Last week saw the 20th anniversary of Richard Stallman’s decision to quit the MIT and start the GNU Project in 1984, with a goal to creating a platform using ‘free’ software that a user can run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve: the GNU operating system which used widely today in its GNU/Linux form. A year later he founded the Free Software Foundation, a body that seeks to further the development and use of free software. He is also the author of the GNU General Public Licence, the licence under which free software can be distributed. Read his interview with Matt Whipp at PCPro.
Richard Stallman on 20 years of GNU
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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What is wrong with being an idealist?
In a positive sense, to be precise.
Here is a quote: “If you include even one non-free program in the system, it is no longer a free system, and it does not achieve the goal.”
That arguement is not more logical than saying: You should only use all closed source software, and if even one app in the system is open than it does not achieve the goal.
Here is a quote: “If you include even one non-free program in the system, it is no longer a free system, and it does not achieve the goal.”
That arguement is not more logical than saying: You should only use all closed source software, and if even one app in the system is open than it does not achieve the goal.
It’s not a logical argument at all, it’s merely defining a term, “free system”. Your definition of a closed system to pretty accurate as well.
Besides, can anyone honestly say that the software world wouldn’t be a better place if RMS’s dreams came to pass? It’d certainly make my life easier.
Besides, can anyone honestly say that the software world wouldn’t be a better place if RMS’s dreams came to pass? It’d certainly make my life easier.
Make life easier for who? Shareware authors who are trying to make an honest living, who would not be able to do so since anyone could re-distribute their source code for free?
Make life easier for who? Shareware authors who are trying to make an honest living, who would not be able to do so since anyone could re-distribute their source code for free?
Please don’t pull out the tired “Free Software is inimical to business” argument. Stallman encouraged selling of free software from the very start. Today there are numerous companies that remain profitable from Free Software.
Please don’t pull out the tired “Free Software is inimical to business” argument. Stallman encouraged selling of free software from the very start. Today there are numerous companies that remain profitable from Free Software.
That many aye? I don’t mind “free” or free software at all, however the philosophy of free software is generally interpreted in a VERY biased way, as in the FSF’s way.
For someone to get paid for a software there must obviously be a reason for it. In Red Hat/Suse/Mandrake/Xandros/etc case this is clearly obvious how they get money. To make the GNU/Linux kernel work together with so many other apps and save time for a user, you can spend quite some money.
BUT let’s just assume for a moment, that a software is so intuitive that explanation is hardly needed, and the stability is there so there is really not much support you need for it specifically… then how exactly is this developer supposed to earn money?
Exactly how many COMPANIES (not organisations) do you know who make money off free software without actually earning it from “sorting out technical problems which shouldn’t be there from the beginning”?
Just curious if you could name 10-15…
I don’t think I could name 15 software companies off the top of my head regardless of buisness plan, but I know that Bram Cohen works on Bittorrent full time so he must be making a decent amount off of it (not from support but simply donations). Also ReiserFS is supported by DARPA, as was OpenBSD at one point. I’ve also heard that some companies pay Hans Reiser to get specific functionality that they want added to the system.
However the philosophy of free software is generally interpreted in a VERY biased way, as in the FSF’s way.
The GNU license is hardly free or open by any sensical definition of the term. Stallman and co. have always tried to redefine terms to their own advantage — in that, they’ve succeeded better than any politican could, as millions will foolishly attest. Public domain is free, and the BSD/MIT license is arguably so. GNU? No freakin’ way.
… when RMS needs a place to stay when passing thru my country. All he has to ask and, if I come to know, he shall have a room at my house. Never mind that I disagree from such radicalisms like one non-free is too much; his work is like a beam in the storm.
Had I done half of what he has made and I’d be very happy!
RMS, live long and prosper!
> “If you include even one non-free program in the system, it is no longer a free system, and it does not achieve the goal.”
That is why I use RH’s Fedora! Suse? Ha! Debian? Good, but from my understanding have official non-free repositories (livna for fedora isn’t official).
