[Fsf-friends] Money ??

[Sandip Bhattacharya]

On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 20:16 +0530, Ankit Malik wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I know this is an old question! In fact I have asked this at loads of
> places but with no satisfactory answer.
> 
> I hope you guys answer it >>
> 
> "Mr. X is a software developer. He develops a Software Y and releases
> it as free [as in freedom and beer] So how does he earn money"

This has been answered too many times. I will try to answer it the way I
have been convinced.

The question you ask is generally asked by people who think making
products is the only way to make money. Such people are normally lured
by the prospect of creating product once and selling it multiple times
and getting rich quick.

These same people somehow miss out all the people working around him -
the plumber, the carpenter, the accountant, the banker, the
electrician ... all the people who earn by selling their *services*. In
fact, the service sector of the economy far surpasses the product
oriented sector.

Just like only the FMCG (Fast moving consumer goods) area of our product
economy will always make money, similarly niche fields in software
products (like accounting software which needs to be updated every year
or anti-virus software) will always make money.

And like the rest of the real world products like refrigerators, fridges
whose markets become saturated over time, long-term software products
(like Commercial operating systems) will also get saturated.

Sooner or later long-term software producers have to turn to a service
model to ensure constant revenue stream.

In short, software products anyway dont work well in the long term.
Services always will (even though they would not give you any sharp
spikes in revenue like products).

FOSS offers the best option for software developers worldwide to develop
a common public body of software and then sell it in their local market
as a service. Over time this common software treasure will only get
richer as no proprietary company can afford to maintain such a huge
amount of software at such a scale of human effort.

Coming back to your question...

So this said person gives away his software for free, and sells the
service of installing it for his clients. No body knows the software as
well as he does, and not all clients want to mess around with hacking a
software to customize to their needs. So this guy is bound to get work
based on his services. IF he has a get-rich-quick idea in mind, I am
sorry, but FOSS isn't his area. Let him stick to closed source - in
which case there is a 90+% chance that he will fail (in keeping with
market norm).

- Sandip

--

Sandip Bhattacharya    *    Puroga Technologies   *     sandip@puroga.com
Work: http://www.puroga.com   *    Home/Blog: http://www.sandipb.net/blog

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