ethical ubuntu

[Chanchao]

On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 17:43 +1000, Peter Garrett wrote:

> > How, exactly, does someone GPL (or similar) code to make it "Free" and
> > then make money from selling it again?
> 
> I am not a businessman - in fact I may be the world's worst businessman :)
> i am therefore unqualified to answer this question. I suspect, as you
> imply, that the commercialisation of Free software is largely done using
> the service business model.

Right, but don't make your software work too well then or nobody would
need support. :)

Essentially being in the software business is not too different from
being a drug pusher trying to get as many people as possible locked into
coming back for more. 

You have to omit some essential part to make sure people come back to
give you money.   Call that 'support', fine.   If you look around
there's a lot of companies with software projects that are going
nowhere, that suddenly become Great Advocates of Software Freedom and
GPL the lot. FOSS community embraces them like they were the Lost Son. 

Then those companies do childish things to beg for scraps. 

"Oh you want a manual?"  Pay for it here.
"Oh you want a driver to actually connect to a database?" Pay for it
here.
"Oh you want to run it on Windows?"  Pay for it here.

'Hey but you're free to modify it as you please. Bend over and wait for
the tarball.'

Cheers,
Chanchao