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What does free mean?

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What does free really mean?

(an open letter to those who are disgusted by our desire to make a buck)

So people have started giving us a hard time because every add-on in the marketplace isn't free. I get that. When we went open source in mid 2008, we talked a lot about the importance of freedom of expression and how we wanted to make the world a better place. All this remains true today, the reality is - we gotta eat.

Let's be direct - this "free" thing is new, and open source is an odd conglomeration of different ideas and licenses. To me, the idea is you have control. I don't want to have you driving a car around where you're not legally allowed to open the hood. That's crazy, but that's what a lot of commercial software does today. Does that mean you can have any car you want and I have to build it for free on the off chance you want to pay me to service it? I'm not so sure.

I don't think "we make money on services" is a very fair model for a software company, be it open source or commercial licensed. In my experience, large or small companies following this model tend to put less love into their core product and more love into each gig they win, for unavoidable financial reasons. I don't want to do that. I want us to make our living off of selling software, not fixing it.

So yes. There's a marketplace - and we're building stuff that's for sale in there. Nothings massively expensive for what it does. I say that as a man who has approved many thousands of dollars for license fees around CMS software, and is now selling components for $15 a pop. Moreover, I say that having opened the money machine to you!

You can make money at this. We've taken a lot of the heavy work out of the equation for you here. You've got a great framework to use that's powerful, extendable, and totally free. If you build something YOU want to sell, we'll happily help you do that. If your add-on meets our standards, we'll put it in the marketplace, we'll help you translate it, we'll even make it a featured add-on in our marketplace and across tens of thousands of concrete5 installs in the Add Functionality tab.

So let's get to it. A website should be as easy to use as a pen and paper. That's doesn't mean it's evil if we can actually make a living at this too. Does it?

-Franz Maruna
CEO, concrete5

Comments:

Posted by invader2k7 on
you make sense, people always want everything for nothing they want high pay don't want to work want to catch fish don't want to buy a fishing pole that's the world we live in. but on the same had people don't like to feel like they are being tricked if you say something is free put behind that statement you have the option to buy bla bla bla well am going get back to making my site thanks Mr Maruna
Posted by saveremreve on
I agree and this sounds like a great system, the only comment I have is that there should be more flexibility in the range of pricing. Would $1 or $5 really be untenable?
frz
Posted by frz on
We're not the size of Apple so at that scale we'd be losing money on merchant fees.

Moreover good work and ongoing support go into the apps you can buy here, you get what you pay for.

best wishes,
-frz
Posted by mmuller on
totally agree with your point frz, the framework you guys have created is incredible for the price ;)

I, for certain, am glad that I can support the developers of this cms (and any other developers) by purchasing addon's (when I get to that stage, with my clients needs) and know that this CMS will continue to grow into something marvellous.

regards,

mmuller
Posted by jcolome on
could not have said it any better. Good job!


Jcolome

Gainesville, FL
Posted by andymackay on
Having just bought a Superfish Menu in what I think will be the first ever software purchase I have made, my tuppence worth is that you guys are doing a great job. I'm sure lots of us would like to live in a world where no one has to go without for lack of money, and where kudos comes not from what you have accumulated but from how creatively you use what you have. Until that time comes I'm just happy that my money is going to people that are providing an open and honest service to the community.

big thanks, Andy
jasny
Posted by jasny on
The source code says '@license http://www.concrete5.org/license/ MIT License'. However the page on the URL shows a different license than MIT. What's up?
Posted by davemcza on
I find this model not only interesting, but also quite exciting as a potential means of making money from my hard work and contribution to the product.

BUT. From experience, people want to try an add-on before they're prepared to pay for it.

Is there plans to create a Try-Before-You-Buy staging area?
frz
Posted by frz on
Yes - we're releasing a whitepaper on setting up demo servers so our 3rd party developers can do this better on their own.
Posted by davemcza on
Thank you, I look forward to reading that whitepaper.

Another question has raised it's head on this theme. How does Concrete5 deal with competition.

For example, I see that Concrete5 have created a Suckerfish add-on, and are selling it for $15.

