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I don't agree with Stallman. Like probably most HN readers, I use a lot of Free/Open Source software - Linux, MySQL, Rails... and it's incredibly valuable. How

I don't agree with Stallman. Like probably most HN readers, I use a lot of Free/Open Source software - Linux, MySQL, Rails... and it's incredibly valuable. However I don't expect all software to be free, and to a large extent many major bits of open source software are 'market distortions' created by the big commercial IT companies. Eg OpenOffice is largely StarOffice, bought by Sun and open sourced, mainly in order to (IMHO) piss off Microsoft. Writing good software takes time and skill (as we all know) and I don't think it's unreasonable that the people who do it should be able to charge end users for their efforts. Expecting all software to be written by public employees or in people's spare time is unrealistic.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
HansF 18y ago
The gpl explicitly allows you to charge for your software.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  But forcing you to open source it prevents you from being able to, generally.
- bayareaguy 18y ago
  While true, there is the problem with the GPL that it allows your competitors to leverage your own efforts against you. That's suicide for dumb resellers of commodity applications. But the successful open source companies have proven that for more complex things you can easily make plenty of money if you dual-license your software and use the distribution the GPL allows to build up an established brand.