I was trying to think of a business that respects this philosophy, but I feel it is not practical. Before I go further I want to openly declare that I am not against the philosophy; I support it.
But for a moment think of proprietary way of life. Most of you (i.e. gnu advocates, including me - to some extent) regard it as evil. Honestly it not the term "proprietary" that is evil, it's the people! Even before the idea of free software came to be popular there were people (good people, not evil) who used proprietary SDKs to make software and sell it. Their way of life demands that they make profit out of each copy of the software he or she sells. That was the proprietary way of life. If you were to think of making money writing free software apps then would you be able to earn? Ok, lets assume I sell a copy to you and you pay me. I assume or at least hope that someone else will buy a copy from me in the future. But "you" can distribute the copy to others free of charge! My business wud fail! Because people are not buying it from me anymore. In my opinion the gnu way of life does not support the kind of life that I mentioned above. If businesses were to only think 'that way', they would fail. Of course one could argue that it is not in the creating software alone that matters; it is also about support. (People recognize software businesses for their support after they market their product). This post is not about proprietary software; it is about "earning money". Of course there are other ways of earning money if you are serious about thinking 'free software'. For e.g. you could go around fixing or supporting free software apps for other people - adding more features or removing them; you could do this service for a decent wage. In a sense it curbs one kind of creativity. But that model or style of creativity also demands that we be rewarded. But, this must be the problem being a human being I guess. I don't know, but what do you think? _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
