[Fsf-friends] RECAP of MONEY and FLOSS - Discussions - It should continue to get more answers fro more members

Venkat Kumaraswamy ellakannada@yahoo.com
Fri Mar 4 09:03:52 IST 2005


Here is the recap which were posted in the group.
______________________________________________________________
 
There's few good articles on the http://www.gnu.org site. I would also
suggest these books:

1) The Success of Open Source by Steven Weber
2) Free for All: How LINUX and the Free Software Movement Undercut the
High-Tech Titans
by Peter Wayner
3) Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock
Down Culture and Control Creativity -- by Lawrence Lessig (not
techinicall related with Free software, but same philiosophy).

-- 
Sharif Islam                            http://www.sharifislam.com  - sharif.islam@gmail.com 
Research Programmer             University of Illinois, 
Urbana-Champaign
Library Systems Office            217-244-4688
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Thanks You Sandip.
Let me give you another example.

Imagine the state of the IT Industry in India.
Most (90%) of the companies are services based companies.
They don't develop products.

In the case of a FLOSS developer, he has an added advantage in that
*he* is the product developer and *he* is also the service provider.

Ofcourse, if you include the amount of customizations that can be
implementaed for your clients, the oppurtunities are limitless.

And your clients will also not mind your product being FLOSS Licensed
as long as it serves their purpose and they will be happy to have a
community constantly developing *their* software (for free) , so that
they don't have to care about maintainence.

Ofcourse they might want it customised for a new release, this is
where repeat business comes in for you. :)

Regards,
Toufeeq Hussain - toufeeqh@gmail.com
_________________________________________________________________
 
Since the software is free(as in freedom), anyone could modify the
installation system and make it user friendly.

Vijay - vijaykumar@bravegnu.org
________________________________________________________________
 
"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). "

but then that would tempt Person X to keep the installation bit an
uneasy procedure since  that is his/her only source of bread.

 
"Ankit Malik" <ankitmalik@gmail.com> 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Sandip Bhattacharya" <sandip@lug-delhi.org>
 
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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hello,
     i guess you might have received a lot of answers.
instead of repeating all that here. can you just brief
all the answers you got and your counter-args, since
it will reduce the no of threads.
regards,

amal - "amal manuel" <amalmanuel@yahoo.com> 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"
-- 
Ankit Malik - "Ankit Malik" <ankitmalik@gmail.com>
http://scribbler.tk
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