From owner-freebsd-questions Sat May 16 17:56:27 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA03864 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Sat, 16 May 1998 17:56:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from lucy.bedford.net (lucy.bedford.net [206.99.145.54]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA03837 for ; Sat, 16 May 1998 17:56:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from listread@lucy.bedford.net) Received: (from listread@localhost) by lucy.bedford.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA29340; Sat, 16 May 1998 20:06:16 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from listread) Message-Id: <199805170006.UAA29340@lucy.bedford.net> Subject: Re: Profit? In-Reply-To: <199805161445.PAA22724@ns0.fast.net.uk> from "andy@fastnet.co.uk" at "May 16, 98 03:45:33 pm" To: andy@fastnet.co.uk Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 20:06:16 -0400 (EDT) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-to: djv@bedford.net From: CyberPeasant X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL38 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG andy@fastnet.co.uk wrote: > Hi > > I have a simmple question, how do you make any money if the product > is free? Think of the OS as a taxicab. If I gave you a free taxicab, could you make money with it? Sure. There are taxicab drivers (users), taxicab mechanics (consultants, custom programmers), people who write books about taxicabs, taxicab junkyards, manufacturers of add-on goods, driver-training instructors, the entire taxicab garaging-industry, and so on. Because they're such swell taxicabs, some of the people who make money or have fun with them volunteer to design and make new models. Some of the big taxicab fleets pay the salaries of the volunteers, or allow their "mechanics" to work on new taxis one day a week. (Lots of device drivers (like ethernet) were done this way.) Probably the single largest profitable use of BSD is called - ta-da - the internet. Lots of folks make a living involving FreeBSD and other free software in some way. (I used to work for a very profit-hungry "defense bandit"; but the software I wrote was often available to people at large. When we were doing something proprietary, we were verrrry careful about contract wording and gov't money.) A lot of freeware (BSD,for example), was written on contract for big money; the client or funding agency (often a govt or non-profit institution, like U.C. Berkeley, the FSF...) pay handsome salaries (or stingy graduate fellowships) to the developers, and then release the results to the community at large. Lots and lots of engineering software was developed this way. (Like SPICE, Nastrans, and so on). The X Window System was done with big-bux from a consortium of corporations who wanted the results, and wanted the results shared for sound business reasons. An awful lot of freeware of merit is produced for graduate theses. Dude X gets his degree, we get a virtual memory system or whatever. Free software is a sort of free-will socialism, or a non-market economic activity. The Red Cross is non-profit, too. Dave -- <----. mail-to: djv@bedford.net <----|=================================== <----' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message