Steve Holdoway wrote:
Err...
1. Support
goodwill of programmer, and community of users
2. Maintenance
goodwill of programmer
3. Development
Well, the initial programmer did the development anyway, out of his own goodwill.
For a start.
Also, even if you don't see the distribution costs, somebody has to pay for the bandwidth. And the project administration.
sourceforge.
It takes a huge amount of effort to get an open source project off the ground. Trust me, I'm in the middle of it ( and I'm just doing the technical side ).
yes. Witness the multitude of withered projects on sourecforge.
Why should all this be done for free - if it takes 60 hours / week of your time, why shouldn't it be possible to make a living out of it - OSS or not?
Paying somebody to write free software doesn't necessarily make the software any less free (gratis or libre). There are just not many people around who will pay you or I to work on our pet project. I would love to write OSS, but I have a family to feed and spend time with.
OSS != proprietary. That's all.
Maybe.
Some of my answers probably sound a bit trite, perhaps. But in many (well enough) cases, it works. We see (and use) the results of it every day.
Cheers, Carl.
