Mishka mused: > > it actually *is* on commercial basis. does red hat ring a bell, just to name > one > (but not, by far, the only)?
I'm well aware of Red Hat, Debian, etc. But they're not selling the software - they're selling support services. If they actually had to pay for the software development (or even for the software engineering effort to fix many of the problems) it would be a very different story. > > but it's a very different (from, say, adobe) business model: free (or > cheap) software, > profit off support. i think, the majority of software development use this > model > in some form (except for "shrink-wrapped" products you buy at compusa, but > that > a negligible part of all software) Just where did you pull that ridiculous statistic from? By far the majority of all software (on home PCs and on business systems) is bought "shrink wrapped", either from CompUSA or from the manufacturer. Windows, Solaris, OS/X, AIX, Irix, and all those application packages. That includes systems running Linux - most of the business Linux sites still run proprietary shrink-wrapped applications on those Linux boxes. The open-source developer community might only have a negligible amount of shrink-wrapped software on their average system, but that's only a negligible part of the total software development world, which in turn is only a negligible part of the entire computer software marketplace.
