On Thursday, Jul 3, 2003, at 13:52 US/Eastern, Buddha Buck wrote:
On Thursday, Jul 3, 2003, at 06:43 US/Eastern, Bernard Hill wrote:
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED] chemnitz.de>, Joerg Anders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
A short remark about this. Somtimes "open source" is equated with "cost free". But even if I'd produce a Qt-only version, you had to pay a lot. Not to me but to the Qt developer Trolltech and to Microsoft.
So what encourages the developer to develop code if there is no payment
to the developer?
It differs from developer to developer. For most, it's "an itch to scratch". The initial developer has a problem they want solved, and writes a piece of software to solve it. The encouragement, the payback, is the solution to the problem. Most successful free software projects start that way: Unix was developed because a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs wanted an operating system he could play Space War on -- and he and a few others developed it into something more general. Linus Torvalds wanted a decent clone on Unix on his home PC, and was willing to write it himself. Eric Raymond wanted a way of transferring mail from IMAP mail servers to his local mail server, so he wrote fetchmail. The Apache folks' day job was serving web-pages, but the existing solutions didn't solve their problems exactly as they needed them solved, so they wrote their own.
Giving away the source code has the benefit that there are plenty of people out there who have a similar itch, but not identical, and are willing to say "That's great! It solves 90% of my problem. I made the following modifications to solve the last 10%", and another itch is scratched. As the program gets more and more functional, based on user contributions, more and more people use it, etc.
It's hard to make money writing free software, but it's not hard to write free software to support what is actually making you money.
I confess I don't understand the Linux setup *at all*.
Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
