[Info-vax] OT(?): Linux: developed by corporates. *NOT* developed by unpaid volunteers.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2015-03-29, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>> Various Linuxes may be free to download but there are lots of people
>> being paid by their big-name employers to do Linux development. The 
>> proportion of input from unpaid volunteers isn't quite negligible but
>> it seems it's a lot smaller than you've been thinking (how does 13%
>> sound?).
>
> Linux started as something that was free, and if anyone wants to play in 
> that sandbox, it's my impression that they cannot charge for the OS. 
> Right?  So, from that perspective, it's free.
>

Wrong. Totally, totally wrong. Sorry David. :-)

You can charge as much as you like for a Linux distribution but what
you can't do is to refuse to ship the GPL source code used to build
that binary distribution to your customers.

Even though you can try to encourage them not to, you also can't
stop your customers from further redistributing the source code from
the GPL parts of your distribution.

This is how Scientific Linux and Centos can exist. They take the RHEL
source code, strip out any remaining RH copyrighted material and
build a new distribution based around the RHEL source code.

It's also why, when you buy (say) home routers with GPL based software
in them, the router comes with a little slip of paper saying how you
can obtain the source code for the GPL parts of the software in the
router.

>
> I'll ask, if Apache wasn't free, do you think there might be more 
> competitors for that market?  I do.  It's the "free" that stifles 
> competition.  Who is going to spend money to develop a product to 
> compete with a free product?  Would you?

No. If there wasn't a free option, the existing commercial options
would cost a lot more and have a fraction of the functionality.
The free option keeps the commercial vendors on their toes and
requires them to product a product better than the free one.

If a particular product range can't be enhanced over a free version
then you can still make money by selling top quality support for
the free version.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world