Sachin G Nambiar wrote:
My apologies for ruffling feathers which i evidently have! We disagree on what freedom is here, my point i reiterate, i like the idea of opening up source to the end user because it's the end users right if he has paid for it. But it's also the givers right to restrict me from distributing it. If he says i can i will, but i wont hold a grudge against someone whom i have paid for his software if he does not want me to distribute. Simple!
You have to understand one thing. If you want to go the FOSS way, you can't be considering software as a *whole* product. Your point is valid considering the situation where you sell copies of your software and get money for each copy of them. But, whats in practice in FOSS arena is you give the software as 'free' but you charge for support and service.
Its based on what kind of software you make that this model may suit you or not. if it suits you, you can follow this business model. If you want to sell the software, just keep selling it and make money, then you have to rather embrace proprietary model than FOSS model for your business. It very much depends upon what kind of software you make, where it is deployed, what are the alternatives and many more factors which determine how you can make *some* money with the above said business model.
Its simple, if you can embrace our business model you stay in our pack. Else, you can use FOSS tools and make software which doesn't give the users the 'freedom to share and distribute', but you can not still call it FOSS software, because it has denied the important point of the 4 freedoms a Free software offers its user.