>Hmm. How come Red Hat can charge for thier Linux distribution?
Is this a valid question, or a rhetorical one? I can't tell. Anyways, Red
Hat is really selling a "value added Linux" and not Linux itself. You could
easily go to cheapbytes.com and pick up Red Hat Linux for about 3 bucks
(production expense). Red Hat is really selling a printed manual, some
support options, and "cool" stickers... Linux is free.
>All he would need to do to make an open source shareware program would be
>to add a screen that asks users to send him money. Of course, anyone
>would be allowed to download the source and eliminate that screen.
Yup, that's true. Although this is entirely easy to do with people who know
code (and subsequently how to recompile), there's a huge portion of the
software world that simply wouldn't have a clue, and would have to live
with it.
Again, I'm jumping in late to this conversation, but if he put the software
on a CD, then he could charge "production costs" for making the CD, and
perhaps paper costs for making the case of the CD. Or if he printed out a
manual and added pretty pictures, he could charge for the manual production
costs itself...
Morbus Iff
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