Over last several days, a couple tweets caught my eye. They are basically variations on the same theme. I’m choosing to quote this one because it is the latest example, but this sentiment keeps showing up in WordPress Twitter quite regularly.
It is a particularly good example because it showcases both sides of this type of thinking.
On one hand we have a person who seems to think that something costing money in an OSS ecosystem is a problem. On the other we have another person, who seems honestly baffled that someone is not prepared to pay money for a product in OSS ecosystem.
For me, those are two different sides of the same coin and represent rather extreme points of view.
Open Source !== Free
On the surface, expecting things to be available for fee in an open source ecosystem to be free seems quite reasonable. To a point where in many minds words “open source” and “free” have basically the same meaning. But in reality this is not the case. At a AltCtrlOrg event Zoë Kooyman of the Free Software Foundation gave a talk on the difference between the two things.
With free software it is exactly what it says on the tin – the software is free. This is great for the users – as you get everything for free, but for the developers of the software, it quite limits avenues for them to earn a living from it, making it harder to keep this development work sustainable.
In open source ecosystems we have put a bigger focus on keeping things sustainable. A lot of open source code is still made available completely free – think WordPress Core, or around 70k of free plugins in the dotorg repository. But to keep things sustainable, we’ve figured out many ways for developers to also earn some money. Like premium plugins, premium features, SaaS’es, priority support, etc etc.
So, yes, it is a bit of a trade-off – you have to spend some money, but in return we have software, that has an actual business behind it and it is at least a little bit more likely to be further developed, maintained and taken care of. As an added bonus, if you have enough time and technical know-how, you can usually avoid spending the money by building your own version of a paid thing.
Time spent !== Value
On the other side, asking why would anyone expect a plugin developer to do work for free also has an obvious answer. Because many of them do. I’ll come back to the free plugins in the dotorg repo. With 70k data points of evidence, is it really unreasonable for an average WordPress user to expect get a particular feature for free?
There are many reasons why developers choose to make their code opensource/free. For some, it is part of their marketing strategy – get the user with free features and then upsell premium things. Others find it a good way to showcase their skills to potential clients/employers, much better than a CV entry. Some might just want to do something good in the world. I recently heard that the original author of TYPO3 CMS had religious motivation… So many reasons indeed.
For sure, that makes the life harder for developers, who choose to try and sell their products in such ecosystem. If you are selling an app for MacOS, you don’t really have to explain why it costs money. It just does, it’s expected. If anything, a free app is more suspicious. In OSS this is the other way around – if your plugin costs 50 Eur, before you even start explaining why it is that price, you first have to tell me why I should pay money for this at all.
That means that communicating value is extra important when selling in an OSS ecosystem. You can’t just say it is expected – because it really is not. Say, you are trying to sell a contact form plugin. Just because you spent 50 hours developing it, it does not automatically make it worth me spending money on. Tell me why this one is better than Contact Form 7:
- will it be easier to set up?
- will it filter spam out better?
- does it have an integration with a 3rd party sistem that I use?
- does it have less of a performance impact?
- ???
In short – show me the value. If it will allow me to do something that others don’t – I might decide to spend 10 Eur on it. If you show me how it will save me 10 hours every time I build a website, I might be happy to pay 500 Eur. But if you just say this took me 50 hours to build – that is not value for me. Takayuki Miyoshi probably spend hundreds of hours on CF7, and his thing is free. Communicating value is important for any kind of product, but in OSS it is basically crucial.
Selling seashells on the seashore
Yes, it does sound a bit like that old tong-twister. And as the Finish comedian Ismo aptly noted, that is a terrible business model – trying to sell a thing where anyone can pick a similar one on the ground 😉 But if it is the market you are going for, that is your choice. People do go for markets like that, and make successful businesses that way.
In my town, the public transport is free. The town is also small enough for most places to be walking distance. But we also have a taxi service and you can event rent a limo if you wanted to. With all the free options available, why would anyone choose a paid one? Because they provide different value. You rent a limo to celebrate an occasion. You take a taxi for the convenience.
You do not need everyone to rent a limo or take a taxi. There will be people who will say you are crazy for charging this much for it. And that is ok. They are not your target audience. So long as you can find enough people to pay the price that allows you to earn a living, all is good. Don’t be angry at people who decide to take a walk.