Document Foundation starts charging €8.99 for 'free' LibreOffice

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/libre_office_macos_fees/

by samizdis • 4 years ago

128 112 4 years ago

wodenokoto• 4 years ago

They're not the first in the world to setup up an optional charge for their own free software, and are not the first to use an app store as a front for allowing people to contribute money to a project.

TheUndead96• 4 years ago

I can see how this would elicit quite a negative response, but getting an app onto the App Store requires non-trivial fees. Even just code-signing an app requires money that could be better spent otherwise. This money would have had to have come from somewhere, and I don't think 9 euros is unreasonable.

The strength of projects like LibreOffice is not that they are monetarily free (Google Docs exists), but that the source code is open.

tpxl• 4 years ago

The difference between 0 and 1$ is bigger than the difference between 1$ and 100$.

Edit: That being said, I welcome the additional of an optional charge.

MonkeyClub• 4 years ago

1 > 99? You’re sure about that?

Or do you mean that the jump to start charging is the big decision, not the amount?

laundermaf3• 4 years ago

getting an app onto the App Store requires non-trivial fees

That's a cop-out. I guarantee they already get at least $99/year via donations by macOS users. If they wanted to charge directly, $0.99 would easily cover those fees, assuming 130 people buy it per year.

The reality is that they want to get some money back, and that's ok. Using the Apple fees as an excuse isn't necessary.

joelhaasnoot• 4 years ago

I mean sort of, but you also have to deal with Apple's App Store rules and goons...

forgotpwd16• 4 years ago

I guarantee

Really? How?

Lutger• 4 years ago

A negative response would be ridiculous, as is the clickbait title, and I don't think losing those users will actually be a great loss.

LibreOffice is free as in beer. Not only the source, but also the binaries, and also for MacOs, are distributed for free. You can just go to the download page and grab it.

The only thing thats being charged is going through the App Store. If this really 'backfires' as some people seem to suggest, I think the project is better off just abandoning the App Store.

zimbatm2• 4 years ago

One question that often comes up on HN is how to make open source sustainable. This is one avenue that will allow funding of open source applications.

What we found out with Spotif, Netflix, ... is that people are willing to pay for a convenient access to media. They could get the same content on pirate websites but it takes a while and there are some risks associated with it.

This dynamic probably also true for software distribution channels. Users can download and compile the source, and side-load it on their phone. It's just more complicated and you don't get automated updates anymore.

The main blocker right now is that people are used of getting things for free. Changing that social contract is going to be difficult.

nullify88• 4 years ago

Regarding convenient access, I'd argue that since there are many providers of TV media with their own libraries, the space is, if not already, becoming fragmented and inconvenient. I often open the wrong app, trying to find the media I want to watch.

"Oh its only available in another region".

"Oh it got pulled from Netflix".

Providers introducing Ads will make it worse.

challenger-derp• 4 years ago

Well put.

... willing to pay for convenient access ...

Convenience as a monetization idea should be considered by more open-source devs: binaries compiled for various OS version, optional cloud compute/storage (e.g. Zotero), prioritized assistance (e.g. Tailscale), etc.

[...] people are used of getting things for free. Changing that social contract is going to be difficult.

Society has to gotten used to paying for people's time & expertise in many conventional areas (e.g. healthcare, education, legal advice, food) but still aren't used to paying for open-source work they consume.

asutekku• 4 years ago

Because open source software is often freely available without major restrictions. All the other examples you posted have a very clear paywalls.

jillesvangurp2• 4 years ago

There are other models. Lots of OSS has existed for decades without compromising on any freedoms, including pricing. And will continue to exist for decades/centuries more. Most of it just continues to thrive on individual and (usually) corporate sponsored work.

