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The problem boils down to "Really I am better at programming than this business stuff.". Someone with his talent and expertise should have no problem with gett

The problem boils down to "Really I am better at programming than this business stuff.". Someone with his talent and expertise should have no problem with getting highly paid consulting gigs. Then he could continue working on GPG in his free time and even use the consulting income for hiring additional programmers to work on GPG. There are quite a few product-based businesses that could be built upon GPG as well (secure email, corporate communication tools, some kind of public-key-based social network come to mind ...). These could be used to support the continued development of GPG itself. It's of course not as easy as it sounds. Not everybody wants to deal with 'all that business stuff' and that's fine but then by all means find someone who can help you with that part. If you want to change the world sometimes idealism alone just isn't enough. You also have to proactively deal with the everyday stuff like where the cashflow for paying the bills will come from next month. There's also a problem with the purism put forth by some of the 'free as in freedom' enthusiasts, most notably Richard Stallman, who seem to gloss over the fact that coders have to make a living, too or who even frown upon making money with software altogether. Software eats the world but even RMS can't eat software. How many successful larger companies come to mind whose business model is based upon open source? Red Hat, Ubuntu and that's about it. If we truly want to avoid dilemmas like this one we also need to think about how to successfully implement sustainable open source business models.

Kalium 12y ago
Stallman doesn't and has never glossed over that programmers need to make a living. He has no qualms about charging for software and has happily done it himself. He says it's wrong to use licenses to force people into depending on you.
- BjoernKW 12y ago
  Good point. It's not that clear and easy in all cases though. Besides, Stallman once disparaged SaaS business models as unfree and essentially a problem to be dealt with. While that in way makes sense from his point of view, it's problematic for developers who try to make a living with providing a useful service. I very much agree for all system software and especially cryptographic and security-related software. What about a developer or a company though that's put several years worth of work into developing a particularly useful novel solution to a specific business problem? If they use a proprietary license they'll at first force others into depending on them once they start using the software but is that really wrong in every case? If on the other hand they immediately release their code under an open source license they might effectively commoditize their novel solution. Sure, they might be able to recoup some of their up-front investment but in most cases this won't be a sustainable business model. Releasing the source code only to paying customers might seem like an obvious solution but depending on the nature of the software and the industry the customers might decide to just pay once and afterwards sideline the developer. Continued innovation can serve as an incentive to pay for updates but again this doesn't apply to all fields and industries. Licenses such as AGPL might be a remedy, too but from experience I can see that software licensed under these or similar terms is mostly avoided in business contexts. I'm not sure if there's any company that's built a viable long-term business on a dual-licensing model. Not every closed source (or only partially open source) software product is created with malicious "Let's blackmail the customer into using our software forever." intent. Sometimes, it just makes good sense. However, in those cases I think companies should at least make provisions for releasing the code if they go out of business.
Retra 12y ago
>There's also a problem with the purism put forth by some of the 'free as in freedom' enthusiasts, most notably Richard Stallman, who seem to gloss over the fact that coders have to make a living, too or who even frown upon making money with software altogether. Software eats the world but even RMS can't eat software. Here you are saying "free as in freedom", while obviously referring to "free as in beer." Your earnings shouldn't be a function of then number of lawyers you employ (to make air-tight licenses.) That doesn't imply you are not allowed to make money if you have too few lawyers. It implies the opposite, actually.
- BjoernKW 12y ago
  You're right. The problem is though that it's not always that easy to distinguish between beer and freedom in this context. Depending on the software and the industry those two might be intrinsically connected. Besides, you might need a large number of lawyers anyway, for example if a company decides to simply disregard your carefully crafted open source license.

Kalium 12y ago

Stallman doesn't and has never glossed over that programmers need to make a living. He has no qualms about charging for software and has happily done it himself. He says it's wrong to use licenses to force people into depending on you.

BjoernKW 12y ago
Good point. It's not that clear and easy in all cases though. Besides, Stallman once disparaged SaaS business models as unfree and essentially a problem to be dealt with. While that in way makes sense from his point of view, it's problematic for developers who try to make a living with providing a useful service. I very much agree for all system software and especially cryptographic and security-related software. What about a developer or a company though that's put several years worth of work into developing a particularly useful novel solution to a specific business problem? If they use a proprietary license they'll at first force others into depending on them once they start using the software but is that really wrong in every case? If on the other hand they immediately release their code under an open source license they might effectively commoditize their novel solution. Sure, they might be able to recoup some of their up-front investment but in most cases this won't be a sustainable business model. Releasing the source code only to paying customers might seem like an obvious solution but depending on the nature of the software and the industry the customers might decide to just pay once and afterwards sideline the developer. Continued innovation can serve as an incentive to pay for updates but again this doesn't apply to all fields and industries. Licenses such as AGPL might be a remedy, too but from experience I can see that software licensed under these or similar terms is mostly avoided in business contexts. I'm not sure if there's any company that's built a viable long-term business on a dual-licensing model. Not every closed source (or only partially open source) software product is created with malicious "Let's blackmail the customer into using our software forever." intent. Sometimes, it just makes good sense. However, in those cases I think companies should at least make provisions for releasing the code if they go out of business.

Retra 12y ago

>There's also a problem with the purism put forth by some of the 'free as in freedom' enthusiasts, most notably Richard Stallman, who seem to gloss over the fact that coders have to make a living, too or who even frown upon making money with software altogether. Software eats the world but even RMS can't eat software. Here you are saying "free as in freedom", while obviously referring to "free as in beer." Your earnings shouldn't be a function of then number of lawyers you employ (to make air-tight licenses.) That doesn't imply you are not allowed to make money if you have too few lawyers. It implies the opposite, actually.

BjoernKW 12y ago
You're right. The problem is though that it's not always that easy to distinguish between beer and freedom in this context. Depending on the software and the industry those two might be intrinsically connected. Besides, you might need a large number of lawyers anyway, for example if a company decides to simply disregard your carefully crafted open source license.