On Thu, 2005-11-17 at 20:43 +0100, ness wrote: > Hi, > > This day I had a really enervating discussion about free software with > my mother. Finally I got her to claim the following statements: > > o One cannot make money with free software > o Free software cannot provide (data) security > > She also called called it fraud if a company sells support for a free > program.
The first statement is entirely correct. You cannot make money with free software. You can make money with services, support, reputation, and relationship management around a free software base, but you cannot make money with free software per se. However: you cannot make money with proprietary software either. The only issue that changes with free software is whether a competitor can turn your NRE costs against you. In the overall scheme, this is a very small issue. The fraud statement is just silly. Counterexample: many proprietary vendors sell software and separately sell support contracts. This is because the cost of the software is basically fixed but the cost to support depends on the number of users. This is considered standard and accepted practice. It certainly would not be fraud if that company decided to give the software part away. Free software is no different. In order to respond to the data security challenge, I'ld need to understand more precisely what it is that she means by data security, and why she believes that it is impossible. > Oh, and she doesn't believe you get money for building coyotos, > Jonathan. Maybye it would help if there was sth. official that showed > your research contracts (especially those you get/got money for and that > result/resulted in sth. free). While the software is free, many clients don't want the work disclosed until they are ready to disclose it. Some clients *never* want their involvement or the dollar amounts disclosed. For EROS, the following contracts involving Johns Hopkins are a matter of public record: Panasonic Research Collaboration (Exploratory: $40,000) EROS-Based Confined Capability Client (DARPA: $852,596) Secure Development Environment (Air Force: $796,848) Outside of the US, Panasonic is known as Matsushita. I can also say that The EROS Group, LLC (my company) is currently a subcontractor for one of the phase-I SBIR awardees on DARPA solicitation SB052-011. The second awardee for this solicitation is also using an EROS derivative, and is contemplating cutting over to Coyotos. The EROS Group is not a subcontractor for the second awardee. Since most people don't know, the SBIR process goes: Phase I: Feasibility Study < $100,000 total Phase II: Prototype < $750,000 total Phase III: Production Contract (varies, typically $millions) So financially speaking, getting a Phase I is not a big deal (even less for me, since the primary contractor cannot subcontract more than 30% of the work). I do expect, given the people involved, that this one is likely to go to a phase II. Phase III remains to be seen when we get there. But the interesting part about the SBIR requirements is that you cannot get one of these unless you have a credible *commercial* customer for what you are building. That part I can't say much about at this point. > Quotes I found in short time: > > > Yes, my money actually *is* where my mouth is. But I must say that > > money does not taste very good, and I would prefer a normal meal. This is a reference to the investment that I, personally, have made in this technology on a private basis. Conservatively, that investment is approaching $2M now. shap _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