Redhat is fully commited to having a compltely free OS, and that is why thy contribute amazing amount of resources to the community!
Not this again. Restrictions don’t always mean “less free” like BSD/PubDomain users are always shouting. First, I should say I prefer GPL.
Let me steal an analogy:
Which is more free, an anarchy or (idealistic) Democracy? There are more rules in a democracy, and those rules ensure that your freedom is protected.
I suppose that is still opinion as well, but I’d rather have a guarantee that my rights are preserved. BSD and the lot don’t make sure that your software remains free.
But the nice thing is that you can choose. Its not like only one should exist.
//
BUT let’s just assume for a moment, that a software is so intuitive that explanation is hardly needed, and the stability is there so there is really not much support you need for it specifically… then how exactly is this developer supposed to earn money?
//
It doesnt matter. Thats why Insurance still exists. Big companies need to be GUARANTEED that the software will be fixed if there’s a problem. Thats why the “service” method will always work. I pay for insurance, even though I’ve never gotten into an accident.
“he compares the best president we have since Wasihington with Hitler”. We? Well, you are from Karlruhe. Seit wann ist Bush “dein” Präsident? Are you trolling?
I think the GPL is the single most important thing of anything OSS. Imagine OSS without it. Also, I understand when Stallman sometimes sounds a little pissed that Linux is not referred to as GNU/Linux having contributed also both gcc and emacs. But think about it this way. Linux is not known as KDE/Linux,GNOME/Linux or somethingelse/Linux either. Linux (Linus) gets the credit. Same with Bush – now that someone brought him up. His gets the credit even though someone else wrote his speech.
well i think free software has a chance..if we evolve to a star trek like cashless society. So all we need to do is come up with a limitless source of energy like anti-matter or fusion energy. Then invent food replicators to end hunger(mainly starving free software developers). Then and only then will free software suceed. Of course in the mean time we could grow beards grow our hair long and fill our minds with dreams of a free software socialist utopia.
I can respect the man’s idealism and goals. I even agree with much of it. The GNU movement has been for computing.
Make life easier for who? Shareware authors who are trying to make an honest living, who would not be able to do so since anyone could re-distribute their source code for free?
Try putting the customer on top of the entreprise: if I really want your application, I’ll pay for it.
The point of the GNU system was to be entirely free, so that the users would have freedom. If you include even one non-free program in the system, it is no longer a free system, and it does not achieve the goal.
Stallman is a bright guy — but, in my view, his thinking and motivations regarding free software are a bit one-dimensional. The goal of having nothing but free software is only marginally interesting. Free software doesn’t translate into democracy. Free software doesn’t grow food for starving Africans. It doesn’t cure cancer.
In other words, there isn’t anything magical about software. People buy products every day and don’t insist on getting them free. They don’t demand circuit diagrams for their cars and stereos and microwaves and toasters. And the lack of those blueprints doesn’t make us any less free. Freedom is about our fundamental ability to make choices — not the choices, themselves. Stallman seems to be incapable of seeing past the tools. The tools don’t define freedom. We do.
And the lack of those blueprints doesn’t make us any less free.
Maybe that’s because your ability to use them doesn’t depend on their blueprint. But consider you spend several hundered hours of work to get your thoughts into a digital form, for example by writing them down. Then somebody comes up saying, you gotta pay twice as much as before or you won’t be able to access your data anymore.
Did the software restrict your freedom or not? And would the access to the blueprint of the software make you more free?
However, I admit that Stallman misses to explain why the normative statement “Software should be free” is more important as the statement “People should be free to choose how they like to publish their work”. At least, I haven’t been able to find his explanation, yet.
Make life easier for who? Shareware authors who are trying to make an honest living, who would not be able to do so since anyone could re-distribute their source code for free?
So how many people do you know that make a living out of selling shareware? To do this today, you either need loads of luck or you have to be one hell of a programmer. In the former case, I’m not convinced that this is something that needs to be preserved at any cost. In the latter case, it is very likely that you’d find another job as a programmer. And if that’s not interesting enough, you could start programming games, making life better for everyone.
