On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 4:12 PM, Nick Østergaard <[email protected]> wrote: > 2015-03-20 15:19 GMT+01:00 Mário Luzeiro <[email protected]>: >> This type of support and community is what they expect when pay for a >> commercial product... if something is wrong.. they will ask the company for >> support.. >> But, this is an issue in the opensource software feeling in general. But I >> believe some projects are making a good work in give people trust on this >> matters. > > I feel it quite the opposite. For a commercial product it is hard to > get sane support, while open source projects are very easy.
I see this as a two-dimensional issue. The opposite of free/open is proprietary. The opposite of commercial is non-commercial. There are four possible combinations. I think free/open and commercial is a winning combination. The software stays free-as-in-freedom, and free-as-in-free-beer for those who want it that way. If, in addition, we could find a way to reward those who make KiCad such a great tool, that can only be good. Look at successful free software projects. Most of them have a way to reward key contributors. Some people get paid full-time salaries to contribute to the Linux kernel, the Apache web server and many other projects. I hope KiCad gets there one day. Sorry for the digression, but I see this commercial-vs-open issue pop up often and I thought I'd give my view on it. Cheers, Javier _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
