On Tue, Nov 04, 2003, Jon Teh wrote: > It is also most certainly not "everything for nothing" as you put it, > considering that people in the Linux communities such as the Debian > one are fairly major code contributors to Open Source Software > projects.
This is an important point -- the Free Software economic model values time input as well as money input, and Debian shows that it is possible to sustain a large project that is "funded" mostly by time rather than money. Jeff mentioned elsewhere that some people are calling Red Hat customers who now fall outside the Red Hat market focus "freeloaders" which is definitely unfair, as is calling people who won't invest money in Linux the "everything for nothing crowd". People who won't invest *anything* in Linux are a 'customer base' that it's not worth serving, but ignoring the people who put time in instead of money is ignoring some of Free Software's most important contributors. Red Hat is, after all, selling support for products that they did not entirely develop in house -- and in fact, for some projects that developed for "free" (no money paid to the developer). For some businesses, it is cheaper to support Linux by paying Red Hat licence fees than it is to contribute to Free Software development (often because this requires paying someone's salary) -- the fact that the reverse is true for other people doesn't mean they are somehow failing to put their resources where their mouth is. -Mary -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
