Companies that produce and sell Free Software face a problem: some competitors use unethical and destructive means to compete, making their products cheaper and winning bids. This kind of market behaviour is increasingly becoming a problem for Free Software producers.
Destructive practices include marketing proprietary software under the guise of being Free Software, whether by using free/open wording, by introducing new licences that falsely appear to be free, or by imposing additional barriers that make it more difficult to use the freedoms offered by Free Software.
Other competitors sell Free Software products without contributing to their development and maintenance, profiting from the work of others but giving nothing back to the community. This allows them to offer low prices while raising the costs of maintenance for the original manufacturers. For some players, there seems to be no limit to their creativity when it comes to undercutting competitors and winning bids.
The Free Software Foundation Europe has been analysing these and other problematic market practices over the last few years. In this talk we will take a closer look at them and show why they harm Free Software manufacturers and the Free Software ecosystem. We will then discuss ways to limit the success of such practices.
