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

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

> The measure should have accuracy suitable for prediction / control.

Well, yes, typical economical measurements are used for
politically important predictions. This is a fact.

> Immeasurable <= not enough accurate.

Yes, and accuracy is a thing that is defined by people.
It isn't 100% induced into some ontology by the the thing to
be measured.


> "Clinical/brain death" and "one caused by suspect's action" are different
> "measures."

Different grain size, same scale label. The formal words
"discretion" and "judgement" even have the word "measurement"
in them, in German: Er-messen. For a reason.

>> there are only exchanges of money
>> and goods, and law, and informal rules.

> It is a deep philosophical question unrelated to the discussion.

No, when it comes to decision making, observations and perceptions
are just facts:
People do measure the quality of programs, even though they do not
always state their criteria. People do discuss the relative value
of programming languages, even though other people might consider
more or less criteria, and say some are missing from the evaluation.

>>>> Can you say that about Ada?
>>> No. It does not come to this.
>> It will come to this the moment you drop a few words about Ada,
>> with caution.
> 
> No runner. You have missed the starting point: technical superiority does
> not matter.

I'm not asking you to say "better" or "worse" than, in technical
terms. I'm not asking you to brag about technical superior
Ada programs. I'm asking you to cautiously mention Ada, because
when people start connecting this kind of program with this "Ada-word",
they form an opinion.

This can be a reasonable approach to inform, fleetingly, about the
merits of Ada: by not stressing its merit. Just make sure it gets
connected to the desirable qualities of software products.