On Wednesday 20 September 2006 07:38, Andrew N. Shrosbree wrote: > Anybody who believes that an open source product will gain traction > without the support of a major financial backer is a naive idealist.
Linux had no financial backer until it was popular, widespread and functional KDE had no financial backer at all till version 3, and still does not depend at all on any financing, nor does it have to answer to any sponsors. Nowadays most advanced GUI (yes, I think OS/X is inferior to KDE4 in a great many aspects) is still an anarcho-meritocratic marvel as it has been right from day zero. The Gnu compiler collection - all these marvelous development tools that made Linux happen - never had any financial backers Konqueror - the web browser bits nowadays used by Apple in their Safari - had no financial backer before it was mature and fully functional GnuPG had no financial backer until well into version 2.x - the German government financed a few extras, but the version was already stable, well tested, mature and feature-complete at the time Koch received the first bucks And so forth, the list is long. Doesn't mean it has to be that way, but proves that it can happen and has been done. All you need is a functional presentable base version that users can install and try - how you get there can be with or without money - but money comes automatically once the project has a larger user base. The only hard mile is the first mile. Horst _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
