Making money from free software [was Re: An Ada IDE and discussions]

[mbenkmann@gmx.de (Matthias Benkmann)]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:12:48 -0400, "Marin David Condic"
<marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote:

>I think we agree wholeheartedly on the objective you outlined. We both want
>to see Ada accepted at a greater level than it is. I think we both agree
>that the presence of lots of Ada code available for development serves this
>goal. I think we also both agree that your garden variety hacker, small
>business, internal corporate developer, etc. ought to be able to get the
>source, use it in their software, modify it as needed, etc. and not have to
>pay a royalty. (That's what will get Ada accepted for various forms of
>internal development.) Where I think we part company (correct me if I'm
>wrong) is that I believe a different license is possible/desirable that
>secures some financial rights for the authors of a work in the event that
>someone takes their work & uses it for financial gain. If I understand you
>correctly, you seem to be favoring the GPL which basically does not secure
>those rights - or at least has not dealt with that question.
>
>I might be willing to contribute to some community accessible code, but I'd
>like to think that if I'm spending time on it that there is some $$$ in it
>for me if someone else is going to take my work and make $$$ for themselves
>with it. Otherwise, it seems I'm just making a gift to "The Community" of my
>time and talent. Granted, I may receive other people's gifts to the
>community by way of picking up their changes, but I think that from a
>cost/benefit analysis in most cases, I may be better off simply purchasing
>what I want rather than paying for it with sweat equity. (My time is worth a
>considerable amount of money when compared to the cost of many commercially
>available products.)
>
>Or I could simply take and never give back and turn a hard heart towards the
>community contributors when they cry "Unfair!" :-)

The GPL prevents that someone just takes and doesn't give. If you GPL
a program, everyone who uses that code in his own projects has to GPL
those, which includes making them available to the community again.
This is how the GPL is different from the BSD license. 

And about the money-making issue: You misinterpret things slightly.
When Red Hat puts together a Linux distro and sells it, it is *NOT*
making money of the works of the developers who wrote the programs
contained in the distro. 
All of those programs are available for free download. 
Unless Red Hat customers are total idiots who don't know that they can
download the software for free, these customers are obviously *NOT*
paying for the software. Only an idiot pays for something he can
download for free. 
So Red Hat is *NOT* capitalizing on the effort made by the developers
of the software. What people ARE paying for is the effort that Red Hat
put into collecting all this software, compiling it (have you ever
tried to build a Linux distro as complete as Red Hat's from scratch?
Have you ever even tried to locate and download all those packages
manually?) and making it (relatively) easy to install and maintain.
This is 100% Red Hat's effort. The developers of the software have not
contributed to this in the least. In fact the developers of the
software are the reason why Red Hat is needed. These developers make
installing the software a hard piece of work. So all the money Red Hat
makes is 100% Red Hat's money. I don't see why any of the developers
should get a dime for something that they didn't do.
If they want that money, they should create their own distro. No one's
stopping them.

To get back to the GPL. Let's say you write a program and put it under
the GPL and some company picks it up. If they change it or build
something around it they have to put it under the GPL and you and
everybody else is free to use their changes. Maybe they charge money
for a CD with the software on it. If that bothers you and you want a
slice of the cake, just take their code, burn it on a CD and sell it
yourself. The GPL is about freedom. This includes the freedom to make
money. If you want to make money from it, go ahead and sell GPL
software.

Developers who reject the GPL with the argument that "someone else can
make money from it without paying me" are just lazy. It's these
developers who are the parasites, not the people who make money
selling free software. These developers just want to sit back and wait
till someone takes considerable financial risk, puts a lot of effort
into a business, and then they want to jump in when everything is done
and just get paid.
 If your program is so good, then why don't YOU sell it? If you don't
want other people to have your code, why do you release it in the
first place?

I think a developer has only 3 choices:

a) Make a 100% commercial product where no one else is allowed to do
anything with your code without explicit permission. Note that this
does not exclude publishing your source code. You may publish it and
even allow certain people to make changes or use it in their projects,
but they need explicit permission from you and may or may not have to
pay you royalties (as you choose). Use one of the standard EULAs
(they're all the same, no matter what company they come from) if you
want this.

b) Make a 100% free product, where everyone can use, modify, sell,
change etc. your code without restrictions. It is even allowed that
people take your code and integrate it into proprietary products as
described in a). If this is your intent, use a license similar to
BSD's

c) Make a product that is free and that will remain free. In that
case, use the GPL.

Trying to invent a license that combines a) (i.e. control over who
uses and makes money with your stuff) and c) or b) (i.e. allow people
to use your stuff freely) is like trying to invent water that isn't
wet. 

MSB

----
By the way:
Vacuum cleaners suck!