I’ve been reminded of the fastest 1980s transatlantic software delivery method:
- Put software on a magnetic tape.
- Put the tape in your hand luggage.
- Fly to the USA.
- At customs, when asked if you had anything to declare, say “This tape”. If asked the value of the tape, make a fast decision whether to say $10 and risk 12 hours of interrogation as a possible communist spy, there to steal America’s software secrets or say $150,000 and be sure of an hour of form filling.
It has occurred to me that the correct answer was:
“$10. The licence costs far more but I’m not carrying that. It will be sent on later.”
Software is worth nothing until you use it and only until you stop using it. Free software costs nothing, so developers need to get paid in a different way. Should Free & Open Source Software be paid for only by those who use it to generate a profit and could it generate an international income for the countries that fund it, adjusted for national wealth?
Could we have a licence to receive free software updates, only paid for by businesses, according to their income (before tax fiddles) and routed to the teams that developed the software that is most used? Commercial software could join the scheme too, with higher prices if less rights are handed over. I don’t think it is healthy for FOSS to kill the commercial software market, because it encourages anti-competitive service monopolies like Facebook and Google.
[ This is a first draft of an idea ]
On The Outside 