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

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 19:59 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> >>Public involvement destroys quality and even common sense. [...]
> > pop-culture /= Public involvement,
> Public involvement is the driving force behind the pop-culture.

Do you mean "mass consumption" when you speak of public involvement?


> > and open source does
> > not imply absence of project rules. 
> > Open source software does not by itself define how a project
> > is run, obviously.
> 
> Exactly

So you agree that software quality, as affected by project
procedures, is orthogonal to open/closed source?


> >> They could become managers,
> >> advocates instead.
> > 
> > Could you elaborate a bit how they could do this, and why they
> > would want to do this?
> 
> Why shouldn't they? People adapt quickly. Their goals are formed by the
> society.

Who is society, then? And who forms the goals, as you say?


> Not wages, but differentiation of according to individual contribution.

And you think that you attract the best programmers by offering
high wages? That, together with meritocracy, has been shown
to be a myth. Job satisfaction is not guaranteed by just income.
The fact that SU professions in high regard could but
achieve a depressingly low standard income has not exactly
turned a physician into someone without education, knowledge,
and practice, has it? OTOH, with not much more than a little
cleverness, and overcoming certain scrupulous habits, you can
become fairly rich, in spite of producing mostly low quality crap...
So how is quality related to differentiation (and selection)
by income?

What are the software quality improvements to be derived
from differentiation by income? (Which I have nothing to say
against.) If you starve, you can't be productive, o.K..
But other than that, job satisfaction is not just money.