A few days ago, I saw a tweet from Simon Phipps pointing out a TED talk done last month by Amanda Palmer. In his blog post Simon highlighted the final words of Amanda in her talk on the music industry:
People have been obsessed with the wrong question: "How do we /make/ people pay for music?" What if we start asking "How do we /let/ people pay for music?".
I love Amanda Palmer, I think her music is fantastic, and I love the energy and off-the-wall-ness of it. Watching her hobble around the streets of [blah] with her band playing the Ukelele and singing in a phone-box is awesome. She was once playing a gig with her band The Dresden Dolls in Oakland, whilst I was just down the road in San Francisco and I didn't realise until it was over… which was gutting.
Amanda has done a number of experiments with regards to economic models for her music. In short, she talks about *trust*. Rather than try to demand people pay for your art, trust them to pay you for it instead.
I'm currently on my way to the massive CeBIT expo in Hannover to man the Plone stand at the CMS Gardens area. This is a sub-expo of Open Source Content Management systems all in one place. There will b a number of individuals from the Plone community coming together to promote Plone at the event.
What has Amanda Palmer's talk on the music industry got to do with Open Source software?
One of things Amanda talks about is letting her fans and community support her. She decided to give her music away freely and to encourage copying and distribution of her music. She was amazed to see what a response she got and how many people backed her ventures.
Sound familiar? Yes, it sounds a bit like Open Source software. Open Source software in it's purest community-driven sense. Not the openwash-type thing where a company decides to release an 'open source' version of their product as a loss leader.
Even within Open Source Software things have been changing. New tools and new ways of connecting with people have been a catalyst for new ways to connecting with developers and customers. Github, the social coding platform has enabled the lowest bar of entry we have ever seen.
Going beyond that Gittip, the service that allows you to /tip/ developers small sums of cash for the work they are doing. Someone fixes a bug in your code? Maybe tip them. Some developers have been moving to this model as an experiment in working full time. Rather than be a part of one particular company or contract to one particular client, they are using tools like Gittip and Chipin to crowd sourcing the funding of developing features for software directly. Within the Plone community we have people like Rok Garbas, Lennart Regebro, Nejc Zupan, Nathan Van Gheem and others who have come forward at points to ask for people to directly support the development work they are doing.
As Amanda says in her talk: "It's kinda counterintuitive for a lot of artists, they don't want to ask for things. It is not easy. It is not easy to ask. A lot of artists have a problem with this. Asking makes you vulnerable". I think many of the developers I've mentioned could be considered artists. Artists in the code they produce and the work they do. Many people do not appreciate the creativity involved in software development. Taking this further, a peer of mine when I was studying Computer Science at the University of Bristol, Chris Parsons went on to be a part of a whole movement called 'Software Craftmanship'.
All of this takes trust. WIthout trust none of this works. You have to be able to trust that the work will be done, and you have to trust that there are people there to pay for it.
Amanda talks of stage diving, and stripping naked and being drawn on by fans. Now, I'm not suggesting developers go that far ;) That said… in the early days of the Plone community there was an annual event in the Austrian Alps called the Snow Sprint. 30-odd developers locked away in a log cabin at the top of a mountain coding away, drinking beer and sitting in the sauna. I think once you've sat naked in a Sauna with someone and dived out to roll in the snow to cool off… you can probably trust them with code.
But it does highlight the importance of connecting with people and building those connections.
That is why I'm sat on a plane right now, heading to an Expo to meet up with a number of Plone developers whom I must see three or four times a year somewhere in the world. Building those connections, and trust. Not just within our community, but also to meet new people and to talk to them about Plone and to extend that trust further.
Amanda talked about people being confused by 'no hard sticker price'. The concept of you paying what you think something is worth to you. People see it as a risk. In her mind it is not a risk, but an expression of trust.
But music is a very personal thing. How does that translate into the enterprise? Can we make the same leaps that Amanda Palmer is making in the music world in our world of software?