[Liverpool] Money

[Paul Johnson]

Hi,

> And, if they'll do it for nowt, they eliminate the income of those who
> make a living from it.
>
>
> On 22 July 2012 03:52, ROBERT COTTAM <r.cottam at virgin.net> wrote:
>> Free software. Why free? Is it software engineers who wish to tear
>> away from the corporate need to make money, feeling that they are
>> undervalued? Are they resentful of the fact that their managers (who
>> understand nothing of the complexity and beauty of the software their
>> employees write) are only interested in money? Is it an idealistic
>> notion that code is the key, and all else is unimportant? Do they
>> really not want to be paid for their efforts? Is the idea financially
>> viable? How can free software make money?

Free software doesn't make money. It can't. If that's the case, why is 
RedHat one of the biggest companies going worldwide now? Simple, they 
sell support for their product.

Why do people write code to give it away? Simple. They want to. Many 
people who write free software have a day job which funds the production 
of the free software. It's not a case of robbing from the mouths of 
corporations or anything like that. To many, GIMP will never be a 
replacement PhotoShop and LibreOffice will never be an MS Office 
replacement. That's fine as people want different things from different 
software. To me, GIMP and LibreOffice knock both PhotoShop and MS Office 
into a dustbin with the words "waste of money" written over it.

I've spent many a night up writing code for nothing other than the 
pleasure I received knowing others enjoy the software I've written. I 
still do it now (and yes, I now do write code for a living).

A much wider question is will open source (which is free as in speech 
rather than free as in closed, but costing nothing) kill off commercial 
software. Probably not is the simplest answer. Not because of the price, 
but because companies are very good at FUD. Don't use LibreOffice, there 
is no support (a complete lie), don't use GIMP - you never know who is 
writing the code and the quality of it (hogwash) and so on, yet these 
companies are happy to rely on gcc or g++ to build their code rather 
than forking out for VS2012!

Paul