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Writing open-source software to get rich is a bit paradoxical to me. Would Linux be as popular now if it was dual licensed from the beginning? Everyone who wa
by ThinkBeat 5y ago
Writing open-source software to get rich is a bit paradoxical to me.
Would Linux be as popular now if it was dual licensed from the beginning?
Everyone who wanted to install Linux in a company had to pay $99 per CPU?
(or whatever), or PostgreSQL, GNU tools and so on.
If you dual license it, can you legally enforce who can use which?
Can you take a company to court if they are using the tool that is
open source as well as dual license?
Opensource is a fad now. Everyone wants to make their software "open source",
make the world better, while at the same time making billions., and getting
really mad if someone else is making money off it.
Though the term open source is not so worn out and tired that it is nearly meaningless since people use it in all sorts of ways.
When I use the term, I mean classic GNU and Linux open source.
For people who get angry about the inability to make enough $$$
on a GPL license should also ensure that they are not using
GLP licensed tools/apps/code in their work.
I have no problem with people making proprietary software and selling it.
I dont have a problem with people making GPL software and offering to sell it.
I dont like the duality in wanting to be "cool and open source saving whales"
and at the same time expecting billions off the product.
- indymike 5y ago> Writing open-source software to get rich is a bit paradoxical to me. 1. Release open source product. Get lots of users. 2. Offer extended services / product to users. Support/custom dev/training/premium features. 3. ??? 4. Profit Has worked for thousands of software titles.
- _zamorano_ 5y agoFor a while, people in the open source community kept bashing proprietary software in a way that for many devs, writing such software is/was considered unethical. Something unique to software development. Yes, Linux won on the web and we're freer than if Microsoft had won, but the corporations learnt a way to keep using the open-source tag, and Android is a great example, while cornering our freedoms more and more. Then, the true mantainer with the open-source spirit, has to live for scraps, while seeing everyone else making the big buck. To me, the current situation is a consequence of the ethics of the early open-source community, that left the average small propietary software developer unable to make money, but of course, could do nothing against the megacorps. Did they really think they could win?
- josephcsible 5y agoI don't see how anyone would have been required to pay for Linux under this proposal. The idea is that everything would still be available freely to everyone under a copyleft FOSS license, but companies that don't like copyleft could pay for a permissive license instead.
- dehrmann 5y ago> Would Linux be as popular now if it was dual licensed from the beginning? Especially when there are BSD variants that are really good.
- ThinkBeat 5y agoThat is a good point. I had not thought about that before. FreeBSB was released Novembet1993 Linux had its first release Linux was initially released on September 1991 Per Wiki, I am not sure if this is accurate. He did announce it then, but it was not open source. Yggdrasil had their first December 8, 1992 Slackware had its first release July 17 1993 I knew about Yggdrasil because I was using it back then. In February 1993. All to say that Linx appears to have just barely makde it to market ahead of FreeBSD but that may not relevant at all. Why did Linux get such a huge following and FreeBSD not. I am quite curius https://itsfoss.com/25-years-linux/ https://itsfoss.com/25-years-linux/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD