You can't beat the current hegemony

[yotambien]

At least not easily.

So I was chatting with this old friend of mine, who in the past tried to make some short movies but always had problems gathering the minimum amount of people and funds to do it. I suggested him to learn Blender, since that would basically enable him to do everything he's got in his mind. After exchanging some youtube videos he convinced himself that it looks like a pretty good tool and asked me how to download it.

- Just download it, mate.

Five minutes later

- How? I don't find it in Ares.

- Argh, only a moron would upload it to a P2P network, it's gratis!

- Really...? Then there must be something better.

- >_<

Oh, lord...

[V!NCENT]

Tell him about the Elephants Dream. And that if he wants to burn for being stupid, that he's on his own...

[yotambien]

That's not the point. First, I said that he was convinced about the goodness of Blender. Actually, Elephant's Dream was one of the videos I showed him. Second, this has absolutely nothing to do with stupidity.

This anecdote only illustrates the prevailing thinking, whereby free stuff simply can not possibly exist, and if it does, it has to be crap.

[V!NCENT]

L.A.R.T.

That's not the point. First, I said that he was convinced about the goodness of Blender. Actually, Elephant's Dream was one of the videos I showed him. Second, this has absolutely nothing to do with stupidity.

This anecdote only illustrates the prevailing thinking, whereby free stuff simply can not possibly exist, and if it does, it has to be crap.

Ah, right. Bet he never heared of the concept of charity. Show him this and see if he still thinks charity sucks: http://www.medindia.net/news/Dichlor...er-68867-1.htm

Something the industry hasn't come up with after decades of funding <_<'

[yotambien]

Wait, Vincent, I only posted this because I wanted to share with you geeks how it struck me to be reminded of what the general attitude is with regards to not just free software, but about pretty much any commodity. I'm not really asking for help about how to deal with this guy; he is my friend, he is a thousand million miles away from being stupid or ignorant, and there even was a bit of sarcasm when he said what he said (but you couldn't possibly know this).

To be fair, I'm generalising a lot here. Perhaps it's just in my head that the general mindset is that nothing is free, and that in those rare cases where something actually is free, it sucks.

As for charity, I don't think it has a lot in common with free software. Nobody would say AMD is doing charity work because they pay for developing OSS drivers, would they? I don't deny that charity can bring something valuable from time to time. However, beyond its patchwork, it's hard to see how charity can really change things and solve problems in the long term. In the context of software, charity and free software are fundamentally different in that the latter actually has the transformative power the former lacks. Compare a free project, in the technical sense of the word, to a one-shot gratis package some company may have decided to release (as in charity). One of them enables a group of users to accomplish a particular task for a period of time, which is good, but in the future they will still depend on donations. In the other case, a minority of users with the required skills has the possibility to take control of their lives (as software users) and act according to their needs.

[V!NCENT]

Come to think about it; Gmail, YouTube and Firefox is free.

I can't see why he thought that gratis software must be worse than paid for software.

Pherhaps he has lost too much faith in humanity and thinks that whenever something's created that can be made money from, people would always chooce to be selfish and decide to not give it away...

[pingufunkybeat]

I think that the attitudes are slowly changing.

People are far more open towards using Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice and similar software than 10 years ago.

[yotambien]

Come to think about it; Gmail, YouTube and Firefox is free.

I can't see why he thought that gratis software must be worse than paid for software.

Pherhaps he has lost too much faith in humanity and thinks that whenever something's created that can be made money from, people would always chooce to be selfish and decide to not give it away...

Your examples are right, but I think it's very easy to see why somebody can be suspicious about something that costs nothing. Just look around you, everything has a price label attached. We are taught that the more expensive the higher quality and cooler it is; be it cars, clothes or electronic devices, there are only enough exceptions as to make of this an almost universal rule. Even you have a price tag that gives the measure of how valuable you are, i.e. your salary.

I think that the attitudes are slowly changing.

People are far more open towards using Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice and similar software than 10 years ago.

Perhaps. Another explanation would be that positive attitudes towards free software were always present in a small group, but only more recently its increasing quality and availability enabled more people to using it. I can only speak for myself, but I started using Linux out of the idea of somehow escaping the mainstream ways. An operative system created by 'hackers' you say? Hey, that sounds cool, let's try it out! If I learned about it some 5 years before I actually did, perhaps the obstacles would be too great to overcome and I'd given up. Nowadays there are still difficulties--there's no use in denying it--but I'd say the bar is at its historic lowest and will only keep falling.

Anyway...I guess the lesson to take home is that what in principle sounds like the most obvious reason to 'sell' free software to somebody, its price, turns out to be a minor point--let alone questions about 'libre' software. If the expected quality isn't there, only a determined minority will be ready to wait for better times. But Vincent will be happy to know that my friend is struggling learning the Blender interface instead of having downloaded a pirate copy of whatever X D

[deanjo]

I can't see why he thought that gratis software must be worse than paid for software.

Well in all fairness it's probably a "once bitten, twice shy" thing. Lets be honest, there is tones of crap "free" software out there and there is with paid software as well but all to often the word "free" is used in scams and thus the hesitation to consider it otherwise.

[V!NCENT]

But Vincent will be happy to know that my friend is struggling learning the Blender interface instead of having downloaded a pirate copy of whatever X D

Actualy, while Blender isn't maybe the best of the best modeling tool, it is the only tool that allows you to make entire movies or games and it is the most 'user-friendly' at doing so.

There is no competition in this.