Re: Making money on open source, if not by selling _support_, then how?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Justin Gombos" <rpbkbq.xax.gld@uluv.kbq> wrote in message
news:nT7%f.4699$7Z6.366@trnddc06...
...
> > Which means no creations at all.
>
> You can't conclude that.  If that were a true statement, we would not
> have the rich library of GNU software that exists today.  Why?
> Because there's nothing to stop a GNU developer from having a day job.
> I suspect most self supporting GNU developers have day jobs.

But that's my point. Taken to it's limit, there could be no well-paying "day
jobs" for those GNU developers. After all, most of them are employed at
companies that get some benefit from the GNU software. In the limit, where
software was worth $0, there would be no "day jobs" in fields that are even
remotely related.

If the day job is unrelated (or even only weakly related), then the
developers are either not developing great software, or are short-changing
someone (their employers, their families, themselves, etc.) Great software
requires at least some of the developers putting a large amount of mental
energy into the design and the vision (and keeping to that design and
vision). That's incompatible with a "day job" that requires significant
mental energy, which is the vast majority of them. (I suppose you could work
at a Wal-Mart-like job, if you don't mind living below the poverty line. But
I happen to think software is too important to the world for developers to
be forced to live at poverty levels...). You can cheat your employer, of
course, but that's not a recipe for a sustanable model. Nor is "work,
program, sleep" a model for healthy living.

In any case, most GNU software is a long ways from being great. Being better
(arguably) than other software out there is not the same as being great.

                                         Randy.