter in Europe and that of mindlessly NOT tipping a developer of Free Software.
Unfortunately, anyone who has ever tried to politely invite users to donate knows it simply does not work. This is why many developers of Free Software do not even bother to ask and the reason developers of ULTRA popular software merely ask people to be so kind as to help them cover the 20 USD per month required to pay the hosting bills.
While this is reality, there is no reason it should be this way. Currently most Free Software is written either by corporates or worry-free students. You can help change that by giving back to the developers of software you regularly use.
You can help boom the universe of Free Software into a new level of creativity and productivity and put a real meaning into Free Software community.
I urge all of you to take the time to read the comments on this post and take action. Don’t be afraid to provoke your users to think about their habits and views, talk with your friends, write about this in your blogs and start tipping!
Hi Nir,
I just donated some amount, from your website for WinPdb.
I want to tell you that your WinPdb was a great time-saver for me.
I had a very short deadline, to understand YUM(package management software used in Linux), capture flows and figure out how YUM interacts with RPM.
Without your WinPdb, I would have taken a lot more time to get it done.
Thanks sooooo much for this great Python debugger.
-K
I agree the OP was rude, however you have to hand it to him, he just more than doubled his lifetime number of contributors by complaining
I wonder if you ever accounted the number of hours or the revenues you just earned based on other’s free software (python creators, for example). Would you share your tips with python developers?
You can think of it as you just were partly paid by being able to use other’s work for free. In this entangled world everything counts (as contributions, I mean).
hzvmqc,
I regularly donate and support developers of Free Software and libraries I find useful.
I have also donated to the Python Software Foundation, but in fact, I do not worry about them in particular since they are sponsored and patron-ed by such corporates as Google, Sun and Microsoft. Successful high-profile projects (typically Open Source, rather than Free Software) are what they are - successful already. They are like the tall jungle trees, their canopy reached the far sun and their roots struck water.
We, the little animals wandering the dark jungle floor, should help each other survive.
Using Free Software libraries and tools to make production of software more efficient is a completely separate issue than that of being able to make Free Software development sustainable economically.
Copyright law was originally introduced to increase the production of science and art (and software), not to make authors, publishers (or developers) rich. It works by artificially making their products scarce or exclusive (restricting your freedom to copy) thus making it trade-able as regular material property.
Nevertheless, copyright law was required since western society failed in bringing itself to support those who put effort in creating these intellectual products, in other means. As copyright law (and intellectual property laws) became increasingly abused by corporates, the Free Software movement showed up and argued copyright is a bad deal after all, and that we should do without it, restoring user (reader) freedom once again.
The result so far, has been a “collapse” in production. Most FOSS is (Open Source) being developed by corporates or worry-free students and is often an effort to imitate proprietary technology. This collapse indicates that many creative people who may believe in the principles of Free Software can’t afford to put the effort required into creating it. It is not out of greed, but out of the need to survive that they can not afford to produce it.
We need to close the loop again and bring ourselves to behave as a community, by rewarding members who give their community something useful and Free. We do not need to artificially restrict the freedom to copy, we just need to behave responsibly.
Nir
Hello,
thanks for your response. I find it very insightful, but in the end (there’s allways a ‘but’ eh?) I think you missed part of the point.
I of course do not accuse you or anyone of being irresponsible or not contributing to major or small free (’libre’, as in my Spanish language) software developments. My point was just to remind that you (and me) can use tons of other free software, at least as a consolation reward to your (our) effort in contributing to the community. As naive as it sounds, it may confort you.
I don’t want to get into money theory issues, but money is at most an efficient intermediary (to put price) on exchanging goods. We can be responsible and supportive asking for money (nothing to argue), and we can do just the same giving other “goods” to the community. It can be just as a software-for-software market, but with the advantage that the idea is the product, and the mass (re)production is nearly no-cost.
Therefore, and more specifically, one can feel better (after such an effort and seeing such a success) thinking that at least the “active” part of the free software community already paid you something with their good software, and you paid to them with yours. It may be the other “non active developers but users” that can be more supportive with an efficient “exchange item” if they find available (money the ones that can part from some of it, or some help with not-so-technical issues that a good product should have, such as artwork, good online documentation, spreading word and use… pick your project’s need and publish it). And of course those that used your debugger to save lots of working hours to their companies should just not only contribute directly to you, but be ashamend of not having done it before with a sound “thank you”. Specially when the cost will never reach near the savings (and that’s the point
While I find your point of view about the “collapse” very interesting and something to think about, I otherwise tend to see it as a “separate” but very visible business chain obscuring the real innovation: marketing tries to drive user needs by flooding the geek “desires” of people’s future use of technology (just have a look at “engadget.com”), and then private companies make profit doing software and hardware for that “needs” (the ones that “survive” and extend). It is tempting to call them innovations, but rather than needs they fulfill the “successful fashion” human aspect. (E.g., I allways wondered which efficiecy or ease-of-use need could a “touch-and-gesture table” could achieve, for which the most spectacular showing to date has been the gesture rearangement of piles of -unordered and unclassified- photographs with some physics… I would find more useful an “image recognition tagging algorithm” software to clasify photos for queries such as “my girlfriend is in them”, “photos of castles”, “interiors”, “party”, “pets”… you get the idea, less gesture and more information gets you closer to what you are searching for).
