[Discuss] Why use Linux?

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert Krawitz)]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2014 23:55:36 -0500, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Shirley_M=E1rquez_D=FAlcey?= wrote:
>> The GPL has always denied some freedoms to developers, such as the
>> right to exclusively make money from their work.
>
>>Ahh, there in lies the lies that lairs lie about the GPL. The GPL does not
>>deny any developer the right to make money from their work.
>
> You missed the word "exclusively". The GPL indeed makes it impossible
> to keep anybody else from making money by building on your software
> and then selling support for it. They can also sell the software
> itself, but since they have to make the source code available for free
> it's impossible to force people to pay.

Impossible to *force* people to pay for software per se, sure.  But
"forcing people to pay for software" is only one possible business
model.  Last I've seen, Red Hat, SUSE, Oracle, etc. are making money
with Linux, by including add-ons such as those that you list below
(and others, such as complete stack integration).

> Even with completely proprietary software there are ways to make
> money: you can sell books, offer classes, sell installation and
> support services, etc. The selfish developer can't prevent others from
> various ways of taking what he might consider a free ride. I wouldn't
> consider any of those things a free ride; they are delivering
> additional value and that is what you are being paid for.

Yes, and you can sell books, offer classes, sell installation and
support services, etc. for GPL software, and charge whatever you
please.
-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 5 straight men's hoops tourney
Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom  --  http://ProgFree.org
Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton