Playing devil's advocate here, and there questions are in no simple
way to convey to new-comers to the game
I'm not saying that making money should be the primary concern, but it
should rank up there... Without some sort of stable, fixed income, how
are full-time coders (needed for quality-control; see current
news-crisis) supposed to get paid (customization only goes so far), or
any expense be paid on marketing or any of the other day-to-day
operations required for a successful, growing enterprise (paying for
office-space, power, taxes, etc)?
Re philosophy: I understand the what & why, but it still does not
address some fundamental issues: I cannot eat, send the kids to
school, or pay my rent with good intentions/philosophical principals.
Eventually I'll reach a point where I'd have to supplement my income,
and selling shrink-wrapped software with a limited shelf-life is a
simple & effective way to address such shortcomings (albeit a
cop-out).
Until we can take the financial aspects seriously & prove ways of
maintaining a successful business, very few are going to take it
serious.
The problem with the FSF campaigns where that they had a negative
message attacking their opponents, and people are turned off by that
approach (honey vs vinegar), and they're preaching to the choir.
ms are MASTERS of marketing & manipulation, and often it more
important to make people good about their choice of purchase than
actually providing a good product (see vista & win-me; TOTAL rubbish,
but people still bought it by the millions, despite being TOLD it's
absolute rubbish)
If FLOSS plans to "grow up", "go mainstream/highstreed" & be totally
user-accessible (and not just a really cool tool for
techies/hobbyists), then it may have to get it's hands dirty
There are those out there that have managed to build successful
FLOSS-based businesses; they usually operate on the basis of providing
hosted services (which RMS seems to have a beef with), or the
customization of existing FLOSS systems.
I've not really found much deviation from these models, and IMO, it's
an *extremely* limited scope compared to the entire economic
landscape.
Is there something I've missed? (I'm, pretty sure there's a lot