The only issue is with corporate entities struggling to turn OSS into exploitable monopolies and control points. That's just not how OSS works. Companies that try to get creative with license restrictions, simply end up destroying their OSS communities. Community is conditional on the ability to actually use the resulting software and receiving a license to do so. That's what OSS is. People/companies contribute for free on the condition that the resulting software is free for them and others to use. It's a simple deal. You break it, people walk away. Your share holders are not our problem; but your problem.

Nothing wrong with closed source where you sell a license. If that's what you want to do as a company, that's what you do. And then people either buy it or not. Most of us are probably involved with some for-profit software company. I know I am.

The issue with Libreoffice is that it is open source and third parties can undercut the price set by the Document Foundation. by simply releasing it themselves.

Oracle found out the hard way that trying to "own" OSS doesn't work with Java, Mysql, Hudson, Open Office and a few other things they got out of the Sun acquisition. Other companies just took the source code and rolled their own builds and started distributing them. In the case of some of these products, Oracle used the trademark to insist on controlling distribution and actual forks and renames happened instead. Oracle lost control over the projects they inherited.

But for better or for worse, OpenJDK can be gotten from several sources and Oracle has largely given up trying to monetize distribution (you can still pay them for a Oracle produced build if you insist, but few people do), Jenkins continues to thrive, MariaDB and other databases are doing great, and indeed Libre Office is shipping as part of several linux distributions as the surviving & more successful fork of Open Office (which still exists as an Apache Project).

Good open source tends to survive the corporate entities it comes from. Sun Microsystems is long gone and absorbed into Oracle. But we still have the source code. And kudos to them creating/acquiring all the wonderful software I mentioned in this comment. They failed as a company but their software legacy is still powering our industry today. That's how good OSS works.

So the Document Foundation is well within their rights to try to charge for the software they steward but don't own. You can always build and distribute your own builds. For free. That's what the license says. Nobody is under any obligation to actually hand over their cash. They seem to have an existential problem in terms of their financing.

zimbatm2• 4 years ago

Oracle and Document Foundation are coming from different places. I don't know if it's fair to compare them like that. One reason that Oracle lost control of their projects is that the motivation behind is clearly profit-driven. It clashes with the motivations of OSS contributors who get the feeling of getting exploited.

You can argue that the Document Foundation also tries to make some profit but I would expect that it's in the spirit of allowing more contributors to be able to work on the project full time instead of lining the pockets of the shareholders. It's still a social good.

pessimizer• 4 years ago

Lots of OSS has existed for decades without compromising on any freedoms, including pricing.

We can't start making up freedoms whenever we're annoyed. Free beer has never been part of the equation, explicitly.

The issue with Libreoffice is that it is open source and third parties can undercut the price set by the Document Foundation. by simply releasing it themselves.

It's going to be hard to undercut €8.99, with the guarantees of authenticity and being current that you're going to get from the Document Foundation. There will, of course, be a free place (or more than one free place) to download it, but the site will be so ugly that only techies will know to trust it. And if there were a free version in the Mac app store competing with the Document Foundation version, it would be very suspicious.

Also, it's important for everyone in FOSS to charge Apple owners. They're rich and can afford it.

I remember that it used to be tough (10+ years ago) to find a compiled version of GIMP for Windows without paying. I thought it was a good thing, and still do.

The only issue is with corporate entities struggling to turn OSS into exploitable monopolies and control points.

The GPL guards against this, so copyleft is an option if you don't want to do free work for giant corporations (without them having to do free work for you.) This won't defend you against the efficient provision of your application as a service, but maybe if your application can be delivered like that, consider going lightly proprietary. You're not going to outcompete FAANG in providing web services.

bitigchi• 4 years ago

Strongly support this, as the revenue accumulated from the App Store will be used to improve the Mac version, which currently provides a horrible experience while using on a macOS system.

bzzzt2• 4 years ago

I'm wondering if anybody uses it on Mac at all. If you don't need lots of features iWork is provided for free (and can handle lots of Office documents). If you need to have Microsoft Office you can buy it.

