Sorry if I seemed to miss the point.
I realize I didn't talk about giving to the community for the sake of giving
away. I was a bit focused to address the question regarding the economics.
I mostly share a close view as many of you since I wholeheartly believe in
Free Software as you mean it.
However, if not the core of the question, I think it's not *bad* to talk
about money or costs. If the price for distributing is "almost" 0, the
creation is not 0 (whether in money or hours). And if it's true it can be
covered by support or time-giving, this effort is worth being recognized.
Otherwise, in some cases, we can fall in situations where the software is
free software, but overly complicated, almost on purpose (to be able to bill
support), which is not satisfying to me. Don't make me say that everything
complicated is on purpose because I know IT is complex by itself ;-)
The vision I tried to give in my long text was one where companies would be
working in the same spirit as the FS communities today : instead of trying to
sell each its share or to have its own share made by another company for
itself only, their goal would be to put the effort in building something of
common interest for everybody, themselves as well as end-users. Even if, in
the end, several declinations come to appear (eg: Subversion, Mercurial, Git,
Bazaar, ....).... And I was trying to give an example of how it could be
*viable*. That was it ! But we still have a long way to go before that
time....
:-)
