On Jun 12, 2008, at 10:34 AM, Bob La Quey wrote:
Selling software = bad business. Selling services enabled by software = good business.Just my take,
Really, that seems to hit it on the head. While there are definitely customers that will want just the software and handle the service part in-house, there are a great many other customers that will usually just want whatever service you offer to be "someone else's problem."
Going back a couple steps, though, if you're an independent software developer, doing it for your sole source of income, your options really are only:
* Sell the software under a restrictive/proprietary license (and be very careful to avoid any and all GPL code.)
* Sell services which happen to depend on the software you've developed.
It's really not much different if you're a small independent software house.
It's very hard to make a living on your own by doing all your work for free (i.e., releasing everything you do GPL.) Yes, you might be hired into a large firm, like Qualcomm, and be able to do it, but Qualcomm's revenues are NOT based on GPL code. The fact that they'd allow code to be released GPL is a side-effect of their core business, which is most certainly not GPL software.
Paying the rent without an income is hard. Can't make a business out of altruism, without finding another way to bring money in.
In my experience, people who insist that the GPL is the answer and copyright should be abolished don't see the whole picture.
Gregory -- Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP Key ID: EAF4844B keyserver: pgpkeys.mit.edu
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