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> Why doesn't anyone try to simply sell free software? One word. Centos. It's easy to devalue most of the engineering work put into a premium distro. Business

> Why doesn't anyone try to simply sell free software? One word. Centos. It's easy to devalue most of the engineering work put into a premium distro. Businesses might still pay for it for mission critical stuff, but that's not enough volume to run a business on. > You want the source code for it, so you can modify it and/or redistribute it? Also pay for it. The GPL has explicit provisions for allowing access to the source code only if you pay, for example. This isn't going to work. 1. You aren't going to get much money. From the GPL (3.b): > for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution 2. Only one person has to pay for the source. Once the source is out, other people can just get a copy of the copy.

jordigh 8y ago
And how is this economically different from piracy, which mostly goes unprosecuted? Also, you've cherry-picked the GPL. It talks about "equivalent access", i.e. you can charge as much for the source as what you charged for the binary. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDow...
- coldtea 8y ago
  >And how is this economically different from piracy, which mostly goes unprotected? That this is not even illegal at all. And piracy in business settings is much more seriously and effectively prosecuted. Pirating at an enterprise is nothing like the free-for-all of pirating music or movies at home.
fuller00 8y ago
Haha you stole the words from my mouth. The fact that CentOS exists undermines all of Redhat's business model. Honestly, the future of Open source software is probably going to be like Sqlite, in the best case scenario: 1. The core of the software is open source 2. Useful extras like unit tests and documentation from developer might only be available to paying customers. There is no other way to make money from OSS otherwise and please don't bring up consulting. It doesn't scaleup and to make money you're incentivized to keep making your software more complex, see a nearby comment on Elastic admitting that.

jordigh 8y ago

And how is this economically different from piracy, which mostly goes unprosecuted? Also, you've cherry-picked the GPL. It talks about "equivalent access", i.e. you can charge as much for the source as what you charged for the binary. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDow...

coldtea 8y ago
>And how is this economically different from piracy, which mostly goes unprotected? That this is not even illegal at all. And piracy in business settings is much more seriously and effectively prosecuted. Pirating at an enterprise is nothing like the free-for-all of pirating music or movies at home.

fuller00 8y ago

Haha you stole the words from my mouth. The fact that CentOS exists undermines all of Redhat's business model. Honestly, the future of Open source software is probably going to be like Sqlite, in the best case scenario: 1. The core of the software is open source 2. Useful extras like unit tests and documentation from developer might only be available to paying customers. There is no other way to make money from OSS otherwise and please don't bring up consulting. It doesn't scaleup and to make money you're incentivized to keep making your software more complex, see a nearby comment on Elastic admitting that.