On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 02:45:00PM +0530, Philip Tellis wrote:
Sometime on Apr 21, R cobbled together some glyphs to say:
Free software is generally looked upon as a conmmunity effort with little monetory gains for the programmer himself. Those who install and
That's not actually true. According to what Microsoft tells companies, free software developers are costiler than windows developers, ie, the company has to pay more money to free software developers.
What is the situation in India? How many software pros. develop FOSS after they finish their education and begin their careers? Who pays them for writing foss?
Also, consider reading 'The Magic Cauldron' by Eric S Raymond (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron/magic-cauldron.html). He lists out several ways to make money out of FOSS.
I would like to invite comments on my idea too, even if they may not be supportive. With no comments, it does not present a clear picture. My concept was to create an Indian organisation that works like a software company. It gets donations from the industry and business community and in return, the businesses as well as individuals get FOSS which is also free as in beer. The big donors get an additional incentive of tech support in various forms like installation, maintainence, custom packages, drivers etc. depending on how big is the sponsorship. The donations will not be software specific but general. The organisation will actually employ software pros. just like commercial setups.
Regards,
Rony.
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