[GRASS5] Leaving

Jan-Oliver Wagner jan at intevation.de
Wed Nov 26 00:58:19 EST 2003


On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 12:00:58AM +0100, Thierry Laronde wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 03:49:50PM +0100, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> > > The third point discards GPL: if once you have made a work, everybody
> > > can take it and do whatever one wants, a developer has no incitative and
> > > no means to be paid for what it actually does.
> > 
> > I strongly object to this statement!
> > It has already been proven to be wrong as there are people out there
> > making a living based on Free Software licensed under GNU GPL.
> 
> I don't plan to fight against these assumptions since this will be an
> absolutely sterile discussion, and too many electrons have already been
> wasted with such threads.

It is never a waste of electrons to clearify wrong statements for
Mailing List archives.

> On can make a leaving with Free Software as long as it is only
> installation, configuration, maintenance or very particular 
> customisation (but a customisation that is not a "general" solution).

Many people earn their money with development of Free Software.

> There are enough enterprises already dead to know that.

Yeah, most of the IT enterprises that died since IT exists have been
proprietary companies.
Come on, many companies die. The reasons mostly are more complicated
than just "their business model was all stupid".

> This plus the fact that irresponsibles have advertised as a sole
> advantage: free software is free i.e. gratis. And they have added: you
> have no more need to for developers since what you need is already
> downloadable!

I am telling every client that he has to think about Freedom,
Control over IT-Decisions etc. etc.
A job well done should be paid well.
No business man will object to this.

Best

	Jan
-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/




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