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Sergey Gromov wrote:
> Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:29:33 +0200, "Jérôme M. Berger" wrote:
>>> Sergey Gromov wrote:
>>> Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:38:45 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>> 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.
>
> Yeah, sure. How much support a single-player game needs? Or a
> 3D-modeling tool? I agree with Nick: to make a profit on support you
> must create something unusable in the first place, and then charge money
> for fixing it.
>
A single player game does not need any support, but a game is not
just software. So you can make a free game engine and have
proprietary data (of course, that would mean spending some time on
gameplay and scenario and so on, which most game companies don't do
anyway, they'd rather add some more useless special effects and use
the same old script and gameplay).
As for the 3D modelling tool, I hope you're kidding? Even though
they use mostly proprietary tools a lot of the budget of films go to
custom extensions to whatever tool they're using. There's a huge
profit to be made there even if the base software was free.
I agree that you can't make money with free software on the
consumer market, but most proprietary software companies don't make
their money there either (the main exception being games). Most
software companies make money on the B2B market and they *always*
sell additional support (whether it's help to setup the software,
special customizations or formations for the users and admins), so
they could put the software under a free licence and still make
money (and more and more of them do so).
> I agree that support is sometimes a valid business model, like when you
> create customized Linux kernels for various hardware and requirements.
> But it's definitely not universal enough to apply to every software
> created out there.
I didn't say it could apply to *all* software, I do say it could
apply to *most* (and your previous post stated that it couldn't
apply to any).
Jerome
PS: making something unusable and charge for fixing it won't work
with free software: if you were unable to get it right at first who
will trust you to fix it right? They're much more likely to hire
someone else to do it for them...
- --
mailto:jeber...@free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeber...@jabber.fr
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