368 karma · joined November 26, 2008
On a German Linux news site (prolinux.de), a commercial Linux game developer -- Ankh2, IIRC -- once commented that they could not get their game running on about 2-3% of their customers' Linux computers, despite their best efforts.
I dunno whether FatElf would have solved problems like this in the long run, but there are problems. You may not be affected but this doesn't mean others aren't.
The definition of what is "Free Software" is arbitrary, because anyone could use a completely different definition and wouldn't be less right or wrong.
The proposition that "Free Software" is moral is also arbitrary, for there's no rationale. There's just some agreement because of the bandwagon effect and multiple meanings of words like "freedom", "sharing" and so on.
The simple truth is: It's sometimes useful and so is "non-free" software.
Nearly all the good Open Source desktop apps run under Windows as well. But there are quite a lot of good Windows and Mac apps that won't run under Linux. There's no good replacement and Wine is too complicated to be a feasible solution.
Commercial desktop ISVs don't support Linux for 3 simple reasons: (1) There's no standard decentral installer. This is the _most important tool_ for desktop ISVs in their sales funnel and Linux has none (or rather: too many half-finished ones). (2) It's not a single coherent platform but several different ones. And it's not going to change without a decentral installer. (3) It's easier and more profitable to develop web and mobile applications today.
There's nothing the Linux community can do about (3). But (1) could be solved and in the long run, also (2). If these two problems for commercial ISVs could be solved, the supply of desktop applications could increase.
Then, desktop distribution could also make money by reselling these applications. Then, it would also be rationale to advertise.
But that's not going to happen, for one cannot rationally discuss the need of a decentral installer with many Linux users (or Linux distributions).
To be frank: Your design doesn't look 'enterprisy'. Your size (as a start-up I assume) is not 'enterprisy'. I guess you have no 'enterprisy' sales force who spend half a year negotiating with CEOs.
You will waste lot of time if you try to educate CEOs that have no clue about the web and who probably never heard of you before.
Your best prosects would be smart, web-experience guys who know what an A/B split test is -- web marketing consultants or web designers/copy writers who can install Wordpress on a server. Why not go for them?
Drop the 'enterprisy' language (solutions, resources, etc.) and give them a reseller account and maybe an affiliate program. Don't try to compete with them by offering services. Let them sell your application to their clients, integrate it and administrate it.
Just a thought. ;)
"We're in private alpha now, so there are no pricing plans yet. But we'll try hard to make it fair and affordable! If you'd like to participate in our alpha test, get in contact with us. Here's how: ... " (Offer some incentives here, if you want to: 'FREE' during alpha, cancel any time, '3 free tips by our conversions experts that you can test right away', 'Get our FREE white paper "How to increase your conversion rate by up to 143% with behavioural targeting"'... you get the idea.)
If your private alpha/beta tests takes longer and you expect to get some traffic meanwhile, you may also like to consider a notification form at the end of the page. It may get some additional leads when you're ready to launch.
I understand that too much jargon scared off your potential target audience. On the other hand, someone has to integrate and use the service after a prospect signed-up. Why not make something like "Documentation" somewhere on the site? Maybe, instead of 'Resources'?
I agree with jlees: It may still be too much jargon.
Btw, I've just visited the page for a second time. It's funny to note that I didn't see the Twitter link on the homepage, because I immediately clicked somewhere above the fold. :)
Overall, I think you are quite close. It's just a lot of minor details that may improve the impression of the site.
Unfortunately, it took me 14 page views and 1738 seconds to find the product tour on the page. In general, I found the organization of the different product descriptions to be confusing.
I also missed an answer to the 'How?' question. Of course, it depends on your preferred target audience but if it's smaller start-ups, it wouldn't hurt to get a bit more technical.
There's just one real negative point I could make: The site lacks credibility, in my opinion. There's neither a clear "FREE" message nor is there a "Plans and Pricing" page. I also missed a note about the status of the service. The word "solutions" has a negative connotation for me. There is no privacy policy, terms of use or 'About Us' page. Also, there's nothing with a more personal touch, no link to a blog, for example. The link to the Twitter account is hardly noticeable. Since 'Get started now' leads to a contact page, it just makes it look less trustworthy. You want me to contact you, but you don't say who you are.
