Eric S. Raymond on GPL and BSD licenses. & Microsoft coming to Linux

["Jérôme M. Berger"]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Sergey Gromov wrote:
> Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:38:45 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:
> 
>> When you buy 
>> a car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to 
>> software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any 
>> warranty if you mess with the internals of its product, but they 
>> shouldn't prevent you access to those internals.
> 
> I hear automotive analogies here and there as "explanations" why open
> source is good.  But automotive does not apply.
> 
> Yes you can buy Ford, modify it and sell it at a higher price.  But you
> cannot put Ford out of business this way because you must start from
> scratch on every single car you modify and that's a significant amount
> of work.  And if you actually try to manufacture copies of Ford cars
> you'll be sued for patent infringement.
> 
> Now, how would you make money on free, as in libre, software?  How would
> you make a free, single-player RPG and still stay in business?  All you
> can under GPL is take payment for distribution, as long as nobody else
> starts to distribute it for free.  This means giving your hard work for
> free, as in gratis, not business.

	Ask RedHat, or any of the increasingly large number of companies
that *do* make money on free, as in libre, software. Basically, you
make your customers pay for specific developments and
customizations. Once the software is released you still get paid for
tech support and maintenance.

		Jerome
- --
mailto:jeberger at free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger at jabber.fr
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAknPI10ACgkQd0kWM4JG3k/YagCfecpRE+55iKAXYxXgO+Q0Vml+
KxIAoL7Yno0jCJvlgaZwnX6xOXYAa0ug
=uTy5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----