I believe that part of the reason why people are so afraid of losing the closed source model is, that it smells like easy money. You land a big hit and then make a fortune out of selling licenses. Of course that’s mostly an illusion (it only happens to a select few people), but a very tempting illusion. With a free software model, a programmer actually has to sell his service (as a programmer) to other people, which obviously is a lot more daunting but you will hardly starve to death if you have the talent.
From this perspective, what you should really ask isn’t “can you still make money from selling software (licenses?)” but “is there still an incentive for people to pay other people for programming tasks? The answer to this is obviously yes. Especially companies will always want better and customized software to run their businesses. You only have to look at the web development sector. Most web developers certainly earn their living not by selling software, but by offering their services to other people, to develop customized solutions for a specific job. Often they’ll even make use of free software already. You don’t even have to give away software you use exclusively in-house (for example to run your website or your internal consumer database), so the free software model fits in perfectly here. Don’t forget that the GPL doesn’t force you to give away anything, it only means if you give it away, you have to allow other people to modify it and/or to give it away to someone else. Nobody prohobits you from modifying free software and keeping the modifications for yourself.
Also using real subjects instead of usernames would make life easier for all of us.
However, I admit that Stallman misses to explain why the normative statement “Software should be free” is more important as the statement “People should be free to choose how they like to publish their work”. At least, I haven’t been able to find his explanation, yet.
It stems from his objections to the concept of software ownership: He thinks everyone ought to have equal right to the source, among other things. I won’t detail it, because it’ll be inevitably tainted by my own opinions on property, but he’s mentioned it in at least one of his numerous essays. While he uses copyright and the fact that the FSF owns software, this is to ensure that no-one steals the software from the community; this is of dubious ethics (ends justifying the means), but he’s clearly weighed the pros and cons of this and come to his own conclusion.
I don’t think I could name 15 software companies off the top of my head regardless of buisness plan, but I know that Bram Cohen works on Bittorrent full time so he must be making a decent amount off of it (not from support but simply donations). Also ReiserFS is supported by DARPA, as was OpenBSD at one point. I’ve also heard that some companies pay Hans Reiser to get specific functionality that they want added to the system.
Ehrm… I wouldn’t say governmental financial support is actually making software business. That would more be counted as life support funding.
Making business is when you sell software and from the income of that manages to live.
I could probably name 50 software companies making proprietary software and who lives on that. And I agree, 10-15 who works with the GNU model is pretty difficult (gee, I wonder why)… how about just naming 5 then? Once again, criteria is that they don’t live off “sorting out technical problems which shouldn’t be there from the beginning”
Can we get 5 anyone?????
No one should ever be told, ‘You can have this attractive software, but you cannot see what it does, change it, or redistribute copies to others.’
This is all an elaborate joke right?
So what’s in it for the ones that actually do the research and development? I agree that lot of crap that gets patented shouldn’t be, but still, if money is spent on research what gives someone the right to just come along and use someone elses work for free?
>Ehrm… I wouldn’t say governmental financial support is actually making software business. That would more be counted as life support funding.
>Making business is when you sell software and from the income of that manages to live.
Quote from namesys.com (ReiserFS homepage)
Yet still we choose to give our software away for free for use with software that is given away for free (e.g. Gnu/Linux). Since we don’t have a lot of illusions about our ability to entirely change the world, and it is amusing to sell free software, for those who do not want to disclose their software and do not want to give it away for free, we charge a license fee and let them keep their improvements to our software without sharing them. These fees help substantially in allowing us to survive as an organization.
We don’t make nearly as much money as we would from charging everyone for usage rights, but we do make just enough to get by, and that is important.;-) We don’t really feel that everyone should follow our example and make their software no charge for most users (it is too hard to survive fiscally doing this), but we do think that everyone should disclose their source code, and no one should design their software to exclude working with other software (e.g. Microsoft’s Palladium which makes such a mockery of Athena).