If I had found the site by some other means, I would have been very warily.
Hope this helps.
Gravatar support is, for example, a feature I'd like to get from my OpenID provider. After all, my image belongs to my identity.
Next, with a single identity comes also privacy concerns. Automatically generated disposable E-Mail addresses for each new sign-up would be nice to have, in my opinion.
Privacy concerns, however, are also related to the most common business models of these providers: It seems, nearly all of them want to display or sent me advertising. Or they want to be able to improve their advertising displays.
Can't they just ask for, say, US$29 or US$39 a year?
Then, I'd also need some sort of easy Identity transfer. If I switch providers, for example, the new one should be able to ask the old one for all the data and notify the consumers about the switch. Otherwise, the transaction costs of a switch would be rather high, exposing me to monopoly problems.
Browser support would also be nice to have, so there's a check that I'm being redirected to my true ID provider, not just something that looks like it.
Maybe, this stuff is too sophisticated for a sufficiently large number of people. But maybe, it works with the right sales pitch.
There are basically two contexts the word "right" is used: an moral and a legal context.
If the right you're talking about is an moral one, you surely can trade it. This happens all the time since people differ in moral judgements. For example, some may say you have a right to health. Assuming the premise is true, you can still "trade" it for the (subjective) benefit of smoking.
If the right you are talking about is a legal one, it depends on the law. I don't think, for example, that you could sell your right to vote. However, there are other rights you can sell. For example, copyright gives you certain rights that you may sell or trade.
Maybe, but this does not mean that Open Source would not have happend.
Project Gutenberg, for example, was already started in 1971 to to archive and digitize cultural works. The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) started in 1977. The GNU project, however, started in 1983.
In other words, the idea of sharing copyrighted works such as literature and software was known before Stallman. Basically, Stallman was quite late in the game. Additionally, other attempts to freely distribute code started after the GNU project, but independently of Stallmans ideas. For example, the Apache project, IIRC.
Overall, it's save to say that we'd have some sort of Open Source movement, due to earlier examples of code sharing and independent attempts, even if Stallman would not have done what he did.
Maybe, we'd even have a "better" Open Source movement.
Also, the ability to have an ideology does not deserve respect, per se. There were quite a few people with ideologies who made millions of people suffer.
Getting a job has obviously benefits for you, otherwise you would no try to get it. But there are also always costs.
These costs include wasting time on learning how to design in the first place and quite a lot of other activities. And it may also include to get a Photoshop license.
After all, you are not required to use it for your private stuff, too!
Also, these "market forces and monopolies of various sorts" hold true for "free" software: If I'd like to get a job as a sys admin, I may have to deal with Apache and Samba althought I really, really hate it!
Where's my right of not being required to deal with Apache and Samba?
My copyright of a work doesn't restrict your ability to copy the idea. In fact, this is what many Open Source projects do: they copy the idea or a proprietary software, but not the software (ie. the work) itself.
You're making some fundamental logical errors here.
Your first premise is that you have these rights. But where's your rationale for that?
The simple truth is that you only have these rights if the objects under consideration are yours. But you have no right to share my books. You have no right to share my house. You have no right to share my property. And you have no right to sing my song.
Unless I give you my permission to do so, of course.
So, your first premise is wrong.
Your second premise is that it's suppression if you were not given all possible permissions. But you agreed to the terms with a free will. No one forced you to do that. No one pointed a gun to your head telling you what to do. In fact, you are free to do the same work I have done to author the work, in the first place.
So, your second premise is also wrong.
I don't know what your conclusion is but it's probably wrong, too, because your premises are.
"People were intrinsically motivated to complete a certain task, initially."
In many economic contexts, this is seldomly the case. How many people are intrinsically motivated to fix a broken toilet, for example?
True, it may hold under certain circumstances -- so-called creative and similar work.
But developing software is not just creative work. There's also lots of boilerplate work to do to make software a good product: It needs to satisfy the wants and needs of the user, not the developer. It needs to be easy-to-use. It needs informative and reassuring promotion (ie. a nice homepage). It needs proper documentation. It needs to be easily installable and removable.
But even Free Software developers are not intrinsically motivated to provide these features. Thus, many Free Software projects fail badly as products.
