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

[Nick Sabalausky]

""Jérôme M. Berger"" <jeberger at free.fr> wrote in message 
news:gqn80v$17gk$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
> 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.
>

Hmm, gaining income from "specific developments and customizations" is an 
interesting business model for a free software company (free as in "both", 
because really, how often is "free as in libre" software ever *not* 
available at no cost? Heck, how often is that even realistically possible?), 
I didn't realize Red Hat was doing that.

But I've never been a big fan of the idea of using tech support as a 
business model for free (as in both) software. The way I see it, that 
creates a conflict of interest. The better a piece of software is (almost by 
definition of "better"), the less tech support it really needs. If I were 
creating a program that had enough tech-support-income-potential to support 
a whole company, I'd be ashamed to call myself a software developer.