I want to second this notion. I wrote an extremely widely used Real Estate
Listings program in PHP. I didn't want to sell it -- I just wanted to build
an easy to use listings manager to trade for a free month's rent out of my
landlord.
Selling it would've been a pain in the ass. I would have had to support it,
etc... and since I've got a full-time job, why bother? Instead, I left it in
a relatively unfinished form, put it out there for public consumption, and
watched it take off.
Now, I've seen hundreds of variants of my program out there, meeting all
kinds of needs. That's satisfying. The community as a whole supports it now.
It has also been profitable -- almost daily, I get offers from people who
want the code customized. They want little things tweaked. They need help
doing installation. (You get the idea)
Now with my current employer (a large public health non-profit), we do a lot
of cool development work. We're not a software company. We aren't set up for
code licensing, etc... there's absolutely no downside to me releasing tools
we've built to the public.
-- jon
-------------
jon roig
online community services manager
epilepsy foundation
tel: 215.850.0710
site: http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 2:18 AM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: OT: Just wanna bitch
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.
Doug Brown
______________________________________________________________________
Why Share?
Dedicated Win 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=coldfusionc
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
