zh_CNlilintong-FrankKarlitschek

\chapterwithauthor{Frank Karlitschek}{Underestimating the Value of a Free Software Business Model}

\authorbio{Frank Karlitschek was born in 1973 in Reutlingen, Germany and started to write software at the age of 11. He studied Computer Science at the University of T\"ubingen and became involved in free software and Internet technologies in the mid-1990s. In 2001, he started to contribute to KDE by launching KDE-Look.org, an artwork community site which later became the openDesktop.org network. Frank started several Open Source projects and initiatives like the Social Desktop, the Open Collaboration Services, the Open-PC and ownCloud. In 2007 he started a company called hive01 which offers services and products around Open Source and Internet technologies. Today Frank is a board member and Vice President of the KDE e.V. and a regular speaker at international conferences.}

\section*{Introduction}

Ten years ago, I underestimated the value of a business model. Free software and a business model? They do not belong together. At least, that is what I thought when I started contributing to KDE in 2001. Free Software is about fun and not money. Right? Free software people want a world where everybody can write software and huge companies, like Microsoft or Google, are superfluous. Software should be free and anyone who wants to develop software should be able to do so -- even hobby developers. So earning money is not important. Right? Today, I hold a different opinion. Sometimes developers should be remunerated for their efforts.
十年前，我低估了商业模式的价值。自由软件和一种商业模式？他们不能归属一类。至少，在2001年，当我开始在KDE工作时，我是这么想的。自由软件是一种有趣的事物而不是钱。对吗？支持自由软件的人们想要一个任何人都可以写软件和大型工程的世界，像微软或谷歌是多余的。软件应该自由，而且任何想要发展软件的人都应该被允许这么做—甚至只是爱好开发的人。所以赚钱并不重要。对吗？今天，我持一个不同的观点。有时候，对于开发人员的努力，他们应该获得报酬。 \section*{The Free Software motivation}

Most Free Software developers have two basic motivations to work on Free Software. The first motivation is the fun factor. It is a fantastic experience to work together with very talented people from all over the world and create great technology. KDE, for example, is one of the most welcoming communities I know. It is so much fun to work with thousands of contributors from all over the world to create software which will be used by millions. Basically, everyone is an expert in one or more areas and we collaborate to create a shared vision. For me it is always a blast to meet other KDE contributors, exchange ideas or work on our software whether we meet online or in real life at one of the many conferences or events. And it is also about friendship. Over the years I have made many good friends in KDE. 绝大多数的软件开发人员有两个基本的动机使他们致力于自由软件。第一个动机是兴趣因素。和许多来自世界各地的有才能的人一起工作并开发伟大的技术是一次奇妙的经历。比如说，KDE是我所知的最受欢迎的团体之一。和成千上百的来自世界各地的贡献者一起工作，去开发将被上百万人使用的软件是多么的有趣。基本上，每个人都是一个或多个领域的专家，而且我们合去实现共同的愿景。对于我来说，见到其他的KDE 的贡献者，交换想法或讨论是否在网上或现实生活中的许多国家的会议和活动中看到我们的软件总是一次愉快的经历。当然也和友谊有关。在过去的几年里，我已经在KDE交了许多朋友。

But KDE contributors are not motivated only by fun to join KDE. It is also the idea that all of us can make the world a better place with our contributions. Free Software is essential if you care about access to technology and IT for developing countries. It enables poor people to participate in the information age without buying expensive licenses for proprietary software. It is essential for people who care about privacy and security, because Free Software is the only way to see exactly what your computer is doing with your private data. Free Software is important for a healthy IT eco-system, because it enables everybody to build on the work of others and really innovate. Without Free Software it would not have been possible for Google or Facebook to start their businesses. It is not possible to innovate and create the next disruptive technology if you depend on proprietary software and do not have full access to all parts of the software.

Free Software is also essential for education, because everybody can see all the internals of the software and study how it works. That is how Free Software helps to make the world a better place and why I contribute to Free Software projects such as KDE.

\section*{The need for an ecosystem}

These are the main reasons why I want to see Free Software, and especially the free desktop, become mainstream. To make this happen, we need a lot more contributors than we have today. By contributors I mean people who write the core frameworks, the desktop, the great applications. We need people who work on usability, artwork, promotion and many other important areas. KDE is already a really big community with thousands of members. But we need more people to help to compete with proprietary software in a big way. The Free Software community is tiny compared to the proprietary software world. On the one hand this is not a problem, because the distributed software development model of the Free Software world is much more efficient than the closed source way of writing software. One big advantage is, for example, the ability to re-use code better. But even with these advantages we need many more contributors than we have today, if we really want to conquer the desktop and mobile markets.

We also need companies to help us bring our work to the mass market. In a nutshell, we need a big and healthy ecosystem that enables people to work on Free Software for a living.

