>I keep hearing about this "linux community" like it was some organised
body.
It's not!! What happens when these guys get sick of working for nothing?<
The "open source community" is not underfunded, and the majority of key
developers on critical systems like Linux and the Apache server do not work
for nothing. For a start, most of these organisations offer support packages
for which a fee is charged (the software is free, but if you need help
getting it set up you still have to pay). Secondly, many corporations in the
US are so keen on the Open Source movement that they give regular donations
to "foundations" set up to support and guide development in this area. In
fact, several open source "foundations" have so much money in the kitty
(I've seen published numbers in the *Billions*) that they have no idea what
to do with it. They started out as unpaid enthusiasts, and succeeded so well
that large corporations saw them as very viable alternatives to the
expensive mainstream suppliers they were virtually forced to deal with.
Imagine being a Fortune 500 company (especially one like Oracle which has a
real beef with Microsoft) which has to pay software licenses for tens of
thousands of employees and perhaps hundreds of smaller server machines.
You're talking about tens of millions of dollars a year. It makes perfect
sense for you to throw some money at a bunch of clever guys who are trying
to churn out software that they're prepared to give away for free ( and in
the USA some or all of the money is bound to be tax deductable as a
donation, or as R&D). I suspect that guys like Larry Ellison would fund the
open source movement if the only tangible reason was to irritate Bill Gates.
On top of this, many open source developers work full time for companies who
employ them to support open source projects. Presumably this accomplishes
the same goal (supporting open source development) but gives them a better
tax break (and allows them to have an "inside man" on the development team).
Further, on the subject of organisation, there are a number of very
interesting software initiatives out there which may well change the way
software is developed forever. Large project teams on the scale used in open
source development have never been tried before, and the change management
tools and techniques being used and extended today will undoubtedly impact
our lives as software developers and software users in the future. And
there's no escaping the fact that open source teams seem more responsive to
change requests and bug reports that the majority of the large commercial
software suppilers in the world today. 24 hour fixes are not uncommon with
open source products. Try that with Microsoft :-)
So to sum up, the open source (and especially the "Linux") community is well
funded, and while there are many unpaid contributors to any open source
project ( and indeed, many projects which are still labours of love for
their developers) most of the core development teams are very well paid
thank you. They don't work for nothing.
Those who are interested in monitoring this phenomenon should read Slashdot
on a regular basis (www.slashdot.com).
Simon Mahony,
System Creator,
MetService.
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