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Don't give away your free software and open source software either. Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't
by jordigh 10y ago
Don't give away your free software and open source software either.
Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise
funds for development. Don't waste it!
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
Just because it's free doesn't mean you have to put it on a public server for anyone to download. It's perfectly within the definitions of the open source and free software licenses to only distribute the software to paying customers.
Or maybe it's impossible to do this now because the internet has made it trivial to redistribute software, I don't know.
- fundamental 10y agoHave you seen any projects successfully selling the source code of a fully open source application/library and making a non-trivial amount? I've seen some projects which receive some funding by charging for compiled binaries, but that revenue is for the additional service of compiling/supporting the use of pre-compiled binaries IMO.
- jordigh 10y agoNo, but I have not seen anyone try either in a long time, not since Emacs source code used to cost 100 dollars. There are companies like Red Hat which charge you money for access to their repos, but I suppose you would argue that they're charging for building the binaries too. Everyone nowadays just puts up all of their source code online without asking money for it. Nobody even tries to sell it. I also think perhaps buying software in general is becoming a bit of an outdated idea. Everyone wants to sell subscriptions now.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- serge2k 10y agoBut they are entirely free to give it to anyone else.