BuyLibre is a marketplace for cage-free,
fair-trade software.
Software is cage free when: the work may be used
for any purpose in any field of endeavor; users may have
the work changed as they wish by anyone they wish; and users
have transparency as to their software’s operation.
Software is fair trade when: the work's unit
price approaches zero as it is broadly adopted; pricing is
not discriminatory; costs are shared equitably; developers
can request market compensation for their efforts; and
developers may improve works made by others.
BuyLibre operates an on-line store having cooperatively
owned software. BuyLibre acquires creative works from
developers in exchange for a revenue sharing contract that
names a per-unit price and a total community cost. When
combined purchases of a work reach the total community
cost, such that the developer is fully compensated,
additional sales equitably reward earlier adopters with a
rebate. With further sales, the per-unit price is reduced
until the work becomes free of charge and is released under
a permissive open source license.
BuyLibre provides a free market for the
change of software.
Acquired works are made available to competing developers
so that users could, if they wish, switch vendors without
abandoning their investment. With compositional pricing,
where the purchase of each work bundles payments for its
dependencies, developers have a cooperative framework with
ample revenue opportunity. Subject to market demand, users
have competitive upgrade options for the evolution of the
software they have invested in and become dependent upon.
BuyLibre offers a sustainable business model for
software developers. BuyLibre differs from free
software in a practical way: we assert that software
need not be free of charge (gratis) so long as key
user freedoms (libre) are held central. That said,
BuyLibre software differs from proprietary licensed
software since users are not beholden to a given vendor
for support or upgrades. In this licensing alternative,
developers earn a return on their investment when users
collectively purchase shares in the cooperatively owned
works that they have contributed.
