Speaking economically, I think that one of the best things about open source is the fact that it is free...free from obligatory payment. When you mentioned this, two things come to mind.
First of all, how great is it to purchase software from the store that you haven't tried out before, only to discover that it doesn't meet your expectations? You're pretty much stuck with what you bought--and a dented band account. On the other hand, many open source developers will say, "if you like this product, feel free to contribute"...some are a little bit more "in your face" about it, but even so, you still haven't (and aren't obliged to) pay for it. If you like the product, you can take the step to contribute...on your own terms--which could be based on your means and your satisfaction with the product. What a great deal. Which brings me to my second point...at this point in our lives (those of us who are still students) may not be in a situation to contribute much (or any) to open source projects. I think that is entirely okay. If the situation ever changes, and especially if we use open source products for business purposes, it may be beneficial to contribute some more. I _assume_ that this is some of the reason why businesses like IBM contribute so much to linux development. Without having to pay for all the commercial products, they can put all that money towards developing the product they use. Casey On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 22:23, Shaun Ladewig wrote: > How many of us have done anything to support the open source business > model? Sure some of us write software and contribute that way, but how > many of us have paid for tech support... or a little extra money sent to > the developers of a piece of software... or to those who took the time to > put together a distribution (or in the case of META-distributions took the > time to put together the initial setup for creating your own). I know > many of us openly support Linux and many of the other open source pieces > of software, but when we keep advocating that everyone should really move > over to that model, are we doing our share too? > >
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