Tried the Mac version a while ago. Looks horribly out of place, and it struggled to update the (retina resolution) screen with only a blank document open. That was a known bug but deemed unimportant...

cracrecry• 4 years ago

I can't see where the problem lies. Open Source is free as in freedom, but you can charge for it. E.g Long time ago I paid for Suse Linux distributions.

I see everyday University's and companies laboratories and offices paying tens of thousands of dollars for proprietary software a year. It is not unreasonable to pay hundreds or thousands for OSS if with that you support development on the free.

mfer• 4 years ago

To add to this...

I remember buying physical media to get my first distros of Linux. The source was open but the builds/dists were what I was paying for.

Open source doesn't mean free distributions/builds or free support.

If you look at the open source definition[1] it has to do with the source and what you can do with it. The key theme here is the source itself.

I've spent a significant amount of my time around open source and having a healthy functional ecosystem of people around it is important. For that to happen you have to solve for the financial parts.

Note, I'm not endorsing or rejecting this document foundation move. I've not thought about it enough to do so.

[1] https://opensource.org/osd

wjnc2• 4 years ago

Ha yes this is a nice memory. Getting Debian 3 cd’s and then failing to do my first install because obviously with only one PC you can’t look up a guide online. (My dad always bought the big OS manuals, like 30 cm of paper per MS DOS-version, but this was my first time on my own.) Struggle, struggle to get to text only. Go onto IRC for help. All channels block you because “don’t use root for online”. Well another few days and user created and even X works. Hmm, no gaming on Linux. Miss that. Back to XP. Decade later. Proton is a gift. Installation is easy. Did pick up the Linux basics old school. Never looked back. Decades fly by.

badrabbit• 4 years ago

So long as you can refuse to pay and just get the source, build it yourself and use it for free.

ColonelPhantom2• 4 years ago

That's not actually required for free software (as in freedom), but once you buy you need to get the source as well, and should be able to do with it whatever you want.

E.g. the GPL mandates not "you will make the source freely available", it mandates "you will make the source available to everyone who receives the software".

Furthermore, the Document Foundation will still be offering free downloads of LO for macOS, they just add another way of getting it that does cost money.

rascul2• 4 years ago

Long time ago I paid for Suse Linux distributions.

The box set even came with a book.

mikecoles• 4 years ago

Pins and a plushy mascot as well.

Asooka2• 4 years ago

I see one problem with this - for outside contributors. If I contribute a patch to a project that is free of charge, then my contribution is on the same altruistic grounds as other devs' contributions - for both of us the profit from our contributions is the continued existence and improvement of the software. However, if an organisation is charging money in some way, then I do not profit equally - I get better software, but the organisation gets both better software and money, which they pay to their staff developers. That is, my contribution has calculable monetary value and someone else gets paid for it.

Obviously for small contributions, e.g. writing or updating a bug report, or fixing some trivial one-line bug, the amount is insignificant and not worth thinking about. I'm thinking more about larger contributions - extra features, tricky bugs, etc - stuff that takes weeks or months to develop. You can expect outside contributors to want some guarantee of getting paid for large contributions if you're a project that is actively monetised in some way, even if the software is also available completely for free.

benj1114• 4 years ago

True. But the approach we're talking about here is more akin to fundraising. The sum is fairly nominal, and there are alternative free ways of getting the software.

mkl95• 4 years ago

This article's headline is a bit misleading

[...] only when sold via Apple's Mac App Store.

justinclift• 4 years ago

The approach they're taking here seems reasonable.

If things work out ok with it, then it'll be a useful revenue stream for them to build further Community enhancing things. Hopefully. :)

cvccvroomvroom• 4 years ago

Does anyone use it? It's slow and doesn't do much that other things don't already do for free. This should reduce demand for it and put it out of reach of the global poor at the benefit of bringing in more money.

qwerty4561273• 4 years ago

Almost everyone (except some businesses who used legal) I knew used pirated MS Office until about 2010. Most of them are using LibreOffice by now. MS Office is getting increasingly rare.

