ethical ubuntu

[Peter Garrett]

On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:02:32 +0700
Chanchao <custom at freenet.de> wrote:

> 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.'

If your humorous (but cynical) post is correct, then you have just given
quite a succinct summary of why I am not, and never wish again to be, in
business ;-)

Peter