Re: Freemium (was: Persee in danger)

[jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca]

Indeed, "freemium" is a model often used in free software. The 
tricky detail, though, lies in the ways in which the free is 
"libre" or not (free beer vs. free speech to use Stahlman's 
famous distinction, hence my use of the romance languages' 
"libre" which refers to free speech).

For example, Google gives us free pdf texts in page images, but 
they are not very "libre" in that their page image status does 
not allow for much re-use, etc. One can also see publishers 
gradually giving access to frozen texts (just like Google) while 
selling what is fast becoming the dominant mode of reading, i.e. 
reading with machines. The recent bounty call by Elsevier for 
"executable paper" (http://www.executablepapers.com/) is a good 
example of what is coming.

Clifford Lynch said it very well several years ago: there is no 
open access without open computation.

In conclusion, "Freemium" is an amusing term, a mot-valise, as 
the French would say (i.e. conflating two words into one: free 
and premium). Well handled, it provides an interesting framework 
for free/libre entities, but it does not go any further than 
that.

Jean-Claude Guedon

Le dimanche 13 mars 2011 a 16:33 -0400, Okerson, Ann a ecrit :

> Not yet familiar with the term "Freemium," I looked it up online.
> We've heard about many such ventures, including in open
> acess-world, and a number of them have been mentioned off an on,
> on this list.
>
> The short Wikipedia article is here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium
>
> Cordially, Ann Okerson/Yale Library
>