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Re: Free Software Company



At 08:02 PM 9/13/00 +0530, Gurunandan wrote:
On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Raju Mathur wrote:

> If I have 2 rotis and I give you one, I have one roti less.  If I have
> 2000 lines of code and I give them to you, both of us have 2000 lines
> of code.  See the difference?

No. I agree with your conclusions, but not the logic that got you there.
Software gets me 2 rotis. If I give the software to you, I worry that I
might get only one roti. Of course I assume that there are only a fixed
number of buyers who will convert my software to rotis for me.

Yeah, that is the real point. And it explains the fact that without having a fixed source of income that will be there even while you are developing the software for free, you (most of the Indians incl. me) cannot even think of joining the Free Software Movement.
So, there has to be
[1] either a commercial incentive for developing the "free" software (but with this, is the "free software" really "free") [2] or you can have a well paying job, and contribute to the free software movement as a hobby (or whatever you call it)

If I were to develop a software for my own use, and I feel that the thing can be of use to other people, then I can put it out for them. But this, IMHO does NOT mean free software. What is means is that you are sharing your knowledge with the community.

OTOH, combining together to work on major projects that are "free", would need [1].

So, it is a difficult choice then.


--

Cheers !!!
Harveer Singh

(NXN - Not eXactly a Newbie)
ICQ#:86100081


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