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

[Paul Tansom]

** Martyn <address@hidden> [2004-01-03 23:30]:
> On Saturday 03 January 2004 21:12, Paul Tansom wrote:
> > 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 ;-)
> 
> Sorry, must butt in here, from a commercial perspective, I've avoided so far,
> mainly because I am not in any way involved in education.
> 
> Such a licence prevents VARs, Linux Support Companies, Linux Trainers and
> Linux Integrators using such a piece of software - there are actually
> examples of this out there.
> 
> If everyone used a license like this (which, if it were accepted by a FLOSS
> group, it would spread rather quickly), it says to business : no, you can't
> make money by selling the software, you can't make money by supporting the
> software, you can't make money using the software etc.   If the message that
> businesses cannot make a profit by providing, and in some cases using FLOSS
> is sent out then there will be a large group of I.T. companies feeling that
> they may as well go back to selling MS.  Imagine if Apache was under a
> similar license - you can use this, as long as you're not an ISP - what
> percentage of webservers would be using it?
> 
> The point about FLOSS is that you are free to do anything with it, so long as
> it's still free.  Put restrictions upon that (even just ask first, maybe
> we'll get around to you in a month or so, by which time the customer has gone
> elsewhere*) and you can cripple both your distribution channels (don't you
> want users?) and if widespread enough, very valuable FLOSS supporters.
> 
> *Cynical I know, but it happens.
** end quote [Martyn]

Good points, and the main reason I posed the question. I've seen a
number of issues raised on this matter from people trying to survive
financially while writing FLOSS software. It is a tricky issue, and I'm
a Linux support company myself so definately not looking to cut off my
access to resources!

What have been curious about for a while, though, is how to make a
company survive whilst making best use of FLOSS. As a Linux support
company now I look to avoid paying money out wherever possible, and
beyond the philosophy behind FLOSS, it also saves me money. In practice
though there are technical reasons why I prefer Linux to Windows and I
was a firm fan of OS/2 before that. In my previous job I was at the
other end of things working for the first commercial venture based
around SmoothWall (although in practice I was still in the support side
of things rather than development). Trying to bring in enough revenue to
survive was an issue still, but then companies such as the one I run now
were a dent in the potential revenue. What you have to do is view the
loss of revenue to other companies as investment in advertising and find
ways to encourage them to partner with you.

Having just read through that last bit I've probably answered my own
question, although I was more interested in other peoples views than
anything else. Also a bit preoccupied a the moment trying to balance the
cash flow and get the accounts sorted out!

It is far easier to be a company doing something and using FLOSS as a
tool than being a company basing its revenue on FLOSS. That said, there
need to be companies specialising in FLOSS to advise those that wish to
use it - at least until it becomes as (well almost as) common place as
Microsoft. It's a fun line of work (if you don't count the admin bits!),
but you can't survive without working with Microsoft software and that
is not fun by any stretch of the imagination - I spend too much time
tracking problems, and then reinstalling Windows because it's the most
economic solution  - that is demoralising! ...oops, sorry, </rant> :-)

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/