Nowadays I would buy MS Office just because it looks eye-candy but they have seemingly abandoned selling classic Office versions. I absolutely refuse to use software that requires me to sign-in with an online account.

bzzzt2• 4 years ago

In my company there's no escaping Google Drive. It's miles ahead of Microsoft if you want to collaborate on a document with multiple people.

laundermaf3• 4 years ago

Most of them are using LibreOffice by now

s/LibreOffice/Google Docs Editors/

absove• 4 years ago

At a glance an iPhone seems like one of the worst general purpose computing device for the global poor so in this case it's maybe not that big of a deal.

benbristow• 4 years ago

This is not for iOS's App Store, it's for the MacOS App Store (for the laptops/desktops etc.)

Cloudef• 4 years ago

Makes sense, putting software on apple's store is not free after all

qwerty4561273• 4 years ago

Clickbait. "only when sold via Apple's Mac App Store". It's totally Okay to charge for specific installation medium. E.g. you can sell Linux distro disks for whatever a price you want and keep the money (although donating a part of it would be nice), you just can't ban copying.

traceroute66• 4 years ago

It is likely an unpopular view, but IMHO the open source community's bête noire about charging for stuff is effectively of its own doing.

Open source has been driven by quite a vocal community of "stick it to the man" generation of freetards who live by the faux-arguments that:

   (a) "because its open source it must be better"
   (b) "X is free, so why should anybody pay EvilCorp for a license ?"

Then you have software like LibreOffice that literally shout FREE in their own product name !

The Open Source community has effectively won its own race to the bottom and its going to be tough if not impossible to reverse that trend. Especially as the open source community also bitches and moans about any sort of restrictive license.

Don't misunderstand me, I understand the arguments for seeking to charge for open source. I'm just saying there's a genie that needs to be put back in its bottle somehow....

ForHackernews3• 4 years ago

LibreOffice that literally shout FREE in their own product name !

Libre != Gratis, as any speaker of a romance language could tell you.

The free software (not "open source") community has always and forever been crystal-clear about this: Free software is about freedom, not zero price.

diffeomorphism4• 4 years ago

Yeah, and we should help beer escape from its captivity and label cellphone contracts with a voice flatrate as free speech.

LibreOffice that literally shout FREE in their own product name

I do not understand the point you are trying to make here. You were complaining about how English-speaking people misunderstand the word "free", but for "libre" there isn't this ambiguity?

boomboomsubban5• 4 years ago

My only issue with this is that Apple gets 30% of the money.

titoCA3213• 4 years ago

Well Document Foundation is "free" to host their own payment services and download servers deal with customers and MasterCard and Visa and American Express to avoid paying the 30%. But they did not, so they must figure that they can't beat the 30% once all the costs add up.

diffeomorphism4• 4 years ago

Are they? In the mac store? Because the comparison with payment on their own website is kinda irrelevant.

boomboomsubban5• 4 years ago

They already offer download servers for free, and I doubt a credit card fee comes close to 30%. I'm not positive what their reasons for choosing to charge on the app store are, but "they couldn't self host it for cheaper" isn't it.

danpalmer4• 4 years ago

In principle I support this, but I can't help but think it's going to backfire.

Users buying LibreOffice on the Mac App Store are not going to be doing so because they care about free software – if they did they probably wouldn't be on a Mac and would probably download from official channels, perhaps donating directly if they want to contribute so that Apple don't take 30%.

This means that those users buying it are users who would otherwise buy/use iWork, Microsoft Office, or Google Docs, and I'm pretty sure they're going to be in for a bit of a shock. LibreOffice is usable, but it's not the same in terms of usability.

