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:5Qc0g.12757$b06.5026@trnddc08...
> On 2006-04-12, Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> > "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.
>
> How could there be no day job available for GNU developers?  Whatever
> your answer, it must be purely hypothetical,

Of course, I said "taken to the limit": that is, a world where there is only
open source software (but is otherwise essentially the same as today -
that's an assumption, but not much of one - there has been little change in
the overall economic picture in the last hundred year - industries and
governments come and go, but the basic drivers have remained the same).

> because GNU developers
> *do* have day jobs.  If they didn't, you'd have to explain how all the
> GNU developers have been surviving for the past 20+ years.

It's irrelevant, because most software has been developed by non-GNU
developers in the past. If there were *only* GNU developers, all of those
other "day jobs" at non-GNU developers would disappear.

> And what prevents such day jobs from being well paying?

Because almost all new jobs created are menial and minimum wage; the jobs
that require skill and thus are well-paying are disappearing. (At least for
those with engineering skills. Hardly anybody is truly great at more than
one thing, and you need to be great to make great software.)

> > 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.
>
> It seems you're making a lot of assumptions here, which in the end
> probably boils down to a very small group.  You're assuming a Henry
> Ford 40 hour work week, or greater.

I'm assuming that employment conditions remain similar to thosse of today.
In the US, IT people work an average of 48 hours a week. The average
American takes only 7 days of vacation. Those figures are getting worse, not
better.

> You're assuming these are mentally exhausting day jobs,

All jobs are mentally exhausting; if not for the work, for the boredom or
the office politics. Especially when you have to do them 10 hours a day.

> and you're assuming that the subject is easily fatigable.  You're also
> assuming that the mental energy
> required at work is the same type of mental energy that the subject
> would use in their GNU development (a lot of commercial software
> effort involves what I call metawork - administrative overhead and
> meetings talking about the work itself).

There is only one kind of mental energy, and it's a limited resource. I
realize that 20-somethings have more of it than 40-somethings like me, but
there are limits -- I hit them regularly when RRS was founded, and I still
hit them regularly.

...
> > 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.
>
> Healthy living is a different issue entirely.

Not at all; no system is sustainable if it is chewing up and spitting out
the workers. Quality software (quality anything) is not created with slave
labor, or people working 22 hour days -- no matter whether that is a labor
of love or a labor of money.

                          Randy.