andreasbalzer said:

Alin1x said:

*snip*

Any progress on that?

test

k2t0f12d wrote:



damage-inc wrote:  I agree. I would like to see the OSS community just at admit that they are funded by companies that make money selling stuff.

I trust that the correct adjective in discussion is philanthropic.  This argument demonstrates a confusion between the idea of software as a product and software as a service.  It is equally absurd to say that the programmers that work for proprietary developers are being paid for the software they write, since, the work that they do is owned by the companies where they work and they are being paid by the companies for their time, unless the programmers are gettiing to some sort of royalty for their work of which outsiders aren't aware.  Truthfully speaking, every programmer with any company anywhere is writing software as a service which is subsequently made into a product by their employers who benefit from this work much more then the programmers they employ.

The contention of free software as I have come to understand is that software should be distributed to the user as a service with four basic guaranteed freedoms, freedoms that are shared equally by its participants public and private, and not defined by which companies give them financial backing.

uriel wrote:



AndyC wrote:  damage-inc wrote:  I'm not sure what google gets out of it. Eyeballs. Yours. On their ads. All those Google online apps, constantly displaying ads in the hope you'll click on a few. Contributions to Firefox - greases the wheel to ensure the default search engine is Google. It's all about selling advertising space at the end of the day.

Which makes the idea that open source is purely a philotranpic effort really stupid. There is an endless amount of companies who spend large sums of hard money on developing or using open source software. Intel, AMD, Broadcom(!!), IBM, Sun Microsystems, Google, Apple, Novell, Red Hat, even Adobe have delivered and released open source software made by paid developers. True, there are people who release software without get paid. I'm writing this comment without getting paid. Not everything we do life we get paid for, but we still do it because we like it. But to say that open source is some kind of hobby movement with no funding is just plain stupid. It seems virtually every single major tech company these days (including Microsoft!) contributes to the development of OSS.   

k2t0f12d wrote:



damage-inc wrote: Every company that supports OSS has an alternate motive. IBM, Google, Sun, Oracle all support OSS to sell something else. IBM and Sun both want to sell hardware. Oracle wants it database on Linux. (they don't give it away or give you the source). I'm not sure what google gets out of it. I'm still waiting for Google to open source their search engine and not charge people for advertising.

Why would Google be persuaded to do either of those things?

ScanIAm wrote:



Dharma Punk wrote:  ScanIAm wrote: The whole GPL/OSS/FSF mantra is that the code you write becomes part of the ecosystem for no cost.  Since you aren't able to restrict it's use to those who will pay you, the effort is not profitable monetarily. As such, all OSS code is hobbyware. Well, it's my belief that the fine folks at the Free Software Foundation have rocks in their heads (heck, Stallman can't even pronounce GNU right, why should I gave a rat's you-know-what about his views on FOSS).

Yes, he is rather silly.

Dharma Punk wrote: I'll admit there's no direct money-for-product exchange with OSS; it's more roundabout. None of the Mozilla developers make money off of Firefox, but they can put food on the table because Google funds their efforts.

Ahhh, but why?  It's either a philatropic effort, or Google gets something else out of it.  Google's got an axe to grind in competing against MSFT, so that may be the reason, but that is pure speculation.

Dharma Punk wrote: Developers working for IBM have contributed to Linux. And, like it mentions in the thread, developers at DreamWorks have built proprietary solutions on the back of Linux. That's just a few ways I can think of that, while you may not get funds directly selling software, you can make money with open source.

Sure, but those methods of getting paid can be had by working on paid software such that you get paid directly AND indirectly.  It seems to me that the OSS developers are giving their efforts away to the Value Added crowd and getting no reciprocation.  Altruistic philatropy is great, but some of the FOSS proponents don't seem willing to admit that that is what it is.

Dharma Punk wrote:



ScanIAm wrote:  Dharma Punk wrote:  Zaki wrote:  Dharma Punk wrote:  Or.... Continue to develop software to put food on the table, come home, eat, spend time with the wee ones, then chip away at some pet project after they're tucked in. As an example. And.... End up writing software competing with your money-making project that people download for free making you unnecessary at your day-job. As an example. Well, let me ask you this: what do you work on during the course of a typical 8-hour workday? That isn't the point.

Well, I was leading up to the notion that if you spend 8 hours a day writing code for an accounting software package, then you wouldn't want to contribute to open source accounting software during the other 16 hours. Goes without saying of course.

ScanIAm wrote: The whole GPL/OSS/FSF mantra is that the code you write becomes part of the ecosystem for no cost.  Since you aren't able to restrict it's use to those who will pay you, the effort is not profitable monetarily. As such, all OSS code is hobbyware.

Well, it's my belief that the fine folks at the Free Software Foundation have rocks in their heads (heck, Stallman can't even pronounce GNU right, why should I gave a rat's you-know-what about his views on FOSS).

I'll admit there's no direct money-for-product exchange with OSS; it's more roundabout. None of the Mozilla developers make money off of Firefox, but they can put food on the table because Google funds their efforts. Developers working for IBM have contributed to Linux. And, like it mentions in the thread, developers at DreamWorks have built proprietary solutions on the back of Linux. That's just a few ways I can think of that, while you may not get funds directly selling software, you can make money with open source.

ScanIAm wrote: It may be rewarding to the author in other ways, but it can't, by definition, put food on the table.

And that's what I was getting at in responding to damage-inc's point (cool name, BTW). Plenty of OSS developers get a kick out of the intrisnic rewards.
 

corona_coder wrote:



damage-inc wrote:  I personally don't get the open source effort. As a person who writes code for a living and supports a family of four, I don't understand why people just want to give away something they have spent a lot of time working on. Maybe someday I will see the light

You can still make money off of OSS.  the code has to be visible to all.  OSS allows you to improve your product.  Security being #1 as OSS is more secure than proprietary software.  The more eye balls the more secure.  It also helps you increase the value of your software as users can add feature they find useful and they give it back to you.  Many say that OSS can cause forking which is hogwash.  How many Linux kernels are there?  Just one.  How many distribution of GNOME and KDE are there?  Just one.  How many times have you seen people try to reimplement proprietary software.  There are many instances of that.

Dharma Punk wrote:



damage-inc wrote:  I personally don't get the open source effort. As a person who writes code for a living and supports a family of four, I don't understand why people just want to give away something they have spent a lot of time working on. Maybe someday I will see the light

Love of the game. Same reason why people write blog posts or make elaborate podcasts and not charge a dime.