So, they're about to get a bunch of users who stumble onto their software, pay for it, have a bad experience, and then expect and are essentially entitled to customer support. Customer support through the App Store is hard at the best of times, so good luck. I somehow doubt the Document Foundation has factored this in to their pricing, or that they even have a customer support team.

leidenfrost• 4 years ago

Commercial FOSS software is in a weird situation

The code is open, so anyone can compile it for free, and when enough people care, any of them with a bit of free time is permitted to distribute builds, like people do for Ungoogled Chromium.

Also, the teams and organizations that create Free Software are often non-profit organizations and volunteers, where customer care and market analysis is nonexistent.

The idea of selling free software is something that I see a lot in theory but almost never in practice. Sometimes I think it was just Stallman preaching what was applicable in his time bit it's not realistic in today's world.

phpisthebest• 4 years ago

It is more realistic in today's world.

There are a TON of open source projects I would be willing to support with corporate money if I could charge it as a "Sale" to my corp card, or invoice it as a "software sale" not a "Donation to a non-profit"

I need no approval to buy software, I need approval to donate company money.

diffeomorphism4• 4 years ago

There are trademarks available for this use case. See for instance redhat and centOS or firefox and iceweasel.

The main difficulties are that you have to provide some value/convenience (e.g. see krita on steam) and that if you mess up your project people might actually leave. For instance if the new MS office is dramatically worse people will drag their feet but will eventually buy it anyway, but when people did not like the direction of openoffice they did not stand for it and made libreoffice.

Cthulhu_• 4 years ago

It's going to backfire because you can't compete with free. Other than the name, what benefits would Libre offer over a fork that is distributed for free?

I mean they could come with an (enterprise) cloud offering or consultancy, but it would need a lot of infrastructure and development.

TheChaplain• 4 years ago

Likely not going to backfire, no.

Whoever forks and distributes it for free needs to set up the infrastructure, websites, community forums etc etc. It is not cheap in both money and man-hours.

Adding to that, they need to have the persistence to continue running and maintain the fork for years to come.

thesuitonym• 4 years ago

Why would it backfire? They're not taking away the free offering, they're just putting a paid offering in the App Store for people who want to download it that way.

sgent• 4 years ago

If they stop providing a signed binary outside the Mac Store (IDK if they did), then this is the only safe way to get it other than a self compile. Add in auto updates and supporting the foundation and it seems reasonable.

danpalmer4• 4 years ago

I don't think that's a problem for them, they don't appear to care if people don't buy it there. The issue is not people not buying it, it's a new type of user coming in, who is a _customer_ and therefore expects things that they have not had to offer before.

aaaaaaaaata2• 4 years ago

it's not the same in terms of usability.

Office 365 has made it so Libre is the clear winner in UX for most of my users last 5 years, honestly.

danpalmer4• 4 years ago

In what way?

My gut feeling is that most people mostly like their documents just being everywhere and being accessible everywhere. Office 365 storing things in the cloud, that's pretty much the case, you don't really need to understand where a file is (it's "in Office") or how to move them. Another bonus is not having to worry about what's been deleted. It's only based on anecdotes, but I suspect this is a lot more important to people than most other aspects of the software.

brudgers• 4 years ago

People care about free software to different degrees.

For example, the Mozilla Public License used by LibreOffice is neither free in the way of the GPL, nor free in the way of BSD or MIT...MPL lives in a middle ground between as--in-beer and as-in-freedom.

Personally, convenience is one of the reasons I run LibreOffice on Windows. Sure, all things being equal, I would rather not pay for Office. And all things being equal, I would rather use non-proprietary software.

Of course all things are never equal. And one of my personal turnoffs is managing the type of subscriptions, upgrades, etc. that are inevitable with proprietary software these days...Stay-off-my-lawn [redacted].

boomboomsubban5• 4 years ago

For example, the Mozilla Public License used by LibreOffice is neither free in the way of the GPL, nor free in the way of BSD or MIT...MPL lives in a middle ground between as--in-beer and as-in-freedom.

The MPL, GPL, and BSD licenses are all free as in freedom and generally free as in free beer, though as this article shows they don't have to be. They have different limitations, but let's not add another three more definitions to the already overworked word "free."