The free software trying to imitate this kind of uses later on is not a problem, just a kind of gimmicky user demand, as “real” innovations in software turn out to be mostly free first of all (’cos there were no hope for success or revenues, no market surveys with marketing support to begin with). I’ll try to give some examples to be more clear:
- small software that someone makes to fill an absolute need of the author, and the autor thinks someone else could have the same need but no programming skills (”windirstat” or “siw” or “process explorer”, for example)… the examples where carefully chosen to demonstrate that the authors may not “feel” the absolute “freedom” necessary (nor that they feel compelled by moral or phylosophical views), but anyway give their work for free because they see better rewards, or are far from being marketing-supported.
- research software, specially at universities, and with government or non-profit private support (algorythms, fluid dynamics, applying fractals to compression…), mostly absolutely “free” and even “public domain” research work (that due to their unrestrictive nature tend to integrate into lots of successful commercial products later on). No better example than BSD or System V family of OS’s, followed by Apache phylosophy. Today it is inimaginable the huge number of embedded or supercomputer systems, free or commercial products, derive from them. Specially at war aircrafts
do you ever wondered why can you get a “nearly free” whireless access point plus network switch plus router plus firewall plus modem in a tiny cage? Innovation.
- and then all other kinds of useful GPL software
… I could investigate a little to give better examples, but I think you get the point about the “creativity” and its “collapse”. I can see some of it, but at least there’s hope. The only thing that real innovative software (free in vast proportion) lacks is polish, marketing and user friendliness (that’s what OSX is all about, if you compare it to NetBSD; there were some controversy about Apple “tips” to the community).
Nevertheless, I’ll think more about your concerns, to see what can I (or others) do about it. (Not giving tips by the moment, as I didn’t even learn python yet
but surely I plan to do it and use it at my company, so we may contact a few months later.
Thanks and regars.
“…downloaded 40,000 times from this website alone…”
a common mistake made by software developers is to equate downloads with actual usage. people download thousands of software, but a lot of them are never used. this is not limited to downloads only, but people pay for software and not ever using it.
good thing your software is not _downloaded_ millions of times or else you would really go over the top with your rant
its alright to ask for donations, but dont resent them if they dont donate. dont make them look like ungrateful bastards for using your software (if they ever use it at all) and not giving back.
for those you use winpdb regulary and somehow has helped them in anyway, and _have the means_ to donate, should.
dukovni,
Imagine that after 10 years of professional software development I already know the difference between downloads and usage.
I only resent a little when people write nonsense without reading first.
“.. I already know the difference between downloads and usage.”
yeah riiiighhhht…..
Would you ever leave a restaurant table without tipping the waiter?
Yes
Would you ever pause to enjoy street music without tipping the players?
Yes
Would you ever get out of a cab without tipping the driver?
Yes
Do I occasionaly tip in each of those situations?
Yes. Tipping, for me, is something one does for an extra-ordinary experience or service, not as a matter of course.
Have I ever tipped or donated to a software project or author?
Yes
Have I tipped Winpdb?
No. I am undecided as yet how, or whether, it will find place in my work.
Is it okay for an author to ask for money in exchange for his work? Of course.
Does the asking in this post come across as plaintive and a more than a touch antagonistic? Does it put some off, and is thus across the grain and counter to its goal? Yes, but I think it’s borne of pain. Of seeing a thousand hungry and often raucous crows for every kernel of corn, and precious little in return. Not just in this project, but as a predominant pattern throughout the free and open source software ecosystem. As a society we have yet to develop a social norm, like tipping, to bring things into balance.
Nir could have perhaps been more skillful in the opening riposte. The ensuing conversation is good however and might, one hopes, bring us a little closer to the tipping point.
I think everybody who uses winpdb or any other FOSS *regularly* should ask himself or herself:
Is this software actually helping me to earn or save money?
If the sincere answer is yes, then the user should donate.
How much? Think of how much it would have cost if the FOSS program had not been available to you.