[zeveb]

> Can anyone commit to building a proper business?

How about we users commit to building the tools we need, and forget about relying on businesses to do it for us?

That's what free software is all about — head on over to the Free Software Foundation and pitch in today!

[clickbyclick]

Another angle...

It's sad when we pay $5 for a coffee made in 5 minutes that we'll drink in 3... but not $5 for an app that took 5 months that we'd use daily for a year.

[vectorpush]

Well, if coffee shops started offering up free coffee with ads on the cup, people wouldn't pay $5 for coffee either.

[ImprovedSilence]

Most coffee cups already do have ads on them. They have you paying $5 for coffee, AND running around with free ads for them in your hands. And you don't even notice you're a walking billboard for them! Not to mention all that juicy data you're giving them with every CC purchase, or loyalty card swipe...

[emodendroket]

I can't speak for anyone else but I'd be willing to spend significantly more than that for something I found useful.

[prawn]

Not to mention that $5 might be the most expensive app someone buys, and then they expect updates for the foreseeable future despite on-going development costing loads more time. There have been developers who released a separate, paid sequel and were left with angry customers who expected updates to their original app.

[paulryanrogers]

My experience has been that since underlying platform software changes so quickly locally run purchases are often more work to maintain than SAAS offerings.

[vacri]

That 5-min coffee serves exactly one client and no more. The 5-month app can serve an infinite number of clients. The two are not equatable.

[pessimizer]

I honestly don't think that Free software can keep up in the short term without a regular dues-paying membership organization behind it. Instead of concentrating on trying to expand interest in software rights, I think the only way forward is to consolidate the already converted. Also, it gives non-developers and non-technical people the ability to feel fully involved.

I wish the Chicago FSF had two or three offices in town, a local administration, weekly meetings, classes daily, and that I could send them $25 a month to remain in good standing.

In the long term Free software can't help but win, unless Stallman gets hit by a bus. Stallman will eventually be hit by a bus.

edit: and by all that I mean that Free Software needs to build a proper business.

[kpil]

In the ancient times GNU and the free BSD programs provided a vastly better user experience than the native tools in just about every commercial Unix system.

Also the window managers were at least slightly less awkward to use and at least tweekable.

I think there are a lot of specialised software development tools and products that are free or open source that are generally better than their commercial alternatives.

Although it's complicated as a lot of large players are putting a lot of money into free or open alternatives while still convincing their customers to pay a lot of money for their enterprise alternatives. (I wonder how they do it. I am actually reluctant to use a free database server although it's not uncommon for the commercial database we use to have rather horrid bugs that won't even be fixed since its virtually impossible to reproduce the problem in another system, and we can't debug properly without the source.)

It's only mass market applications and games that gives you enough money to totally outcompete free, maybe a small reason is that typically only a small fraction of the audience can code. I guess the same is true to some extent also for specialised tools in other domains, like financial or medical software, were the users typically can't code and there might be legislation and regulations too.

[afarrell]

The problem is that there is a limited number of people who have enough free time to spend the effort to refine a user experience.