Sure, there may be people out there who are intrinsically motivated to do some of these tasks - writing, for example. But when they are, they often have better things to create, namely their own creative works. Why should anyone who enjoys to write, care about the lack of documentation for some unknown software project, even if it's "Free"?
This is why so-called "non-free software" is useful and necessary and hardly anything "immoral" or "unethical": It provides benefits lots of people want and need.
In other words: I doubt, the GNU project posted this on their web site to educate the public. Probably, they just did it to support their political agenda.
(1) http://dabodev.com/ - MIT license, using wxWidgets
(2) http://www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi/index.html - LGPL, pyGTK
(3) http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/pygtkmvc/wiki - LGPL, pyGTK
You may like to improve the copy on your web page. The first thing that's not immediately obvious is what links are displayed. It might be better to write "it uses their individual search queries to display _additional matches from your site_."
And you may like to change the image on the front page. Nothing wrong with stock photos but this guy looks as if bouncing makes fun. I don't think that's the impression you want to create.
In the low-brow definition marketing is the set of all decisions regarding product, price, distribution and promotion. As soon as you start a company, you will do marketing. It's either bad or good or something in-between but it's marketing.
Promotion is something different. You can forget promotion, sometimes. Provide a working cure for AIDS or cancer and you need no (active) promotion.
But in today's crowded markets, the possibility of making a software that solves problems no one else addressed yet, is rather low. Then, promotion becomes as important as the product. They interact.
Promote your product badly and you'd be wasting money when you're making a good product. For in most cases, you don't need to make your software scale or easy to enhance, if just a few people know about it and use it.
Make a bad product (with no intend to improve it later) and you'd be wasting money when you're spending lots of it on promotion. For sooner or later, your customers will turn to your competitors and there will be no way to get back the money you spend on promotion.
In other words: All your marketing decisions, including how much money you spend on the product and promotion, affect your profit.
(1) Hiding low quality: Theoretically, this would be a point -- if and only if "quality" could be judged objectively. This is seldom the case: Just look at the design decisions different Open Source projects make and how many flame wars these decisions ignite.
Granted, sometimes code lacks objective quality. This is sometimes simply due to the ignorance of programmers -- for example, not salting a password in web applications.
However, most of the time, the lack of quality argument is simply due to people having different preferences! Making code is expensive; it takes quite a long time to build something that's useful and working.
In other words, there's a trade-off and people need to make decisions which goals are pursued, first. Any decision will result in disappointments. Sometimes, management needs to make decisions that emphasize different values then yours, usually the need to make revenue. But also consumers sometimes have different preferences: some would spend an available amount of development time on code security, others would spend it on usability, others on the amount of corner case functionality, others on something entirely different.
Even Open Source projects have problems, here. For example, a few years ago, GNOME developers were absolutely certain they could raise the quality of their product by implementing a spacial file manager. They were "highly motivated and eager to show the world how they think something should be done."
It was a disaster. Most users hated it instantly (strictly speaking, because there was no obvious and easy way to opt-out of it).
Here's the major mistake: Just because you're a developer with an idea, doesn't mean you have a clue what consumers want. In fact, that's the problem in most of these "low quality" arguments, especially when made by Open Source advocates: The software you refer as to, probably has no low quality; it just offers quality you don't recognize or need.
(2) Protecting consumers: This is just another form of the victim assumption many (left) politicians also like to use. You're assuming consumers are innocent and are being "fooled into purchasing" crap. Most of the time, consumers are not innocent. In fact, the most powerful sales arguments are those that build on the greed and selfishness on the consumer: How to make more money, get more sex, be more powerful. In fact, even one of the major sales arguments of Open Source is 'Make more money' (by spending less on license fees).
You can't sell crap to an informed consumer. But why are some consumers ignorant, then? Nobody stops them to educate themselves! You could say, the real reason is their laziness and unwillingness to learn. In other words: They are ignorant because they are greedy. And in fact, that's an argument also used quite a lot by opinionated (Open Source) developers. However, it just means people are selfish and rational on how they spend their time.
Your analogy to toasters is also flawed: There may be some exceptions, but in general making the "wrong" decision about software usually doesn't really hurt people -- in contrast to toasters.
