http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/rejas/blog eng-GB Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:36:37 +0100 http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/rejas/blog/free_software_advocates_please_do_not_talk_about_price <p><i> Thanks to Alexander Nordström who, even though he doesn't fully agree with everything in this text, proofread it and gave me suggestions of improvement. </i></p> <p> I have been a Free software advocate for quite some time now. I give speeches all around Sweden, I work as a Free software consultant and try to promote Free software whenever I can. I know that many of you do the same. The aim of this text is to encourage you not to talk about price when advocating Free software. I feel that the price issue is not helping us at all to push Free software forward, instead it keeps backfiring at us. </p> <p> First of all, I would like to ask you how many of you use Free software because it's cheap? Not many raising their hands, I presume. I think you use Free software because of ideology, technical advantage or just because it's fun. There are several reasons, and I don't think that many of you would put price as the major one. Still, many Free software advocates put price as the major advantage with Free software when they promote it. Why are your reasons for choosing Free software not good enough for others? I think they are! </p> <p> There are other reasons not to talk about price. When promoting Free software, we have a competitor in proprietary, commercial software (please remember that Free software might be commercial) that, almost without exception, has a license fee of some kind. It is tempting to target that fee in our campaign, but then we make a big mistake. The price is something that we cannot control, but our competitors can. This is a bad thing for us. When someone deploys a new software system, there is always some cost involved. License fees are a part of it, but in many cases it is not a very big part. So we cannot really say that Free software is without cost. We can calculate and maybe show that Free software is cheaper, but it's a fragile path to take. Remember what I said about our competitors, they control the price. They can choose to drop the license fee whenever they want. If we built our case on this fee controlled by our competitor then we have to take another approach, the one we should have taken from the start. </p> <p> But then someone raises one hand and says: "We must show the companies that Free software is cheaper, otherwise they will not be interested". Well, I say that they will be interested anyway. It's true that commercial companies are driven by financial interest and will not take any action that doesn't save or give money. There's nothing wrong with that. We have to show them that Free software has benefits that will save them lots of money in the long run. Things like security and stability come to mind. Now we have put the ball in a more common playground, we and our competitors have more equal control here, we might very well win. Even better is if we put the focus on openness and freedom. If you are afraid of using these words in a commercial environment, talk about vendor lock-in. It is almost the same thing in "corporatish". Now we have the ball in our back yard and we control the game. If this gets through to the leaders, they will see beyond the initial cost and license fees. Most of them are not stupid. I think that the best for us would be if the companies started to deploy Free software even if they see that it is more expensive initially. Free software has qualities which other software doesn't have. Quality costs, but saves money in the long run. </p> <p> Okay, that was, I think, three reasons. There is another one (that I thought of, anyway). Low price is not always a benefit. People are used to think that you get what you pay for, so if the software is gratis, how good can it be? Employees at companies that have to learn one or more new programs might even feel offended that management wants to replace software with a gratis alternative. The employees might think that they have to do lots of extra work just to save some money that they will never see. If the management instead tells them that this new software is superior to its predecessor in several ways, including security and integrity, then it might be much more accepted. </p> <p> So in short, so far I tried to explain the following. </p> <ul> <li>You probably didn't choose Free software for the price, why should anyone else do so?</li> <li>The price is in control of the competitor, don't rely on it</li> <li>The price is not as important as many think, we can show other benefits</li> <li>The (low) price is not always a benefit</li> </ul> <p> So if we cannot user the price as an argument, what should we talk about? Talk about freedom. It doesn't scare people, just make sure that you tune it so it fits the audience. This is our back yard, we control it. Be proud of it! Talk about vendor lock-in. There are lots of money to save here. If someone throws a TCO-calculation at you, it probably covers the software's lifetime at most, which is maybe three years. Ask what happens with the numbers if the calculation is extended for, say three software lifetimes. Many of the Free software advantages get visualized if they try to do this. Talk about security, and if you are up to it, talk about technology. </p>