Re: [Fsfe-uk] BECTA discriminate against FLOSS?

[ian]

On Sat, 2004-01-03 at 21:12, Paul Tansom wrote:

> 
> Fair comment, and I may just be a bit pessamistic. I have discussed this
> sort of thing with someone who was looking to get financial support for
> his project from RH. Their response was, fine we'd love to add it to our
> distro, but we won't give you any support financial or otherwise. Now
> this is completely their decision, as it should be, but it does
> illustrate a concern for anyone kicking off a new project that isn't
> just a hobby or done is spare time - how do you finance your coding
> time.

I should think the last thing to expect is to get it from the most
obvious source because 100s maybe 1000s are thinking the same thing. You
have to think of an original way of getting your project funded, perhaps
indirectly from other business or services. No-one has said this is
easy. if it was everyone would be doing it. 

>  Something of significant scale coding wise, and specialist market
> user wise has to find funding from somewhere - arguably easier for FLOSS
> to do though I guess, since if you can survive financially you are only
> risking time not venture capital, but then you could do the same and
> then turn it into a commercial product too if your coding team wishes
> to.

The thing is FLOSS exists and so it must be possible to produce FLOSS
one way or another. Whether the entire software market can be FLOSS or
not is a different issue. Maybe it can't. What is obvious is that that
which exists and is going from strength to strength can.

> Getting a trademark, etc. may or may not help. If you put together a
> really excellent package for the inexperienced end user to manage a
> server, for example, and a big company such as RH picked it up and
> branded it as their own (with a few customizations and then classed as a
> fork of the main project) would you stand a chance, unless you can get
> your name known in a fairly big way first.
> 
> > If another company can earn money from supporting your product then
> > that's good news.  It means your product is popular enough to have
> > created a slightly bigger pie;  one that you still have a large slice
> > of.
> > 
> > Now, if they do a better job of marketing, etc., then they may grow into
> > a more profitable, bigger, company than you.  This may be a failing on
> > your part depending on your aims.  Still, at least they may consider
> > buying you out to get their hands on the real McCoy.
> 
> See above, if they have the profile and finances to do it better and the
> technical skills to take a good idea and run with it, why do they need
> you? It can be the luck of the draw, or economies of scale - even
> without financial economies.

They need you if the project is organic and grows and requires
expertise. Real incentive to keep ahead of the game. Its why Linus is
not going to be out of a job anytime soon. You might not get billions
but you will be able to make a comfortable living.

> > All rhectoric, of course.  Stuff I've heard put forward as arguments.
> > But food for thought.
> > 
> > Lastly, there's nothing to stop you from charging GBP250.00 for the CD,
> > printed manual, and six months support which some places will prefer
> > over downloading over the Internet, and working through it un-assisted.
> 
> Good point, as are they all, but once again it depends on your product
> and user base. As an example on this from the other side (as in where
> this concept is benefiting me rather than another company to some
> extent) is this school software where I am support it from an original
> purchase rather than a support contract from the developer -
> additionally with reference to other schools using the same package.
> Admittedly in this case it is pretty much encouraged by the original
> company (so they must be charging a good price for the software!).
> 
> All this said, I am most definately not against FLOSS (I wouldn't be
> here otherwise), and make extensive use of it myself. In fact all my
> customers that use server environments use Linux bar 3 (1 on W2k, 1 on
> NT4 and one on Novell 3.11!).
> 
> Maybe I'm just a little cynical following my involvement with the first
> attempt at commercially 'supporting' SmoothWall! I think I was mainly
> interested in the discussion though as how to survive whilst working
> with FLOSS is something that interests me - in very practical terms so I
> can direct my business towards the most interesting and satisfying work
> :-)
> 
> Is there a practical and FLOSS friendly license that would allow
> personal and business use of an application, but not resale of services
> or support without permission (not necessarily implying a financial side
> here)? ..or is this against the FLOSS ethos? I'd assume that this is
> most practically achieved through trademark of a name, and sidestepped
> by a fork! Again, mainly curiosity here I guess. Oh the joys of
> politics, business and putting food on the table ;-)

LGPL? Star Office as the commercial side of OpenOffice.org. You can make
up any license conditions you want really.

-- 
ian <address@hidden>