Free products - are they good or bad on balance?

You know, I'm absolutely in two minds about this.

Some of you may have noticed Prokovy Neva (I think thats right) posting his view that giving away free products is bad for secondlife.

Over in "New Products" at
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CrystalShard Foo is offering a free TV for streaming movies.

This wonderful free product is a perfect example of the dilemma.

Crystal appears ar first sight to have bestowed a fine gift on the rest of us, generously giving of her effort and time.

But has she?

How many people were working away to develop movie TV's to sell, who will now stop, give up, not bother ?

There might have been ten or twenty different offerings. Each one embodying different ideas and approaches, and with different facilities. And at different prices. The creators would have learned from the competition, adjusted their prices, refined their products, added in new creative ideas. A few of them might have gone on refining their products, and supplying updates, longterm - encouraged of course by the income it provided.

In short, maybe a couple of dozen scripters might have felt it worthwhile to put effort into this.

But with something like this available for free, will developers feel this effort is worthwhile?

On balance will the community be better off or worse off ?

And this free gift is even offered and advertised in the "new products" forum. Is a free gift a product ?

I really don't know. But I think the question is worth asking.

I really am asking a question here. I can see both sides of the argument. I simply can't make my mind up, but this does seem a perfect example of the dilemma.

What do people think?
Usually everyone jumps on Prok from a great height - but think it over..................

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Forgive me if my attempt to create a poll messes up - I don't really know how to do it, and as I am about to press the "submit" button it still hasn't asked me what the question responses should be. Fingers crossed.......

If people make things worth buying over free stuff, then they will be bought. There really isn't much more to it. If people give up working on something because there is already something out there on the market for cheaper or free, then that's their own problem and can't be blamed on others.

CrystalShard is one hell of a scripter. The code she put up in the library for that is quite wonderful.

Offering it for free will only discourage those who would have released a product not up to that standard. For the rest, all she's done is "set the bar". Media control objects will now have to be something more than what she's given away to be saleable. Rest assured, as cool as it is, there's more than could be done. Not to mention, it doesn't cover all uses either; so there's gobs of room in niche and specialty markets.

Seeing as competition is the core of a healthy capitalist economy, I think free products of this quality are a very, very good thing!

If those same scripters feel they can do a better job of it, or add features of value -- you bet. They'll know they can still find a market.

I think a positive example is the clothing "industry" in SL. There's a lot available for free and some of it is really quite nice. Yet people still appear to be successful at selling their own designs for hundreds of $Lindens. I think SL is far better off as a result -- new or frugal players are far from excluded from enjoying the fruits of creativity, and the creative are far from hampered in running their "businesses" if they so choose.

Second Life isn't like the First in that if you make a product in First Life and give it away free, there's only ever one copy of that in existence and you have to make each individual one... so that giving them away makes no economic sense. In Second Life you only have a one time cost to yourself when making the product, then there are infinite copies you can give away. If you feel that the utility gained by making other people happy is enough to justify this one time cost, then you'll give it away free. It comes down to the individual when making this desision. Some other person might feel that they need to put a $L price onto it.

As to whether making them free hurts other people's ability to develop similar products, free is just a price point. In many senses "you get what you pay for." That is if someone creates a TV script and model that is in many ways superior to her's, and puts a $L price on it, than it will sell simply because of its better features.

If someone wants a streaming TV with lots of cool features then they'll pay for the better one. If someone just wants something basic, then they'll go find the free one. Using sweeping generalizations like "a free TV script will ruin all innovation in TV scripts" isn't fair. There's incentive to make something better so you can sell it for money.

[edit] And your poll is fairly biased. Where's the "The pricing of a product has no bearing whatsoever on whether it is good or bad."

I understand the concern but I don't think it's actually a problem.

1) Generally speaking, if you're trying to sell something which someone else is giving away, you just need to be making something more sophisticated. Most people are only giving away stuff that's releatively easy for a skilled person to do. There are exceptions, but that is the general case.

2) Support for a product is very valuable and people giving things away generally aren't going to support them. At the least they're not going to feel committed to support them. So it's possible to compete with a free item on support if nothing else.

It's a long standing tradition in SL to give to the community - everything from scripts, to buildings, to clothes, vehicles, home furnishings, art work, weapons, etc.

This tradition has in on way hurt ANYTHING or ANYONE - and only recently has it been suggested it's harmful! Bullshit i say!

People give back to this community - and it's a false and bogus issue about gifts given freely hurting Second Life.

In that spirit - the first 10 people with Forum start dates in March or April respond to this thread and type the words "Give me something free" will receive $100 Lindens from me.

Tren has it right. To blame a free product for non innovation in a field is bubkiss. There are tons of free scripts available, yet it doesn't stop people from making simular products for sale.

If people can't come up with ideas for a television that offer a benefit over a free version, thats their problem.

The script to make a movie streaming script is VERY simple, if Crystal wouldn't have done it, I would have, and if I didn't do it, someone else would have. For scripters, certain things are just easy, but for other people its not, so to make up for it, often the easy stuff is given away.

"Is a free gift a product ?"
Yes.

