From: "Peter Gordon" <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Aaron Konstam wrote:
Well that depends on the answer to the question that open software
advocates have to answer. How do oyu make money on software that you
give away free?
I think this is a critical question that needs a workable answer.
The answer to that one is rather straightforward: Sell warrantied
support and services. Red Hat has proven time and time again that such
a business model can be and *is* quite profitable. :)
It is for a large organization. It is not for me as a single person
consultant. I either create new software and give it away or I create
once and start supporting it on the phone for the rest of my life for
pay until some other person creates competition for my software. If I
write the software PROPERLY there is no need for support. Therefore I
am out in the cold.
I do NOT want to spend my life trying to live off support contracts.
I do not suffer fools gladly. (Honest problems I do enjoy helping
people solve. But some people just come up with absurd questions and
demands which can set me off. This might be someone with a grandiose
system administer title in their message who cannot do a simple
apropos and man or demand list members to remove the self styled
"system administrator" for a large company from this mailing list.
That kind of arrogance does not sit well with me. After too many
repeats of these absurdities I lose it.)
By the way, has anybody noticed how much a license for Qt costs if
you want to get PAID for software you right? I might as well simply
get an MSDN license and develop for XP. Ditto with respect to the
RHEL costs. They cost MORE than XP in the long run.
This surely is an issue that needs solution, especially for the small
developer.
{^_^}
