Re: LINUX is the "one" ? .... Comments??? -- MIDRANGE-L

Okay, technically, you can not "sell" GPL'd software. But, you can charge what you want for the distribution and/or warranty of the software. Of course, market conditions will put a limit on your fees. The cost of many current distributions is quite a bit more than the cost of the few CDs in the distribution.

The license gives the right of royalty free distribution to anyone who receives your distribution. So, what you call "secondary derivatives" are the money making activities and these will be highly competitive. The question is, "Can you make money doing this?" For me, there is a fine line between charging for distribution/warranty and charging for the software, except the fees for distribution/warranty will be lower than the cost of equivalent proprietary software. However, there are other fees to be gathered such as support, consulting, and upgrade fees. Isn't this what IBM is doing by building a service and support network around what used to be their "bread and butter?" Linux is just a logical extension of the service orientation and IBM doesn't even provide a distribution.

You can program for a company that participates in the GPL and get paid for it. So, in effect, you can make money programming GPL. Witness the enormous amounts IBM has invested in this activity to date. Under the GPL they have given much to the "free software" movement but they have also received a lot of free code. So, for a company using and developing GPL'd software they get paid in kind through use of all the free software available. That has to count for something. They can keep their software in-house with no obligation to share unless they decide to distribute to a third party. A company can also choose to ""sell" a proprietary package and distribute it with the GPL'd code.

It is a different model but it isn't communistic. I don't think that it applies to all types of software. There will always be work for proprietary development. However, your last point about innovation is something I wonder about also. Maybe innovation is best left to the likes of Apple or Rochester or, dare I say, Microsoft?

On the other hand, I may be as misguided as you seem to imply.

Also, it, it really hurts my eyes when you SHOUT.

Peter

On Thursday, Apr 3, 2003, at 16:54 US/Central, jt wrote:

There's a misunderstanding here alright. You CANNOT sell GPL'd software. Read up on what GNU is, Peter.

"Of course, anyone else can obtain your code for free once you give it back to the community." So explain again: I write code, and I hafta give it away free, and yet somebody WILL pay for it...?? (I've got the Brooklyn Bridge and PLENTY of swampland, if that's the case...;-)

Red Hat and the others are not selling the code. They're selling a set of distribution CD's. Again, look around the GNU link Stephane posted.

And oh yeah, the old You are NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE ANY MONEY if You WRITE software, but making money on the secondary derivatives.. (like the few that land great jobs, or board of Directors positions, or make speeches.. or the trickle-down Ya might get for packaging, service, maintenance).. well thaz okay...

So no wonder little TRULY innovative software gets written, but there are plenty of folks making speeches on how great this is.

| -----Original Message----- | From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx | [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Peter | Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 7:30 PM | To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion | Subject: Re: LINUX is the "one" ? .... Comments??? | | | I think there is a misunderstanding here. GPL'd software can be sold. | The use of the software under the GPL means that you give back to the | community anything you add to the code (source). Otherwise, you can sell | it for whatever you want. For example: Red Hat, Suse, Debian, etc. Of | course, anyone else can obtain your code for free once you give it back | to the community. But you can make money by value add - packaging, | service, maintenance.......

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