Ever get a "Free sample" or "Free gift basket"? Are not the items in those products?

I agree with what Cadroe, Oz and others have said. And more power to CrystalShard.

Damn you Merwan!!!

Stupid May

Hear Hear. If a business model cannot adapt, it will wither and die.

Give me something free

(and you are 100% on the money, MerMaster)

edit: Oh darn, i just noticed my account started in feb. Poopers.

i voted "only..." with the following in mind. free items have their uses:

to be an example of how something can be done;
to be a sample of items that are for sale;
to provide newbies with a few things before they have money or learn to build, texture & script.

free items also have the following inherent disadvatages:

people tend to stuff their inventories full of freebies and copies of freebies and renamed copies of the same freebies and retextured copies of the renamed versions of the original freebies adding to the massive overload the asset system is already having to manage;

too many free variations of an item can flood the market to the point that it's nearly impossible to sell anything like it. they don't necessarily; but they can.

so overall, i can't say that freebies are always bad for second life; but i can't say that they're always good either.

Free things tend to inspire people to make better products, they get the free item they look at it and use it a while and then think "Hey I could make this better by..." I've done that myself. and some of the improvments are so much better they actually sell them. If someone wants to take their SL time and give away something they made for free, that is the way they want to play their game. No one should bitch about it, it just makes them a nice person.

Yeah, unfortunately Prok has been unfairly banned and I can only believe because he is a lightning rod for new thinking, unfairly targeted as well.

However, let me just say-

This is a vitally important debate, much like most of the issues that Prok brings up.

Free intellectual property unfortunately is an emotional issue (look at Merwan's reply, usually a calm and sensible fellow) and one that is not treated like the pure social and economic puzzle that it is.

Other interesting social and economic puzzles:

+ Communism, for example, has shown to have a lot of effects, many of which do not create proper incentive for innovation.

+ Capitalism has been shown to ravage the commons and wreak havoc in many different ways.

+ Freedom of speech, while interesting, doesn't always apply. We certainly should not be free to give away plans on how to build bio-terror bombs and what not.

The point being that while we all have extreme viewpoints on these subjects, the truth always lies somewhere else, generally in compromise.

I believe that the truth when it comes to the freedom to give away free goods lies somewhere in compromise as well.

One problem with freedom is that that object transfer is purely frictionless (or near frictionless). People can give away objects willy-nilly. What if we proposed a 1 L$ per object transfer? This may create the right balance between freedom and incentive to innovate.

There are many other types of solutions. I can only say, guaranteed, that a faith-based approach to this problem is the wrong one. We need to understand it better and we need to think intelligently out of the box.

Hey, I have no pride Give me something free!

Perhaps the profit is not in the viewer but in the streaming content?

Many of the "free media viewers" offer some free content, but all offer premium content which is really what everyone wants.

I can view free tv streams that play movies, videos and such that are in the public domain. But if I want to watch a licensed version of a current movie, I would prolly have to pay some sort of premium fee.

So it comes down to...perhaps SL will be seeing its first "cable companies?" Sure you can have an excellent viewer for free...but would you pay linden to a stream provider who offers licensed movies and pay per view type events?

Just something to ponder.

-Taylor

edited to add this URL of a service being offered that may do just this:
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SL is designed for entertainment FIRST, and has steered toward profit and money SECOND, not EVERYTHING in SL has to be made for profit, why cant someone make something for the community for free, and everyone enjoy it? if free products cut out profit, so be it. make something better or different and it will sell. there are millions of avenues for money if you just HAVE to make some, but for the most part not many products are worth that much any how.

I am EXTREMELY for free exchange of ideas and free products, they encourage growth and higher standards, as well as help new players who have much to contribute reach a higher potential and in the end SL comes out all the better!

I think what will happen at some point is someone will start to release free goods which may have 'adware' or 'spyware' in them.

At that point, this debate may become redundant.

Also, fortunately, as SL upgrades they tend to break scripts. It's unlikely anyone is going to provide full free upgrade support for free scripts.

Why is it every time someone questions a scripts intention or affect on the grid, the scripter rambles on about their freedom to do as they please and blah blah; but when someone is giving a script away for free some of the other scripters say we need to limit or put a cost on that freedom??? Maybe we charge 1 L$ every time certain LSL functions are called? Or 1$ for every temp on rez object a script creates? $1 for every script compile? And yes I know we arnt only talking about scripted objects.

Give me something free. (Pretty please?) LOL

If someone creates something, it is their choice if they wish to give it away or sell it. I was given free items as a newbie and have passed a alot of that on to new people.

That has not stopped me from buying things...quite the opposite. So why the controversy?

Greed

I was developing a movie projector for retail before the official release of 1.6. It was intended to be a hybrid of my land URL streaming radio. On second thought, I realized there was several issues with streaming video that made it undesirable at this point.

From my standpoint, I have no issue with CrystalShard releasing a free version, in fact, I am delighted. Her scripting talents are excellent and she has every right to do so.

I agree with most of the posters here, that innovation and features based on user feedback and/or quirks is what makes a superior product for the marketplace.

These aren't necessarily bad ideas. SL is considering them for certain commands, like XML-RPC.