On 2014-10-08 02:54, Peter Stuge wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
So I have to develop software for free
No you don't. If you choose to then all the better, and kudos to you
for making the world better! But you don't have to.
Who is going to pay me beyond the first person?
Just get paid once. And again, if you create amazing value then you
should get paid an amazing amount.
I cannot charge one person that much money. And why should I demand that one
person pay me for all my development costs? The market involved where I got gut
punched is small and had a use for some particular odd bits of software in the
show control field. Theaters are notoriously parsimonious.
I also don't like developing free software because people have the
temerity to demand, not ask politely but demand, new features their
way for free.
Yeah, I know that. I don't think one should listen to all the demands
made by people on the internet however. Somebody is wrong on the
intenet quite a lot.
And you certainly don't have to provide any support. That is really
explicit in the license.
If I give away the software how do I eat if I don't do for pay support?
You provide no support at all (like the license says) and earn money
developing something else.
That's good in the ideal. Think it through.
Think it through.
Yeah, I have.
No, it very much appears you have not. You listen to open sores idealists rather
than think for yourself.
Of course people want you to work for free and do their job so that
they can feed their own faces without having to make an effort.
..
People really need to learn to deal with that aspect of open source.
I could deal with it
I'm not saying you should deal with it, I'm saying the people who
demand things for free should deal with the fact that there is
explicitly in capital letters no warranty with the cowboy software
they might build their entire business on.
I already wash my hands of a product that I release open sores. If it is
licensed and gets pirated I put copy protection on it when I add features.
Nobody yet has told me how to make a living developing free software
as a private individual. GPL effectively precludes that.
A small business can not compete with a much larger one doing the
same things. The small business has to do its own thing. GPL or no
GPL.
The technical term here is "brown stinky substance such as emanates from the
South facing end of a North facing fertile male bovine." Did that successfully
for years with some side products using license keys. It helped that the (much)
larger business involved had developed a bad reputation in the industry. Theme
parks get upset when their show control equipment dies on them. It costs LOTS of
money to have a show down.
I know several small businesses which make a living developing GPL
software.
I'm somewhat surprised by that. The little software gadgets I build were
targeted at a very small segment of a small industry. Yet we had people who'd
never bought one of the tools calling and asking for support. Of course, we told
them to purchase a license on the spot or go fly a kite. That still cost
development time.
I suppose I can see a company commissioning me to do some strange bookkeeping
software designed to make their business more efficient. Even if I license it
GPL they can keep it to themselves to avoid feeding their competitors. That
might make a big enough charge I could live on the profits from a couple jobs a
year. I don't do that kind of software.
I think part of the problem may be a confusion between software
development as a service and software development creating a product.
Perhaps - devices to make say PLC devices look like MIDI devices to a Windows PC
do not have a huge market. But it is larger than a single customer. Those are
the gadgets that ended up pirated. That rather soured my attitude. It became
obvious that without serious copy protection they were a "get paid for it once"
item. And the customers were not about to pay that much money.
Pure software products generally aren't worth very much today, but
that doesn't mean that it is impossible to create amazing value just
with software.
Yeah, particularly when they are GPL. That is why I tend to stay away from GPL
for anything I take seriously. I look at the trifles I do for GPL (such as
fixing the RDSK (boot sector for Amiga disks) code in the Linux kernel) as
community service.
{^_^}
