Should music be given away free?

[acidsaturation]

i just strongly feel that music & art has a value and if you like it you should support the creator and help him/her create more of that product.

But what if the creator wants to do it for free. That's his/her choice.

Should I say to the guy who does brilliant graffiti all round Leeds he shouldn't do it, cos it devalues people who make a living from fine art.

I notice not one person has answered my question about should this apply to making and giving away software for free. Or is that different 'cos it's someone else's industry. Surely it's the same?

I feel greatly that music has a value, but I personally feel that if you can afford to give something for free you should be allowed to without others saying it's stepping on their toes.

[Jay Pace]

I notice not one person has answered my question about should this apply to making and giving away software for free. Or is that different 'cos it's someone else's industry. Surely it's the same?

I was thinking this.

Do open source projects devalue paid for programs? Yup. Why pay when some nice chaps make it for free for the love of it?

Does that mean all programs should be free? Nope, can't rely on altruism to cater for all your needs, and altruism should be a choice of the creators, not an requirement of the consumers.

Do the two models cause problems sitting side by side? Undoubtedly.
But, its just a reality you have to face I suppose.

[TechMouse]

I was thinking this.

Do open source projects devalue paid for programs? Yup. Why pay when some nice chaps make it for free for the love of it?

Not sure it's that cut and dry.

The really good open source software caters to the Tech community and provides stuff like development tools and APIs. Generally the kind of stuff that most people wouldn't know where to begin with.

There are some products which challenge commercial end-user applications, but their market share is usually less than impressive.

Why? Because commercial software comes with something that the open source community struggles to reliably provide: support.

If you are reasonably technically minded then there are a wealth of websites, forums, wikis and other documentation that you can use to guide you on your way. But I for one wouldn't forgive many people for giving up and going home.

Sometimes, having someone on the end of the phone who can help with your problem makes all the difference.

There are a few open source firms (Canonical and Red Hat being examples) who have built a business model out of offering support for their free products, and it remains to be seen how that pans out over time.

If open source software really devalued commercial software, then there is no way that Microsoft would still hold a 90% share on the desktop market. Linux is a better, safer product. But the reality is that people need a safety net, and familiarity is as good as any.

Does that mean all programs should be free? Nope, can't rely on altruism to cater for all your needs, and altruism should be a choice of the creators, not an requirement of the consumers.

Agree completely.

Do the two models cause problems sitting side by side? Undoubtedly.

Well, again - that's a complex question.

It totally depends on the open source licence in question. Not sure how much you know about this, but every bit of software in the world (even the free stuff) comes with a licence. There are multiple open source licences (GPL, Sun, Mozilla, Apache, BSD, multiple variations of each) and the difference usually comes down to how you have to repackage the software.

At the more stringent / idealistic end (GPL) the licence says that you can redistribute the code so long as any derivative work comes under the same licence. So this basically means you can't use a GPL product in a commercial product.

At the other end you have the likes of BSD which basically says "you can do whatever the hell you want", and there are many shades of grey in between.

We do a lot of work with stuff licensed under Apache because we think it strikes the right balance.