Tell me why they sell water... :) I think the key word in your post is 'beneficial'. Yes it would be beneficial to the programmer to sell the program for money. However, giving it away for free, will benefit everyone. Open source also help make people more productive, which helps the economy even, since programmers do not have to implement the same thing over and over.
I personally don't care about that angle though. I just view it as payback to the Internet. I have learned far more from the internet over the past 10 years than from anywhere else. I just want to give something back. There is of course the whole power to the people angle too... I don't understand why you feel open source hurts the developers though. Seeing as only developers are the only people that can read source code, it's developers that gain the most benefit. The real issue is support. If someone wants to sell a piece of software, and is competing against a free product, then it either has to be a better piece of software, and/or it has support. If it has neither of those advantages, it's dead in the water. Survival of the fittest... jon Douglas Brown wrote: > I know this is not the place for this, but I just have to ask this > question of the community. What is the benefit of developing a > commercial grade application and then giving that application away for > free? I see message boards out there where people have obviously spent > hours and hours of development time and effort, just to turn around and > give the thing away. Is this type of mentality not hurting the > development community? I understand that a message board is not that > huge of a deal, but some people are trying to make a living developing > such items. Is it not more beneficial to design a product and sale it > for the going rate of such an application? I am eager to hear what > everyones thoughts are on this subject. I would have posted to the > community list, but hardly anyone really reads it. > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ Dedicated Windows 2000 Server PIII 800 / 256 MB RAM / 40 GB HD / 20 GB MO/XFER Instant Activation � $99/Month � Free Setup http://www.pennyhost.com/redirect.cfm?adcode=coldfusiona FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
