On Wed, February 2, 2005 9:53 am, Carl Cerecke said: > 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. Primarily paid for by a) VA Software and b) Sourceforge.com > >> 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 is not about 'your pet project'. It's about a completely different development model. > >> 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. Well, yes they do. Do you think all the people who write open office / kde / solaris do it in their spare time, for free? > > Cheers, > Carl. >
I think you have an outdated idea of that OSS is really about. I suggest that you look at the sugar crm project on sourceforge, and see how one can be successful. Steve -- Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