————-
It think the problem in selling free software is not that it’s gratis, but that free software usually isn’t developed to be spread commercially and thus often lacks something that were needed to make it appealing to consumers. This could simply be that a application simply has too many features while the GUI isn’t percieved as polished or lacks wizards and such stuff.
Proprietary closed source apps, in contrast, get developed to be sold and thus vendors have an eye on things that may sometimes be more or less useless but make the product appealing to consumers. The app doesn’t neccessarily be good quality or deliver good quality output. Mind all that crappy mp3 encoding apps that got sold as super tools. One thing often is, that Joe User can complete a given task with the product although the outcome can be of crappy or not optimal quality. Lots of people rather use a tool that lets them easily complete (which often means: do something without knowing what you do or have a non-optimal quality as result) than choosing a tool that gives them the ability to have optimal results but needs you to gain a good portion of knowledge to be able to do something at all. Free Software apps can often fall in the last category, meaning they can be good tools but expect too much knowledge to be interesting for Joe User.
With no word this does mean that commercial closed source apps are usually better or worse than free software. But there’s often this just explained difference.
I hope my english isn’t too bad to properly express what I just wrote.
Regards, David
With no word this does mean that commercial closed source apps are usually better or worse than free software. But there’s often this just explained difference.
I can definitely agree on your thoughts and easily say that I consider that this part is correct…
But RMS constantly have this disguised hate towards people who wants to make a living from selling software. He’s a madman and should be treated as one in my eyes.
I’m also in the software business, selling very nisched B2B software at quite high prices. It’s not uncommon that someone pays at least 15 000$/year to use our software, and we live off the 50 customers that do use our software.
To tell our clients, here’s the sourcecode, would mean our business idea would get destroyed in an instant second.
Who cares about Office? What I care about is nisched software which simply can’t be Open source for various reasons…
Let’s hypothetically say I work with trainmanagement systems. I mean every major city has Undergrounds etc. If someone were to open source a system which probably costs millions every year….. how can someone be so stupid to expect that this will be kept rock solid and continously developed to suit new needs? Sure RMS does, but he is, as clearly stated (not by what he says, rather how he says it) an idiot.
I think Stallmans message shouldn’t be taken as a universal way of developing and spreading software. An attempt to convert the whole IT business to Free Software based business models is not going to work. But Stallmans way can very well be an excellent way to spread various kinds of software. Furthermore Stallman’s a very important counterpart to the ongoing practice in the software world of locking out other formats, operating systems, coders, consumers etc.
If you see Stallmans message and actions more in context of the whole software realm, he’s doing a very good job. Of course one could argue if he shouldn’t be less dogmatic (I’m not sure if he actually is) but no one’s really perfect.
I personally prefer Free Software even down to the level of device drivers but I can both understand and accept Stallman’s view and the need of software vendors to have a business model that more or less ensures a save income.
>how can someone be so stupid to expect that this will be kept rock solid and continously developed to suit new needs?
This _can_ work if there are enough devs interested in it or employed to work on it. But this doesn’t mean that it actually _would_ work.
>Sure RMS does, but he is, as clearly stated (not by what he says, rather how he says it) an idiot.
He can be very extreme. I assume that’s half the time productive and half the time counterproductive.
Regards, David
>how can someone be so stupid to expect that this will be kept rock solid and continously developed to suit new needs?
Because the people that use your software would rather own it than pay rent money. I hire an architect to build something to my specs and I retain the design afterwards.
Likewise, you can compete with other developers in the open-market for the best implementation of a given set of features and specifications that I require of a given software system.
All government software contracts should be subject to the bidding of a number of developers and the government should retain ownership of the software through a GPL license. Why? Because the government has a fiduciary responsibility to use my tax dollars wisely and it is in its interest to not be subject to a software cartel and its extortion prices, which is precisely what happens when you have no source code ownership.
