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

[George <jirka 5z com>]

> 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".

You have got the whole thing wrong .... a programmer writes a free piece of
software (GPL makes it easier for more people to work on it and therefore
make a better product, plus this initial work can be either funded or just
done in the hacker's free time as most is) ... then some organisation comes
in and wants an enhancment to the software .. so they pay the programmer to
do that for them ... the result will most likely be GPL unless the
programmer owns full rights to the software ... this is what is happening to
a lot of hackers and a lot of projects .. and it's a "good thing(tm)"

> 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).

you are putting restriction on the freedom .. which is not a good idea and
it not easily implementable ... the institutions should be free to support
the projects ... and it would be to their adventage ...

I think if redhat feels they need to reward us gnomes they will/do ....
in fact they already pay people to write free software ... the thing is
other work is done in spare time as people have to go to work ... if
redhat would pay me for working on gnome ... I could spend a LOT more
time on it ... so I don't think it's their duty to pay a cent .... but
it's to their advantage ...

and they are already giving a LOT of support to the project ... including
programmers, hosting the server, mailing list ... publicity ... you name it
they did it ...

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

fortunately not really ... please keep licenses free (not "free beer" here)
...

George

-- 
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George Lebl <jirka@5z.com> http://www.5z.com/jirka/
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