6 ms·

You do realize that you can sell GPL'd software, right Yes, and there's nothing preventing your client from reselling it to other potential clients. So realis

• mindcrime 16y ago
  Yes, and there's nothing preventing your client from reselling it to other potential clients. Other than the fact that they're probably not in that business. If I sell, say, a GPL'd CRM system to a Widget manufacturing company, why would they go out and start trying to sell CRM systems just because they can? Same reason all of Red Hat's customers don't get into the "selling Linux" business. It's just not what they do. Red Hat, BTW, make a decent bit of coin selling a product that's largely made up of GPL'd code.
  • riffraff 16y ago
    but another company in the same space can get to your code and run with it, isn't that how mandrake and suse came into being?
    • mindcrime 16y ago
      but another company in the same space can get to your code and run with it, isn't that how mandrake and suse came into being? Sure, and Oracle also took Red Hat's code and created a competing offering. Selling open-source is definitely different, in some regards, than selling closed-source proprietary stuff. But RH (and a few others) demonstrate that it is possible to make money selling open-source software (Ok, I'll argue that it's not actually the software you're selling, but something else.... but still, you're selling something, not just doing professional services).