On Sat, 12 Jan 2002, Mark Bigler wrote: > But, I also want proprietary companies to be able to sustain > themselves, for a while, in the Linux world. And, for that, I think a > period where Linux has a common ABI they could deliver to would help > them to explore the Linux commercial space. > Good point, though it does bring up an interesting question; how do we wean proprietary companies away from the idea that they can only sell software as binary format executables?
It is possible to sell programs as source code and make money at it, and as the warez market has shown precompiled binaries are not immune to copying and subversion... Fortunately there are many people like myself who would flat out refuse to put stuff on their computers unless they have at least a link to the source. On the flip side there are also plenty of people like myself who use binary package managers and who don't read the source for most of the software on their computers. Interesting times.