I would like to know what Free Software Vendors are staying profitable? If you pay for service the software is not free.
Happy Birthday:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jesus Christ
Buddha
Mohandas K. Ghandi
Lao Tzu
Richard Stallman and Linux Torvalds.
I think we should celebrate everyday as if it were their day.
Here’s to freedom!
And for all those that still don’t get the value of free software, I recommend the following article:
http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/maine-speech.html
>how can someone be so stupid to expect that this will be kept rock solid and continously developed to suit new needs?
Because the people that use your software would rather own it than pay rent money. I hire an architect to build something to my specs and I retain the design afterwards.
Ofcourse, and this is ALLWAYS an option to you. A government can buy a custommade system which includes sourcecode etc or buy a license. Generally, the license is A-LOT cheaper both in the short run and the long run… since they can completely change the system resulting in buying a different license from a competitor next time.
If this market would have been infested by GPL software, no one would bother to build an alternative from scratch. This would naturally result in lack of innovation due to the simple principle that you stop innovate when competition drops.
Did you ever read the basics of capitalism and market theory (or have practic experience for that sake?)?
Why hang on the simple stuff…. please please please just give me 10-15 names of companies who manage to live on this stuff … check post again for question.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=5664&offset=15&rows=30#18…
All these people celebrating GNU/GPL and none can apply it in practice or show real examples??? Is that supposed to be taken seriously?
Happy Birthday:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jesus Christ
Buddha
Mohandas K. Ghandi
Lao Tzu
Richard Stallman and Linux Torvalds.
I think we should celebrate everyday as if it were their day.
Here’s to freedom!
Thinking in political terms, I think you should study Marx. I can think of more similarities between him and Richard Stallman than of things being different…
So how about celebrating him aye?
1. Software of significant value requires one or more people to expend their life and resources to do the required research to create a software solution, and the amount of time spent is often a significant portion of ones’ lifetime.
2. Most governments and social systems don’t reward those that don’t support themselves by their work that earns them pay enough to buy the requirements in life: one of these things that’s often required to create these solutions is a hefty investment in education in all forms of resources.
3. While Stallman espouses “freedom” he in reality is a Robin Hood with a truly nasty twist: those that would expect to earn or at least have the right to risk earning their fair reward (based on merit and value returned for their work and their time) clearly have no right to such a reward, regardless of the honesty involved: according to Stallman, all such desire to actually survive off of creating software is an evil and unlawful endeavor, and must be squashed out of existence: he would enslave all creators of software, so that the software can be free! Which is more valuable, free humans, or free software?
4. For those that insist on only using “free” software or releasing software “free” into the world, that is purely their right and their choice: forcing someone to only use “free” or “entangled” software is not freedom, that’s dictatorship! Do I need to connect the dots?
5. For those that insist that software creators give away their time and resources to the world in the form of free software, if they do a proper job of designing and implementing the software, in many cases there simply is no room for them to be hired to provide “service” to support the software development in terms of how they are paid: software that performs a single focused purpose and does it well with high quality in terms of design and implementation does not need support beyond a decent manual and/or helpfiles; tell me, how many people get paid to support users in using an individual unix command line application? In extending said command line application that does the job exactly as needed, and has reached the state of maximum usefulness for its designated purpose?
6. It is hypocritical to expect those that do one thing very well, and perhaps other things not at all well (write software versus being a help desk support person and business man) to make a living doing something they are neither good at, and don’t enjoy doing, while you have the “right” to expect that of them, and go and do something you are good at and enjoy doing for a living: accounting and preparing taxes really doesn’t produce a “product” and is no more complicated than creating and properly testing software, and yet people expect to pay others to do the work involved, because it is WORK and takes TIME in terms of learning how to actually do it properly, besides each instance of it.
