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.

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.

yeah riiiighhhht…..

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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