Ignore me if you want

[DaveJ]

I use Windows 7, IE, Security Essentials, and have never had any issues. I use this laptop 3 hours a day on the train. I barely even know how to open the Control Panel, because I've NEVER needed it.

I have 2 XBoxes at home, Netflix streaming through XBox is my primary mode of TV. Im going to buy a Kinect from MS also on Nov 4th. All this despite MS is a profit making company and laptops sold on the shelves at evey major chain store has Windows 7 on them.

Seriously, I'm not trying to start a war, because there is no contest -- the Linux users will trounce me to no end.

But how is it Linux is free? How do the developers pay their utility bills and for food and such? Are Linux developers independently wealthy, or are they like slave labor or something? I guess I'm living in some bourgeois world were making money is necessary in order to live so I don't get it. A company like MS making money seems totally the norm to me. Really how is it Linux is free?

[struggle4progress]

1. Depends. Ubuntu, for example, is free for personal use but charges

for commercial use or for support. There's a commercial paradigm here: if people come to your website for free software, they may be interested in stuff you sell, too; Google counts on that with Google Earth, which is a great free program but has a more advanced commercial program. And what works for companies probably works similarly for individuals: somebody, who loves programming and is good at it, can build both experience and worldwide contacts by working with a volunteer team on open-source software and may then be in a bargaining position for contract work

[canetoad]

2. How do you know

that Linux developers don't have paying jobs in other spheres?

Dave, you're young and yet to learn the values and motivations that make people contribute for no immediate financial return. Why do people answer questions in this forum for no money? Why did you post that graphic designers rarely give their time away for free, but I answered you in a PM?

Look no further than some of your own posts in this group. Sometimes they do it just because they care.

[DaveJ]

3. Ok, yeah I forgot that I'm indeed creating a site for someone

I guess there are some people who work for free. I just assumed that an OS would require a large team of full time employees dedicating their full time attention. But not if Linux can be created by part timeres working a few hours a week, like I'm doing for someone else.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Because they care ...

Not me. :)

Seriously, though ...

It's also a hobby for some people.

There are thousands of people who contribute bits of code to the Linux kernel. Most never offer more than a tiny bit. Perhaps they have an exotic piece of hardware and are wanting Linux to be able to communicate with it, so, having some technical skill in this area, they create a driver for it. This person doesn't want to have to patch the kernel each and every time he installs a new update, so it petitions to have the code added to the kernel. Said driver happens to be really good, and it turns out there are a lot of people around the world who have that piece of hardware who have no technical skill. The code is added. It's just a few lines, and this person will probably never do anything like that again.

And then there's the people who wrote vi. These were sadistic bastards who wanted to create something that was really, really good but which only they and those who know the secret handshake could use. There's that lot too.

[pokerfan]

4. No one is working for free

It's not exactly a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy">gift economy (an interesting concept in its own right) if that's what you're getting at. Think of it as a way for companies to simply reduce their development costs by choosing to freely cooperate and share those costs. Sure, they give up a slice of the pie in exchange for reduced development costs, the end result being perhaps a greater profit/cost ratio. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source">wikipedia entry for open source draws this interesting analogy with the development of the automobile:

In the early years of automobile development, a group of capital monopolists owned the rights to a 2 cycle gasoline engine patent originally filed by George B. Selden. By controlling this patent, they were able to monopolize the industry and force car manufacturers to adhere to their demands, or risk a lawsuit. In 1911, independent automaker Henry Ford won a challenge to the Selden patent. The result was that the Selden patent became virtually worthless and a new association (which would eventually become the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association) was formed. The new association instituted a cross-licensing agreement among all US auto manufacturers: although each company would develop technology and file patents, these patents were shared openly and without the exchange of money between all the manufacturers. Until the US entered World War 2, 92 Ford patents were being used freely by other manufacturers and were in turn making use of 515 patents from other companies, all without lawsuits or the exchange of money.

Could a company just leach and not seed (to borrow a bit torrent term)? Sure, but remember that "free" and "open source" licenses do have restrictions, the least of which is that while you are free to take the code and modify it, you must publish (share) your work. The http://www.linux.org/info/gnu.html">GNU public license for example.

Open source is much more than just Linux and it's being fueled in part by the arrival of the Internet itself. One could say that this level of cooperation wouldn't be possible without the Internet and the Internet as-we-know-it wouldn't be possible without open source:

Much of the Internet runs on open source software tools and utilities such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, known as the LAMP stack for web servers. Using open source appeals to software developers for three main reasons: low or no cost, access to source code they can tailor themselves, and a shared community that ensures a generally robust code base, with quick fixes for any new issues that surface.

Despite doing much business in proprietary software, some companies like Sun Microsystems and IBM participated in developing free and open source software to deter from monopolies and take a portion of market share for themselves. Netscape's actions are an example of this, and thus Mozilla Firefox has become more popular, stealing market share from Internet Explorer.

Canonical Ltd. offers Ubuntu for free, while they sell commercial technical support contracts.

Red Hat offers the Fedora for free through the Fedora Project, while selling Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Novell offers openSUSE for free through the openSUSE Project, while selling SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE).

Sun Microsystems offer OpenOffice.org for free, while selling StarOffice.

Adobe Systems offers Flex for free, while selling the Flash Builder IDE.

Apple Inc. offers Darwin for free, while selling Mac OS X.

Francisco Burzi offers PHP-Nuke for free, but the latest version is offered commercially.

Ingres is offered for free, but with a subscription you can get services & support. The Ingres Icebreaker Appliance is also offered as a commercial database appliance.

MySQL is offered for free, but with the enterprise version you can get subscription, support and additional features.

