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

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

>> Need is measurable: Someone seeing a carpenter saying, "I need
>> a cupboard" is certainly measurable.
> 
> It is not the data one needs to open a furniture store.

I think that all of todays furniture stores are mostly in
the hands of heirs. So lets not discuss furniture, but software.
I said that, on the whole, there is no point in Producer(i)
trying to hog all potential orders in a market, if you ponder
this a bit.

In fact, many western economies do have rules that should avoid
the effect of P(i).gets(every order) for just one i. It's just
that Microsoft manages to circumvent the application of the
rules.


> Economy does not
> function this way. 

Well who said economy functions this or that way? (I've made a
claim that many people in the software market behave in certain
ways, and that this has certain effects. No "economy" in sight.)
In fact, no one knows anything about how economy works, really.
Although certainly personal acquaintance with those who can
open doors is a crucial factor in most kinds of business.


>> Paying customers are
>> measurable, too, count them, and sum the paid bills.
> 
> You have to get paying customers first.

Do I?


> I just don't believe in any model based on ideological or religious
> imperative.

Then let's drop your ideology contribution from the
discussion, o.K.?


>> Ask people about the features and misfeatures of Ada.
>> What is a good way to change the perception of Ada?

> There is no good way, because Ada is a committee language (which is
> *good*), a relic of the epoch, when quality was an issue.


It is certainly an advantage if you have something to say about
Ada to potential customers who ask you about Ada.
For example,
"we have had to write some concurrent code doing such and such.
It turned out Ada's concurrency features worked nicely.
The implementation is correct, efficient, and we had it finished
almost in time."

Can you say that about Ada?