7. If “free” software were strictly enforced in terms of non-internal software never being sold or even being allowed to be marketed to prospective customers, how many things of an innovative nature would actually get created of any significant complexity, and how long would it take to create them? After all, if people are forced to accept that “software must be free” in terms of Stallman’s ideals, then there is 100% guarantee that all development costs incurred are lost, on the slim hopes that your product is just interesting enough and complex enough to have people ask you (and why couldn’t they choose some other developer to extend your software instead, so you get nothing but “thanks, chump!”) to support it by extending it specifically to their needs, or teach them how to use it? Again, I refer back to point 6 above. Where no incentive beyond “thanks, we really appreciate your efforts” are given, people that actually have to support themselves and their families are reduced to living off the external support of others for their work: they become wards of the state, and are the working unemployed, because they work with no real hope that anything they do will get them beyond what they currently have, which (if their government/societal support allows it) is likely to be bare subsistence level, and they have as much incentive to actually invest their life as those in communist economic systems had: we all know how well THAT worked!
I am not saying that all software that’s either “free” or “entangled” is worthy of paying money for: I’m stating that the original authors have all the legal and moral rights as human beings not to be dictated to in how they release their creations borne of their time and energies into the world. It’s very easy to make all these claims that you can make money with “free” software, but very few types of software have NEED of the services required for someone to make money off of it, and if the software is truly that “free” then there’s absolutely nothing that stipulates that the original author will even break even, let alone be spurred on by whatever form of support they get in return. In the real world, “thanks” won’t provide temporal artifacts needed for human survival. Everyone has the right to attempt to earn their existence in this life according to their works, insofar as they are honest and legal. If you don’t believe that others have the right to do so, then go and work on changing the laws of whatever land you live in, but ensure that you haven’t weeded out your best resources: those that have spent their lives mastering the skills needed to provide the things you value.
If this market would have been infested by GPL software, no one would bother to build an alternative from scratch. This would naturally result in lack of innovation due to the simple principle that you stop innovate when competition drops.
That is not true. Innovation is driven by needs.
An emirical example was the fun sports sector: Innovations were made by users of snow boards and the like. They later started to build an enterprise around their solutions.
However, it’s true that innovation decreases when the number of competitors decreases. If you dare to look, you might notice that FOSS tends to have a lot of competition.
What big enterprises usually call innovation is either the product of a long journey into consumers wants and needs or simply desperate marketing hype because the management made the wrong investment decisions.
That’s also what the GPL software builds upon: solutions get implemented if there is a need for them. The only missing thing right now is to bring together developers and people with needs and money but no development abilities.
>according to Stallman, all such desire to actually survive off of creating software is an evil and unlawful endeavor,
That is _not_ true. Stallman’s not against commercial software, in fact he says that Free Software can be sold without any moral/social impact. Furthermore I remember having read in an article where he was okay with dual licensing software; for example like Trolltech does it with Qt (GPL and QPL?).
What Stallman wants is guaranteed access (at max for a fee that prevents you from loosing money to provide the sources) to the source codes and the right to share, modify and redistribute an application. Further it is a matter of free speech to him. This isn’t very compatible with traditional practices in software business but that does clearly not mean tht Stallman’s approach is bad or wrong.
However, it’s true that innovation decreases when the number of competitors decreases. If you dare to look, you might notice that FOSS tends to have a lot of competition.
a lot of competition indeed, but not any innovation. All of it is based on same stuff…. is there any R&D happening in the GNU Model? If so, what? As far as I’m concerned, it’s all about makign something like Solaris after a communistic model.
Red Hat? Suse? Gentoo? Mandrake? It’s all the same, not innovation… big difference is support and that’s pretty much it.
Have any of the above players forked the Kernel??? gEee, how innovative…
>but not any innovation. All of it is based on same stuff…. is there any R&D happening in the GNU Model
You’re wrong here. Best example is namesys.com with ReiserFS4.
People tend to get something wrong about innovation. Real innovation is very rare (and not bound to commercial or university research), most things that have something new to them and get hailed as innovative do stand on the knowledge of previous solutions/approaches. Often the so called innovation is nothing more than a combination of existing solutions.