The closed source edition of VirtualBox (free to use for home-users) must be bought by companies to be used (but there is also an open-source version that can be used by anyone)

Mozilla Foundation have a partnership with Google and other companies which provides revenue for inclusion of search engines in Mozilla Firefox.

Linspire, Inc. offers Freespire for free, while selling Linspire.

Mandriva offers Mandriva Linux Free and Mandriva Linux One for free, while selling Mandriva Linux 2008.

Active Agenda is offered for free, but requires all extensions to be shared back with the world community. The project sells a "Non-Reciprocal Private License" to anyone interested in keeping module extensions private.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open_source_software">Business models for open source software

http://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html">This is a fifteen minute Ted Talk that's well worth watching. Yochai Benkler is Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He goes into much more detail. Everything is changing.

[RoyGBiv]

5. Funny post ...

"I'm not trying to start a war ..." "... the Linux users will trounce me to no end."

Interesting phrases to put together.

Anyway, pokerfan's post should give you all you need to know on the subject, but I'm going to summarize something for emphasis with a brief personal anecdote.

My one, major foray into programming involved creating an inventory control system for the business I managed. That is, I was paid to manage the business. Due to the nature of the business I could not justify paying around $10,000 for the cheapest proprietary system I could find that would do what we needed, so I set out to do it myself. I got moderate help from a friend who is an expert in database design, and over the course of six months or so, I put together the system. It was rough, but it worked.

I (or technically the company) then slapped a GPL on it and threw it out into the software universe. I got involved in some forums discussing the software and other packages similar to it. A few people took the source code, added some improvements that allowed them to use it in their own spheres. A few people contributed bits of code who were just interested in the technical process; they were students I think. I took those improvements and started using them myself. Over time, I made more improvements, cured some bugs, uploaded the changes, and others did this as well. Working collectively, we created a better piece of software that worked for a lot of us, and we were able to do that because of an opensource software license.

That is how the core of Linux/GNU came to be in the first place. There are many other ways to make money. Novell's model for SuSE involves funding the OpenSuSE team to develop and test their free-of-charge version of their OS and then allow the community to test it, find bugs, offer fixes, create documentation, etc. They then use what they've learned to sell their enterprise product, which includes support, to businesses. In that case, it's effectively an exchange of services. We give you a free OS. You help us make it better.

I could go on and on.

The problem you are having is you are stuck in this world where we've defined IP as something tangible to be sold to the highest bidder rather than a collective resource to be used to make all our lives easier. Microsoft's business model is only one model. It took root, in part, because too many idealists failed to recognize the need for legal protections in this uncharted universe and also because some of them needed to make a quick buck and weren't creative enough to figure out how otherwise. MS comes along offering a check, and there ya go. It's the same sort of reasoning that went into Native American's sell Manhattan for a few bucks. And boy didn't that turn out well for them ...

[DaveJ]

8. Seems like ~$150 per user is pretty cheap

Servers are another topic, but to focus on cost of Windows 7, $150 for an employee who makes more than that per day, is pretty cheap for an OS that will last years. What is that like 3 cents a day or something?

With regard to broader development, I have found that programming is incredibly easy when using the right tools. I've been using .Net to program sites, and it's the easiest thing imaginable. There really is no need to pay thousands for any application as long as a company has one guy will role up his sleeves (or hers) and actually put something together.

Seriously, programming in older languages was a hassle, and incredibly costly to use and inefficient. But with the (free) Visual Studio environment MS created, it is easy to make sophisticated applications as long as one knows them. Most people are afraid to be geeks though and won't even dip their toes in the water.

So the whole concept of paying thousands for any application seems moot to me when anyone can do it for free.

[RoyGBiv]

9. What?

[DaveJ]

10. What are you wondering about? The application development thing?

Yeah Visual Studio is free, at least the Express version which does everything I've ever needed. And with that I create advanced applications at work. One thing that irritates me is we paid like $50k for and outside vendor to do work, which I could have easily done myself. Now we are subject to the whims of that vendor and whether they feel like helping us, and anything they do will come at more high cost, and they are using old slow tools but they don't are as long as they get paid. Like I said, I could have easily done their work in 1/4 the time, and the tools are free. People are still stuck in the old mode of thinking that says they have to pay tons of money for business apps when generally that is not true, as long as you have someone on staff who will do it. It's not that difficult.

[RoyGBiv]

11. I'm wondering ...

... in what way you think your response has anything to do with my comments or, even, with your original question.

[DaveJ]

12. I can see this isn't going well

So if you want to argue that can be done elsewhere.

[RoyGBiv]

13. Yessir ...

Look. You blew in here with this passive-aggressive "everyone's gonna either ignore me or pick on me" setup, and you're surprised that I might be a bit distrustful of your tangents?

I genuinely don't understand your point. You asked how people who do opensource make a living. You got answers. Now you're talking about Windows licensing costs and your own employment frustrations. What's the connection?

[RoyGBiv]

7. Addendum ...

When it comes to running an open source business, the question I’m asked second most often is "How do you market your services?" (The first is "How do you make money selling free software?") I wish I had a concise, step-by-step answer, but I don’t. The best I can do is to relate some of my experiences.

http://opensource.com/business/10/10/marketing-open-source-business

[Duer 157099]

14. We have always been at war with Eurasia

Unfortunately you have been brainwashed into thinking that man is inherently selfish and only motivated by greed.

[RoyGBiv]

15. +1

[Yavin4]

16. Watch The HBO Show, "Treme"

It's a great show about musicians, and their plight. Some musicians play and get paid big money. Others perform on the street for free. Others jam with other great musicians. Yes, they all want to be paid, but playing, getting better, and impressing their peers is also of prime importance.

The analogy to open source developers may be crude, but it's close. Some developers love to develop to get better and impress their peers.