The GPL is copyleft, the BSD license is permissive, and the MPL is in between.

zokier• 4 years ago

Hardly an unprecedented move. For example Krita is also selling on Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/280680/Krita/

and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples around too.

zaik• 4 years ago

Conversations is selling on Google Play while being gratis on F-Droid: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conve...

npteljes2• 4 years ago

OsmAnd does something very similar. The OsmAnd+ version is $25 in the Play store, and free on F-Droid.

HankB99• 4 years ago

And the MSFT store before that. https://krita.org/en/item/krita-in-the-windows-store-an-upda...

npteljes2• 4 years ago

Another example is the (excellent) Mindustry game. $10 on Steam, "name your own price" on itch.io and other channels.

ElCheapo• 4 years ago

It costs $100 to publish apps on the App Store every single year. Plus Apple puts caveats and conditions that must be dealt with by people in the organization on company time.

Publishing your program on the App Store makes it convenient for the user to keep it in sync and updated, but it costs the publisher money. LibreOffice sure needs a bit of funding (like Anki) so I'm totally for putting it up for sale.

Let's also not forget that the App Store is a proprietary platform, meaning that publishing a FOSS program vs. a proprietary one is pretty much the same since you can only distribute binaries. Sure, you can download the source and install it on your machine if you want to pay $0, but you can already do exactly that by going to the developer's website and downloading the .DMG installer.

Twisell• 4 years ago

I actually bought the collabora vanilla Libre Office App on the Appstore that is mentioned in the article for 10€ because at some point the Mac HiDPI support was horrible on the stable community edition and I would rather pay 10€ than to figure out how to make thing work... Call me sheep I'm fine with it.

I guess the official release is meant to appeal to such use case and profit from direct monetary contribution to the project. I hope collabora played it fair an square and contributed to upstream, but an official release is a good way to ensure no middle party can cash in for a minimal packaging effort.

smileybarry• 4 years ago

Paint.NET does something similar and charges ~$8 on the Windows/Microsoft Store. You get smoother updates (via the Store and MSIX instead of their updater), easier installation and to support the project.

Totally fine by me and I ended up buying it there for the auto updates.

everyone• 4 years ago

You have to pay $100 a year to apple just to be able to have stuff on their store. Also you need to buy the ridiculously overpriced apple hardware to run xcode in order to submit to store.

They would need to charge something to cover those costs.

pabs38• 4 years ago

I note that Krita has a similar model; download for free from their site, or from the app stores for money.

pabs38• 4 years ago

I feel like there are always perverse incentives with open source business models, but I'm not sure I can see any with this one.

I would of course prefer it if people could pay what they want (or if they linked to the gratis version), since there might be folks stuck on macOS and that don't have spare cash this week to pay for LibreOffice.

pabs38• 4 years ago

I guess the model (without pay-what-you-want) punishes poor people with the extra cognitive load of installing the gratis version outside of the presumably more convenient App Store flow.

benj1114• 4 years ago

Ah yes. The poor people. With Macs...

taylodl• 4 years ago

'Free Software' has always referred to freedom, not price. You get the source and you're free to change the source to resolve whatever local issue you may have.

dethos• 4 years ago

By reading the article, it seems a reasonable approach. Similar to what several other open-source projects are already doing.

insane_dreamer• 4 years ago

Reasonable approach. It costs actual $ to publish apps through the Mac App Store (which this is limited to, for now at least), even if devs contribute their time for free.

nashashmi• 4 years ago

Similarly Paid version of paint.net is available thru Microsoft store.

All this does is make Apple Richer with the 30% tax.

Can I also host Libre office on appstore?

thebitstick• 4 years ago

[NeoOffice](https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php) is free on the App Store and offers Dark Mode while LibreOffice for macOS still does not.

Document Foundation starts charging €8.99 for 'free' LibreOffice

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