And most often so called innovations in software businness aren’t innovations but get marketed as such. Reality shows that real innovation isn’t nearly as much needed as the so called (wannabe) innovators want us to believe.
What the software business needs is mostly not innovation but something new (not to be misunderstood as innovation) to sell. A reason for us to keep buying their new products.
I find it amusing how often people want one to name innovations in Free Software – usually people want you to even name a lot of innovative things – and then ignore that most commercial closed source software vendors can’t deliver any countable amount of innovations. Innovation isn’t what’s steadily happening, especially not in monopoly driven software business. Microsoft Windows anyone? Wow, there were countless innovations from Win 95 to 2000 – from the underlaying system to the GUI. And because innovations did change Windows so often, you can still use the software you used on Win 98 on Win XP, you can still use the userinterface the same way, etc. Sure there were _changes_ but where was the innovation in software aside from exisitng in marketing claims? Well, maybe Windows Longhorn or how it will be named will bring a real innovation, who knows (I don’t mean that ironic). But as of now, MS did it’s best to prevent competition and innovation.
Of course MS is only one software vendor out of many but it’s the biggest one, that did it’s best to prevent others to innovate or let innovations get into the market. At least they did so in the past.
And yes, commercial closed source software vendors do innovate. But not nearly as much as marketing wants you to believe. In Free Software innovations happen too, but does that mean people have to come up with one every month? No! Same goes for the CS vendors.
And about new development and forking: Take X as an example. There’s Xouvert that’s intended to make it easier to development new stuff for XFree86. And there’s Keith Packards X-Server (I forgot it’s name) which is mostly a new development; IIRC most remaining code XFree86 is or will be replaced anyway.
There’s Fresco a total knew developed vector based windowing system for GNU/Linux.
And there are more examples, I’m not going to do a list of that projects just for you.
You’re wrong here. Best example is namesys.com with ReiserFS4.
This is indeed a perfect example. They don’t earn any money, they get it off welfare, huge difference. If you have 50 people who have kids to feed, saying that “we’ll probably have someone give us some money” just ain’t good enough…..
And about new development and forking: Take X as an example. There’s Xouvert that’s intended to make it easier to development new stuff for XFree86. And there’s Keith Packards X-Server (I forgot it’s name) which is mostly a new development; IIRC most remaining code XFree86 is or will be replaced anyway.
There’s Fresco a total knew developed vector based windowing system for GNU/Linux.
And there are more examples, I’m not going to do a list of that projects just for you.
Thank you for proving my point!!!! Xfree86 and GNU model don’t have anything to do with eachother as Xfree86 doesn’t use GPL license, it uses a free license. Go figure!!!
Fresco (any similarity with the well known SVG Tracker for BeOS that’s been around for quite a while???), is not GPL that neither… that’s LGPL….
oh shall I continue?
Apache nor Mozilla, is GPL…
Just simply find those GNU companies for me… can you name 2 at leasT??? From 15 down to 2, that should be a simple task???
You’re loosing the point. As long as it’s Free Software it’s Free Software. Namesys earns money by doing development for other people and by selling ReiserFS for proprietary products. And yes, they get or got money from DARPA for development. And? Trolltech has Qt released under GPL. Red Hat releases Software under GPL, Mandrake does too. Fresco is LGPL which is a license from FSF compatible with GPL. Mozilla 1.7 will be released under GPL aside from two other licenses. OpenOffice.org is LGPL too. Apache is a Free Software license but is not fully compatible with FSF’s GPL.
>If you have 50 people who have kids to feed, saying that “we’ll probably have someone give us some money” just ain’t good enough…..
You’re not going to make me waste some tears on this 😛
The flaw in your thinking is, that just because it is possible to make money with Free Software there would have to be many firms that actually do it. And why are you constantly whining about all this? Who’s trying to force you to build your business on Free Software?
>any similarity with the well known SVG Tracker for BeOS that’s been around for quite a while???
