Rewarding who write free software (was Re: Gnome Web Browser)

[Redaelli Paolo <redaelli inc it>]

Il 21-Apr-98, robert havoc pennington ha scritto:
>On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Martin Baulig wrote:
>> There may be some problem with mozilla - or with its license - AFAIK it's
>> not compatible with the GPL - and GNOME is a desktop environment that
>consists
>> entirely of *free* software - here, we should interpret *free* software the
>way 
>> the FSF does (ie distributed under the GPL).
>This is not what the FSF means by free. They mean the Debian or Open
>Source guidelines, just as most others do. GPL is only a means to
>freeness.
>> When you think we can use Mozilla within GNOME - why should we then
>> make GNOME? There's already KDE - it's also 'free' software as Mozilla is
>> 'free' software - but this 'free' here is not what the FSF tells us.
>Mozilla is free in the FSF sense, and RMS has said so. Qt is not - it
>fails multiple aspects of the Debian/Open Source guidelines. See 
>www.opensource.org. KDE is itself free, but it depends on Qt, so is not
>usable in an all-free environment.
Hi guys!
These discussions come well timed to me.
I've been thinkung about free software for some month, since I herad Rms's
speech at Ipisa (november 97 Milan).
I've been wondering about some matters, which I write here....

Well, Rms and all the other mythical hacker were paid by
universities/government/institutions for their hacking, or in other ways they
were paid to do some work which result is free software. 
But now? Now if you do not count some good university that finance some
project regarding free software, there's no one who paid the hackers for their
work. And I underline "pay the WORK".
Because I do strongly want that software should be free, but I found unlawful
that the work necessary to produce such wonderfuls programs is not paid. 
I'm born in Padania (formerly known as North Italy) and here we stress so much
the slogan "everyone should be able to live of his work".
And writing free software is a great work, requiring big skills, heavy
thoughts and many many hours of dedication. How can we keep software free and
let people to earn some money for theis heavy work?
I think that a modified version of the Gpl (or other free software licence)
can help us.
I think that we can finance free software and the people who dedicate
themselves to creating free software with son duties in the Licence. 
Because Freedom implies some duties.
The duty I wa thinking about was the duty to finance the development of free
software.
This means: are you using this free software? Are you a
commercial/governmetnt/university institution, or otherwise you get from this
free software some benefits that can be priced? Well you have to support the
DEVELOPMENT of this free software by paying some fee to the institution that
coordinates and develop it (for example with Gnome people should pay Red hat,
which in turn should pay some shares to everyone who contribute to the
project).

What do you think about it?
Is there something similar to this idea?


P.s.: I know that this mail can be considered OT, but I think that thinking
about a way to finance free software (and Gnome anyway) can boost greatly its
development, because people get a strong motivation to develop (8-)
P.P.S.: can someone tell me Rms's email or some newsgroup where to discuss
with Rms these matters?
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