(3) Ethical code: This is just a word many people like to use without due consideration, like "freedom". You probably seriously care about your code, but that doens't mean you're acting ethical. In fact, caring about your code just means you're selfish; for if there's a trade-off between the purity of your code and a feature request by your customers, you're probably going for the purity.
The more probable cause for your frustration is simply that other people don't share your point of view concerning things you care about. Sometimes that means you to do things you don't like. Sure, that's disappointing, but that's just how it is.
Neither marketing, nor market failures, nor Closed Source Software has something to do with it. These are just convenient rationalizations.
Well, I'd say your imagination is slightly misleading, then. ;-) Of course, we may now debate what you mean by "serious journalists" but let's put that aside.
What every journalist wants, usually, is that his stories are read! Even you want to inform people you need them to read your story, first. One method is to write compelling headlines and teasers, for example. Sometimes, that's sufficient.
Another one, as you say, is to start with the "human side". But how you proceed, then, is often up to you: You may get deep into the topic, explore the problem behind the human story, write about pro's and con's, introducing the actors or stake holders, describe their opinions, and so on. Usually, you end by getting back to the human example you introduced in the beginning.
The simple truth is that every story has a human side. Nearly everything affects someone. If it doesn't, it's simply not interesting to anybody. It's not news.
Sure, there's also the common pieces, going after the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. That's the AP stuff. In contrast to want you believe, however, they are easier to write! It's just six questions you got to answer. Follow the Inverted Pyramid format and you're done.
Finding the human side, however, and making it believable and interesting is real work and takes quite a lot of time and experience.
Of course, you can't write every piece like that. Going into all the details of a story all the time would be boring and futile. So, both sorts have their place. But if you have something that's abstract, unexpected or hard to comprehend, starting with the human side is often the best way to go.
However, it seems to have lost some traction in recent years. My impression is that "Principles of Economics" by N. Gregory Mankiw took its place. If Mankiw's "Principles" is written as clearly as his Macroeconomics textbook, it's certainly worth to start with it.
Of course, both are quite expensive and -- depending on your math education -- demanding. So, as a test whether textbooks are something you could like, you may like to start with the free textbook by R. Preston McAfee's "Introduction to Economic Analysis". It's available here:
As an alternative, you may like to look for smaller textbooks that mix formal and applied economics. They may be demanding but also somewhat practical. The later part may make it easier to get the former part. As a disadvantage, they don't provide much overview. Among those I've read and can recommend, are:
* "Managerial Economics" by Ian Dobbs, and
* "Games for Business and Economics" by Roy Gardner.
Of course, if you're interested in something more entertaining and less formal, there are quite a few books that have been published after the success of "Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
Unfortunately, none of them are really introductions to the field. They all try to make the point that economics, in general, is interesting by presenting random collections of interesting ideas or stories. Most of them also concentrate on the author's own research which is hardly a good start.
That said, they are still entertaining to read. So, you may like to look at the following ones:
* "The Undercover Economist" by Tim Harford
* "Naked Economics" by Charles Wheelan
I've read the first one and he covers a rather broad selection of topics. I didn't read the second one but the reviews at Amazon made me put it on my wish-list.
So, Henry Hazlitt's book is still unique and worth reading, since it covers one of the more basic idea of economics without using any formal means. Just beware that it's outdated (since it's been written much research has gone into the problem of market failure), and that it's somewhat opinionated.
Of course, the later is a general problem in economics: researchers usually assume a rather simple utility function of public decision makers, namely to maximize public welfare. This is hardly the only possible one, just the only one people can agree upon.
For the record: Here's one Open Source advocate who applauds LinuxCare for saving themselves by abandoning Open Source. I guess, the current users of LinuxCare's products probably agree. Yes, I advocate for "proprietary development methodologies in areas where evidence seems to show that they are more effective".
An idea is not inevitably good just because it's guided by principle.
In fact, I believe most ideas that are guided by principles -- especially those that claim moral superiority of a certain principle -- seem to turned always into human tragedies.
> This is not correct.
Well, it is basically correct. The core idea of the Free Software movement is that all software should be free. They believe that software not fitting their subjective definition of "free" is immoral (or evil).
