Il 15/12/2016 23.46, je ha scritto: > > > I do not believe that developing a commercial operating system > based on an > > open source foundation will pay off on a long run. > > Is there a specific reason you think it will not? Just curious. > > > Most companies will stick with one version of the product till they > really have a reason to upgrade. Same here, they will not change to anything because what they have works: for example xp notebook (luckily air-gapped) with printer, no os upgrade because printer works only with xp, and no more new drivers.
> 2. The simple question is how can you sell a product which contains > mostly GPL licensed code (Xen, Linux Kernel) > which everybody can download and compile for free? I don't think that you can sell this os to enterprise too, because imho that kind of people want a ready to use product, if you say "we personalize for you" they will see it as "this is not ready to use". forgive me if what i'm saying is not possible (for example license problems) but... what if you sell it to *us*, the users??? you are searching someone interested in buying it, there is no need to search we, the users, are interested in this project! ["evil"+ pessimistic mode on] i saw emails like "if everyone donate 1€", this just don't work why should i pay for something that i can get free? [and mum doesn't want that i donate :( but she allowed me to *buy* posteo account] tell me how many projects survive only by donations: -wikipedia -tor -??? no more?? i know there are many other great projects like no-script but that is much smaller project, here we are talking about an operating system. [evil mode off] also there are problems like is this no profit? or profit? what will you do with the money? what if you say that you aren't a no profit. everything is simpler, you don't need to explain what will you do with money: when you buy a car you don't ask what will you do with money. you say that you do for profit and with that profit you will build new features. take a look at posteo, they sell email, you *can't* get it for free, 12€ year=1€ month the estimated user base is about 10k people so if we copy posteo is 10k€ per month, enough to start developing it full time, and in a few years you will not have to wait for a certified hardware, you will build it yourself! the question is users will pay? or quit and find something other that is free? to answer this question you could start a poll the key point is that also if only 3000 people will accept it you will probably have enough money to continue the project. yes, it will not be used by much people but it will survive and grow and to answer "how do you sell something that can be downloaded and compiled for free?" you could sell updates of qubes (since other software is free) and also if some people will be able to not pay and compile it by themself that is more complex that clicking the update button. the idea is not that everyone must pay and if the license is expired 1 day after you can't use anymore qubes (more or less like posteo, seems that they will not block your account 1 day after you haven't paid) and to me paying for posteo is paying not only for an email but is paying for improving the state of the art in computer and email security. i know that free for all is better than paid and used by less people but i don't see a long term future of qubes if we keep it free. also not everyone can contribute to this project because they want high quality (and imho is correct) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to qubes-devel@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-devel/5457b9ad-3796-d711-2dc2-5c859c444808%40posteo.net. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
