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Open Source: Where's the money? | by Didactylos | 2003-08-23 07:33:37 |
| Why not look at working examples |
by chrisfs59 |
2003-08-23 16:32:20 |
Not being in the industry, here's my two cents anyways. Some people pair the words Open Source and free, when this is not necessarily the case. Even Richard Stallman said Free software is like Free speech not Free Beer.
I'm not sure if a single developer can make a decent living from Open Source software working by themselves from their home. Then again, I don't know if you can make a decent living selling proprietary software working from your home.
Go to a book store and you'll see lots of books by Shakespeare, Dickens, Verne and Wells. All of their work is in the public domain, yet companies are still publishing them and very much expecting a profit even though the same story is available from a number of different sources.
And it's not just pretty packaging, if what's inside isn't useful then, it's not going to go too far, so developers are still needed even for Open Source software.
Look if you can talk to people at places that are pursuing Open Source software, like Red Hat, SUSE and see what they think. People there have skills and smarts and must have ideas on how they can work with OSS and make a living.
I work for a local non-profit listener supported radio station. We send out the programming for everyone to hear with no commercials and we ask for money 3 times a year. We took in about $3 million this year, not bad for a station that's giving away something. |
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