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How low do you think it needs to be? I'd estimate no more than 1/3rd of the ESA's estimate could possibly be developers[0]. I would certainly consider less tha

How low do you think it needs to be? I'd estimate no more than 1/3rd of the ESA's estimate could possibly be developers[0]. I would certainly consider less than 50,000 out of 1.4 million to be "almost nobody" for the purposes of this conversation. [0] And I think that's a very, very high estimate, it's probably closer to 1/5th, or even lower. There are a lot of art, QA, and support people involved in the industry, before you even make it to usual corporate overhead of management, HR, payroll, etc..

cwyers 12y ago
50,000 out of 1.4 million is roughly 4%. So, yeah, like I said before: about an order of magnitude too high. But that's really a definitional argument, and those are dull. The larger point is that plenty of people still sell software to other people.
- millstone 12y ago
  The FSF has this bizarre belief that companies write some software, and right before it gets shipped, pick the license under which to distribute it [1]: When we explain to the employer that it is illegal to distribute the improved version except as free software, the employer usually decides to release it as free software rather than throw it away. Our hapless employer wrote some amazing software, but then found out that they had to give it away! Hah, joke's on them! 1: https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/