On Mon, 2006-06-12 at 10:51 -0700, jdow wrote: > 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. ---- there's nothing that says that you have to use qt and if you are developing GPL licensed software, the qt license is different than if you develop software that is restricted license. I can appreciate that you don't want to write software for free and end up supporting it for pay but it is a model that works for some people/companies but it doesn't necessarily work for everyone. That's why there is a choice. For a majority of computer usage, there is little software innovation. Many software companies simply regurgitate the same software over and over, fix some bugs, add a few features and sell the update to the same customers over and over again because that is the only business model that they understand. Things like GPL and Linux provide an alternative to this cycle for the consumer...they don't need to necessarily purchase/repurchase software and I think that the best example is the 'office suite' of products. More to the point, the 'purchase' of software is an investment in a company whose survival can be tenuous. Those who purchased 'Real World Accounting' found it lacking when Great Plains Accounting bought Real World and now it is just a memory since Microsoft purchased Great Plains and ceased all development/support of Real World. Purchased software has a history of being orphaned, swallowed, discontinued, abandoned, etc. GPL software has more durability and can be picked up by someone else where proprietary software simply disappears at corporate whim. Now as for RHEL vs. Microsoft - they are very different things that you are purchasing. Microsoft sells software with a license. Red Hat sells RHEL support. If you purchase Windows 2003 server and you call Microsoft for support, you have to pay. If you purchase RHEL ES 4 entitlement and you call Red Hat for support, the support is included...that is what Red Hat is selling. If you want RHEL ES 4 and don't need/want support, you can use a re-spin such as CentOS 4. Craig