\section*{The current situation}

I started contributing to KDE over 10 years ago and since then I have seen countless highly motivated and talented people join KDE. This is really cool. The problem is that I also saw a lot of experienced contributors dropping out of KDE. That is really sad. Sometimes it is just the normal way of the world. Priorities shift and people concentrate on other stuff. The problem is that many also drop out because of money. At some point people graduate and want to move out of their dorm rooms. Later some people want to get married and have kids. At this point people have to find jobs. There are some companies in the KDE ecosystem that offer KDE-related jobs. But these are only a fraction of the available IT jobs. So, a lot of senior KDE contributors have to work for companies where they work on proprietary software, unrelated to KDE and Free Software. Sooner or later most of these developers drop out of KDE. I underestimated this factor 10 years ago, but I think it is a problem for KDE in the long term, because we lose our most experienced people to proprietary software companies.

\section*{My dream world}

In my dream world people can pay their rent by working on Free Software and they can do it in a way which does not conflict with our values. KDE contributors should have all the time they need to contribute to KDE and Free Software in general. They should earn money by helping KDE. Their hobbies should become their jobs. This would make KDE grow in a big way, because it would be fun to contribute and also provide good long-term job prospects.

\section*{What are the options?}

So what are the options? What can we do to make this happen? Are there ways for developers to pay their rent while working on Free Software? I want to list a few ideas here that I collected during several discussions with Free Software contributors. Some of them are probably controversial, because they introduce completely new ideas into the Free Software world. But I think it is essential for us to think beyond our current world if we want to be successful with our mission.

\paragraph*{Sponsored development}

Today, more and more companies appreciate the importance of Free Software and contribute to Free Software projects, or even release their own completely Free Software projects. This is an opportunity for Free Software developers. We should talk to more companies and convince them to work with the Free Software world.

\paragraph*{End-user donations}

There should be an easy way for end-users to donate money directly to developers. If a user of a popular application wants to support the developer and promote the further development of the application, donating money should be just one mouse click away. The donation system can be built into the application to make it as easy as possible to send money.

\paragraph*{Bounties}

The idea behind bounties is that one or more users of an application can pay for the development of a specific feature. A user can list his feature request on a website and say how much he is willing to pay for the feature. Other users who also like the same feature may add some money to the feature request. At some point the developer starts to develop the feature and collects the money from the users. This bounty feature is not easy to implement. People already tried to set up a system like this and failed. But I think it can work if we do it right.

\paragraph*{Support}

The idea is that the developer of an application sells direct support to the users of the application. For example, the users of an application buy support for, let us say, \$5 a month and get the right to call the developer directly at specified times of the day, users may post questions to a specific email address, or the developer can even help the users via a remote desktop. I realize many developers will not like the idea that users call them and ask strange questions, but if this means that they earn enough with the support system to work full-time on their applications, then it must be a good thing.

\paragraph*{Supporters}

This is the idea that end-users can become supporters of an application. The ``Become a Supporter'' button would be directly built into the application. The user then becomes a supporter for a monthly payment of, for example \$5, which goes directly to the developer. All the supporters are listed in the About Dialog of the application together with their photos and real names. Once a year all supporters are also invited to a special supporter party together with the developers. It is possible that a developer may be able to work full-time on an application, if enough users become supporters.

\paragraph*{Affiliate programs}

Some applications have integrated web services and some of these web services run affiliate programs. For example, a media player can be integrated in the Amazon mp3 MusicStore or a PDF reader can be integrated in an ebook store. Every time a user buys content via the application, the developer gets some money.

\paragraph*{App store for application binaries}

Many people do not know that it is possible to sell binaries of Free Software. The GPL only requires that you also provide the source code. So, it is perfectly legal and OK to sell nicely packaged binaries of our software. In fact, companies such as Red Hat and Novell already sell our software in their commercial distributions but the developers do not benefit from it directly. All the revenue goes to the companies and nothing to the developers. So we could enable the Free Software developers to sell nicely packaged, optimized and tested applications to the end-user. This might work especially well on Mac or Windows. I am sure a lot of users would pay \$3 for an Amarok Windows binary, or digiKam for Mac, if all the money went directly to the developer.

\section*{Conclusion}

Most of these ideas are not easy to implement. They require changes to our software, changes to our ways of working and changes among our users who must be encouraged to show they value the software we create by helping to fund its development.

However, the potential benefits are huge. If we can secure revenue streams for our software we can retain our best contributors and maybe attract new ones. Our users will get a better experience with faster software development, the ability to directly influence development through bounties and better support.

Free Software is no longer just a hobby to be done in your spare time. It is time to make it a business.

zwz / Open-Advice_Chinese-Edition

zh_CNlilintong-FrankKarlitschek #35