Will my add-on that also provides support for the Suckerfish menu, but sells for $2 be listed in the marketplace?
frz
Posted by frz on
The how-to on the demo has been released and is under Documentation > How-tos.

Yes, in general we approve competing add-ons if there is some value to both and they both work. You can see any number of image galleries in the marketplace.

We can't sell things for less than $15 because we're not Apple and able to negotiate merchant deals that cushy.
Posted by davemcza on
Thank you once again.

I missed the $15 restriction before, but I did eventually find it under http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/marketplace-submission-rules/ .
Posted by skquinn on
I notice the question posed by jasny a while back (in May) was never answered. In fact the license URL he points to appears to be completely different from what's commonly called an "MIT license."

Clarification, please?
frz
Posted by frz on
I'm not sure which URL the post in may was referring to.

Here are all the legal documents around concrete5, and concrete5.org
http://www.concrete5.org/help/legal/

In short, the core and free add-ons are all MIT. The commercial add-ons are still open source, but you own your copy for one active website and can't resell it, even with modifications, without author approval.
Hondo69
Posted by Hondo69 on
Nothing is truly free so please, please make money and lots of it so you may keep the dream alive.
pixelita
Posted by pixelita on
Two things, a comment and a question. First, my comment. Yep, the more people get for free, the more they want; the less they have to pay, the more they'll try to wring every last drop of sweat and blood out of you. Don't believe me? Hang around the WordPress support forums for awhile and soak up the sense of entitlement there heaped on a strictly volunteer community. If WP treated its plugin authors this way, maybe WP wouldn't have so many plugins, brilliant ones, that die on the vine from lack of interest or motivation to grow.

Now to my question. I'm a web designer who prefers to develop client sites on my own server then move then to their permanent home. If I have the client purchase the particular addon(s) desired, can they be moved or are they site-specific? This will be important to know if I plan to start developing c5 sites.

Thanks!
frz
Posted by frz on
pixelita: The add-ons are sold on a single site license today. This means you can use a single copy of the license on an active/public website. If you need development stages of that website, that's fine. If you need to move the website around, that's fine.

If you connect your site to the community through the add functionality page in your dashboard it will create a project page here on concrete5.org for your site. That's tied to your site via an ID in your site's database, so as long as you're using the same database across all "copies" of the site, you're fine.

If you need to wipe your database, or if your site goes away and you want to use your add-on licenses somwhere else, you can release the licenses from projects and reassign them as well.

We're really not trying to get in the way with some annoying level of copy protection that a bunch of open source developers would be able to break anyway. We're trying to just show people how to do the right thing by tying support to your purchase + site information.

If you're deep into wordpress matters, you should also note that concrete5 is MIT license. All of the add-ons we sell here are covered under a single commercial open source add-on we wrote for simplicity sake, but if you want to make your own application that requires concrete5 and sell it on your own site in some other way (like Thesis) you're welcome to do so.

Here's more thoughts on that debacle and why the GPL isn't helping:
http://concretethestudio.com/?p=223
Posted by jtladue on
I found Concrete5 in a newsletter from HotScripts, and at first it looked like a great item for me to provide some of my clients who are on a budget, mainly volunteer fire departments, club, and other small non profit organizations. The spending money part of me would love to see it to be all free, but the web designer part of me that understands people have put a lot of time into these add-ons can relate to wanting to charge for them.

My personal thoughts on this however is that these items are priced kind of high for a single website use. Someone above mentioned if your site is generating revenue, then they person buying the addons should not mind spending more money. This may be true, but many people looking for open source scripts, are doing so because of a tight budget. I feel that there should be multiple licenses. Have an lower cost license available for personal and other non profit sites, and more expensive one if your site is making money, and another one for developers like me that would allow me to use it on multiple sites.
profp30
Posted by profp30 on
Totally agree with last post by "jtladue".
Posted by DaggNabbitt on
I look forward to being able to use add-ins for free, or at a lower cost, for first-time users (like me) who are trying to learn the concrete5 system. No harm to anyone if add-ins were available for a practice site, right? Once everything is working and the site is ready to transfer to a hosting account (for profit, of course... why most of us are here... then we gladly pay for all the add-ins required for each site. Costs are transferrable to our clients.
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