I don’t know ir there are similaritys and I don’t know which, Fresco (previously named Berlin) or SVG Tracker, was first. And I don’t care ’cause either way it wouldn’t change the fact that Fresco’s a new development, which doesn’t mean it’s innovative (I really don’t know it Fresco is).
Regards, David
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html
Selling closed source software isn’t really a save income.
Example: Microsoft would earn nearly nothing if it hadn’t so many income from Windows licenses preinstalled on computers and commercial users buying licenses. Most money really is only made with commercial users, which would have way more trouble when MS discovered that they hadn’t a license. So most money is made with software that is part of a hardware bundle and commercial users.
Private users who buy hardware which comes without Windows usually don’t buy a Windows license, they simply make a copy of someone else’s CD. That’s the reason there once was a law in germany that forbid to sell a computer without a OS. People simply copied (and still do) the software they needed. Same goes for other kinds of software e.g. games, graphics applications etc. Why else do we see copy-protection mechanisms and producht-keys and product-activation pop-uo everywhere? In asia fairly everyone with only few exceptions uses an unauthoriued copy of MS products.
So closed source software is only theoretical a guarantee to earn money.
All mentioned doesn’t earn money from the GPL license, it’s dual licensed… can’t you pick a single example about the issue we have just discussed? Are you too busy being a zealot rather than reading and trying to actually figure osmething out from the discussion???
Red Hat is from the above also excluded due to reasons that is previously discussed in this thread….
After 3 non successful tries, I think it’s time to give up… as of today and through past our so far GPL history, not a single company has made a proper business model. Surely you can say Yadi yadi yadi, I don’t really care until you properly read the thread and try to give some descent examples based on what the conversation is all about.
I also noticed IBM sales goes up… it sure is expensive for companies t o deploy Linux with all service/support needed…. geee, can you imagine that it actually cost more than using MS stuff??… well it does…. go figure…
>Are you too busy being a zealot rather than reading and trying to actually figure osmething out from the discussion???
Go read the thread yourself and find out what I was replying in this discussion. If there isn’t already a usenet rule saying, “the longer a thread gets, the more likely it’s that someone comes up and trys to insult others by calling them zealots” then it’s now time to spread the word.
As I pointed out in a previous reply, I think the problem with selling Free Software usually is that no ones creating Free Software with the goal in mind to commercially distribute it. I don’t know of any company that creates Free Software, regardless which license it’s under, to sell it. You can try to take this as prove that it isn’t possible to create Free Software for commercial spreading for the rest of your life, it won’t change anything. As you should see, commercial closed source software gets usually copied without permission by it’s users the difference you had (or would have) with Free Software were, that copying it isn’t forbidden. Again software is usually only paid for when it comes bundled with hardware, or when it’s used in a corporate environment where support and further development of software need to be made sure. And even in a corporate environment it’s often the case that software is used without having paid for a license. The only type of software that I assume to be not affected by this is niche software. Everything that can be of use on a “normal” desktop system will usually get copied, regardless of legal status of such action.
I also think that I clearly stated that I do_not_believe that a Free Software based busniness model is always going to work – again, go read the thread yourself – especially I don’t think you could s just convert a corporation with existing closed source business model to a “Free Software based only” model.
If all you can accept is a software model that exists on a license, in this case GPL, than you’re fooling yourself. That were rarely a save bet for either commercial closed source or commercial Free Software. This is generally about desktop software, I mean software that could be of use for a desktop user. Niche software or simply software that doesn’t fall into this category were (at least for me) another topic.
I didn’t want to insult someone in this thread, if I actually did or you feel like I did than I’m sorry for that.
I didn’t want to insult someone in this thread, if I actually did or you feel like I did than I’m sorry for that.
Sorry about that… sometimes I just get so fed up I can overreact. I guess it’s because I try to fight fire with fire, and zealotry has made me become an antizealot I guess.
It’s just too much ranting from a very specific camp that makes me blow up every now and then.
Sorry about that, my appologies…