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> Open source does not mean "gratis". See for example this historic order form of software offered by the Free Software Foundation: That's the example that's b
by forgetfulness 5y ago
> Open source does not mean "gratis". See for example this historic order form of software offered by the Free Software Foundation:
That's the example that's been shown for the last 30 years, Richard Stallman making a buck selling copies of Emacs and GCC during a period in the 80s and early 90s, when infrastructure constraints made it cheaper, or feasible in the first place, for the user to order software to be shipped on physical media rather than downloading it from the net.
Either there are no more examples of businesses that have lived off selling copies of Free desktop software, or the FSF really doesn't care enough to look for one in the last 20 years.
- ensignavenger 5y agoOther examples of entirely open source projects that have paid, full time developers include all of RedHat, Godot, Blender, Linux, Python, Django... the list is very long.
- forgetfulness 5y agoYes but we're talking specifically of Software targeted at consumers or niche professionals, what "Independent Software Vendors" sell, it's good that some infrastructure projects get corporate sponsorship and that RedHat funnels some money from its server software business to the Linux desktop, but this is, rather noticeably, not spurring development of Linux desktop applications now, or last year, or in the ten years prior.