[jiggy2011]

But who will pay me for my work if it is not some bespoke contract thing?

Will you ask for donations? What happens if you announce you will work on something and take a bunch of donations in the first couple of months (enough to live off).

What happens if the donations then dry up and you run out of money so you can't continue to work on the program full time but it is not finished? Do you have to go into debt to repay the people who donated or do they have to take a gamble that your program will get finished and be good enough?

Or do you only start work when you have sufficient donations to finish development? What happens if you misjudge this?

[tikhonj]

I don't know how it translates to non-programming stuff, but the vast majority of developers do work for in-house stuff (I've seen this cited somewhere, but can't remember exactly where). Only a minority try to actually sell programs (admittedly including some big companies like Adobe and Microsoft, but that's a different story). Moreover, as somebody using exclusively open-source tools--and being more productive than before--I can testify that the world would not be too bad without anybody selling proprietary programs.

My point isn't that this model can carry over unchanged to a different field; rather, all I maintain is that it is possible for a creative endeavor to be pushed largely by creators working for a salary rather than a royalty. I do not know enough about fields outside of programming to figure out exactly how it would work, but I see no reason it could not exist.

[jiggy2011]

Paying someone a salary inhouse will work for stuff like "Bespoke BigCorp Customer Database" but I don't think it would work so well for general use applications intended to be sold to the population and I don't think we want those type of apps to die.

Open source dev tools are great because they are built by developers who understand what developers want and crucially they were built because they were needed i.e there was nothing commercial that did the job in the way they wanted.

How many developers know enough about developing image , video or audio editing software to do it well on their own? Most OSS solutions in this area are basically poor clones of commercial software. Also where will the money come from to fund them doing this full time?

I know as one example Ardour is developed full time and is quite a cool piece of OSS for sound editing but it's developed by one guy who can barely pay his bills from the donations, he probably makes what he would at burger king.

You would think that computer programmers would be able to design some awesome OSS games right? After all about 50% of my CS class joined the course because they wanted to make games and it's probably one of the most popular topics on any programming forum.

Well I can't really think of a single OSS game that has ever really impressed me and certainly none have become popular in the same way Half life or Skyrim has (by OSS game I mean a game that was developed under an OSS model, not something where the code was released by the developer 10 years later or something that is essentially an open source mod for a commercially developed game).

[ZenPsycho]

And I have yet to be provided with any reasonable business model that would still enable the creation of something like the Great Pyramids of Giza, or the Great Wall of China. I just don't think this idea of abolishing slavery has legs.

[jiggy2011]

Well I'm no historian but I think it's possible that in the time of the ancient Egyptians the idea to abolish slavery would not be feasible whilst retaining their society. If they didn't have slaves to do the heavy lifting then it's likely that another civilization which did use slavery would simply wipe them out due to better efficiency.

Slavery was abolished partly because there was enough technology to make it less necessary.

If we could automate human creativity then I suppose copyright would no longer be necessary.

[ZenPsycho]

we did. It's called /the internet/, (or euphamistically, "piracy") that's what all this fuss is about. Catch up, man!

[jiggy2011]

I see, now I understand. Nobody had to design or program any of those websites or other online content. It just sprang into existence organically!

Gosh I am behind the times.

[ZenPsycho]

There was a time, not that long ago, when there was no such thing as recorded music or films. People just performed the music live. Then one day, the phonograph was invented, and thomas edison paid musicians to perform in front of a phonograph recording machine. The musicians were happy, because they got paid for a performance. Thomas Edison was happy, because he got to make a gajillian zillion dollars off of that artists performance using his "automated creativity machine". Since then the major advance has been that record companies have worked out how to not bother paying the musicians for that original recorded performance.

[ZenPsycho]

Also, I missed this before, but... ARE YOU SERIOUSLY ADVOCATING SLAVERY?!

[ZenPsycho]

you adapt, or you die.

[jiggy2011]

Not really a helpful answer, doesn't address any of my points.

I think "adapt or die" has the risk of killing a lot of good business models that have so far provided us with some great content/software etc.

I have yet to be provided with a good business model for content in a post copyright world that can be made to work for every type of content that we currently enjoy.