This has been declared quite a few times by Richard Stallman; for example, here:
“The free software movement aims for a social change: to make all software free so that all software users are free […]. Every non-free program gives its developer unjust power over the users. Our goal is to put an end to that injustice.” -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html
I admit, the word "intellectual property" was an unlucky choice by the previous poster.
I don't know whether your answers are correct but you should not use the term "derivative" or "derivative work". It's a rather clear legal term. The GPL3 does not use that term, anymore.
In fact, if we would be arguing about a derivative work in the copyright sense, your answer to 2 and 3 (and depending on the circumstances also 1) would be wrong (with the usual disclaimer IANAL).
A software B that uses a library A by "loose" linking does not constitute a derivative work. Courts in the US have develop a test for that: First, B is a complement to A. Second, it doesn't distribute any of A's code when distributing B. Third, thinking otherwise would chill the market, since no library would be used by anyone anymore, for this would make using a library an infringement of the library owner's copyright.
For further information, see:
First, I assume self-interest, not group-interest. That's what the club is for: The more people become members, the more content anyone gets, including you as a member. This is guaranteed by the club structure. For additional effect, the club may also own the copyright of the content.
Second, redistributing information is work. You can't simply copy'n'paste articles due of copyright. Even if this still pays for some individuals, finding good information is also work. It's easier to become a club member, especially when you have additional benefits such as being the first to know by automatic notifications, being able to set manual filters by following, being able to get to know other members by following, etc.
The Economist offers nothing like that.
[1] http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/ [2] http://metaquark.de/appfresh/
Also, you seem to misunderstand the point. To have a third kind of distribution -- "stable foundation and recent apps" -- doesn't affect your choice of distribution, at all. When you're satisfied with Gentoo, you simply continue using it.
Why does it have to be like that? Why does Linux distributions fall in one of two categories: either "stable foundation and out-dated apps" or "unstable foundation and recent apps"?
What many people want is a stable foundation and recent apps. This is easier to get with a decentral installation system.
In contrast, Closed Source products simply hire a professional interface designer if that's necessary to convince "no-users" to buy.
Start a club and grant access to (full online) texts to club members, only. Keep a fixed percentage of the revenue for administration. Say, 30 or 40 percent. This is where your profit comes from. Spend the rest of the money for people creating the value: reporters, journalists, photographers, or even club members.
Start with a fixed budget for a year and an initial membership price. If revenue (fee * members) exceeds the budget, send a refund to members or raise the budget for the next year. If it doesn't, stop the club or raise the membership fee for next year. You may let members vote on that issue.
Let people follow (as exemplified by Twitter) the journalists they want to read. Journalists followed by many are obviously popular, and thus valuable. In other words: Make them celebrities, to some degree. Inform club members about new pieces of the journalists they follow by mail or SMS. Provide an interface for members that resembles a feed reader: A member only gets to see information from journalists he or she follows. Let members vote on articles.
Create an incentive to journalists to advertise their commitment to a certain club. For example, make a part of their payment depend on the numbers of followers they have. You may also allow them to employ other journalists (or ghost-writers). Then, they may utilize their blogs and appearances in other media to point to 'their' club. They could engage with their reader community (by answering comment discussions, for example).
In other words: Your sales pitch is not about the news you provide, anymore, but the access you provide to (popular) journalists.
You may also let members follow other members and show only comments made by them (or notify about new comments). Invite members with lots of followers to write articles. This creates an incentive to members to write good comments. You may also increase to incentive to be a club member by letting people become members by invitation, only. Being a "Wall Street Journal Club Member", for example, could mean something. If you provide a page for each member, they may use it on their usual web presence (LinkedIn, etc.)
Offer some free content on the site; for example, general news, introductions to popular articles, outdated articles, or comments (or discussions by your journalists. Make is SEO-friendly so people can link to it and Google can pick it up. You could use advertising to finance the free part.
This has the following effect: Firstly, they have an incentive to advertise the club: the more people participate, the more value they get (or the less they will have to spend). Secondly, there's an incentive for readers to withhold more valuable information to others (instead of spreading them and making money with Google Adwords). They are also less likely to spread their account information to others.
In other words: Create a mix of Digg, Twitter and Feed Readers and add a stronger incentive to keep information private.
Or course, that's just a quick summery. Comments welcome.