The authors of proprietary software control what you do with that software.
Quite clearly Free Software as a source of income works. Sell the support for the software which you have written, software you will be most familiar with. This is the model for countless companies writing Free Software.
People are malicious (I enjoy your cynicism, BTW). The difference between proprietary software and free software is that you're free to find those malicious "features" (mind the quotes) by reading the code that is available to you under Free Software. If you can't find it (the evil - not the code), you can assume that the massive community will (eventually). This is impossible in proprietary software. You don't control the software - it controls you.
That works fine for software which requires support. However, I don't want to rely on getting paid by doing support. I'd like to just write some software and for people to pay me for it.
I'd be happy to let customers have the source code, and even let them sell patches to each other and/or me. But I don't want people to legally be able to resell copies of my work, ala the GPL. If somebody wants to use the program that I wrote, I want to be paid for it. They can modify it however they want after that.
What are my options for doing this? I have released numerous programs licensed under the GPL in the past, but I have a few ideas where I would want to be directly paid for the software.
Exactly! That's my biggest problem with Stallman's beliefs. Let's take Red Hat Linux for example. Anyone can get or modify Linux free. Even Red Hat itself is open source. So Rwd Hat can't really make a buck selling Linux so they make money on training and support. If I wanted Red Hat I could certainly find an ISO somehwere online easily or I could just download Fedora. So for them it's great but what about the guy who writes a cool text editor for Linux? If that's open source then what does he do? Hope everyone sticks to the honor system and pays? How do you make money charging for support with that type of project?
There are far more projects like the example I gave than companies like Red Hat. You're far more likely to find little solo acts who either can't provide support, dont want to, or even if they did wouldn't be able to sell it because it's just not that necessary. Imagine buying a license for support for some text editor you like and calling the support line to ask how to program in some macro or something. It's just not happening.
Why do FOSS folks always equate closed software with evil? Couldnt we simply want to keep our code to ourselves so we can make money? In most cases 90% of the value of a developer's app comes from the fact that no one else has the code. Just because I've closed the source doesn't mean I'm adding back doors and spyware to my app. It just means I'm protecting my income stream. Demanding that all software release code so that people can extend the app to their liking presupposes that people want to modify the code. Of all the FOSS software I've downloaded and used I really haven't ever wanted to modify the app except in a few rare cases. It sometimes seems like this FOSS ideology completely forgets that not everyone is a programmer or assumes everyone should want to be a programmer.
> The authors of proprietary software control what you do with that software.
He's fine with this, as are many other people.
And I think that's a fair point: if you really are going into the deal with eyes open, knowing you're going to be locked in and tied down to whatever platform, you should be free to make that choice. Of course, if you're smart, you'll drive a hard bargain, knowing that in the future you won't be able to. Stallman says that choice simply should not exist in that proprietary software should not exist.
The 'sell support' thing has some fairly serious limitations that make it less than ideal. Many software products - especially the end user variety - cost a lot to make. Selling 'support' for a product that works well and doesn't require much of it is not a good way to recoup all those sunk costs.
Since you cite 'countless' companies, how about we actually count a few and look at their revenue models?
* Redhat: first of all, they distribute a lot more software than they produce, which is fine, but the scope for that is pretty limited. Also, they basically use trademark law as an end-run around software freedom. You can't redistribute and call it Redhat, and you can't buy any support unless it's real Redhat, and support is a subscription, not a per-incident kind of thing.
* Mysql: they used the "GPL'ed library code" gig to try and get people wanting to embed the code in their proprietary products to cough up some cash. Legitimate business model, but would not work without proprietary software! Also, most things aren't libraries.
Quite clearly Free Software as a source of income works. Sell the support for the software which you have written, software you will be most familiar with. This is the model for countless companies writing Free Software.
People are malicious (I enjoy your cynicism, BTW). The difference between proprietary software and free software is that you're free to find those malicious "features" (mind the quotes) by reading the code that is available to you under Free Software. If you can't find it (the evil - not the code), you can assume that the massive community will (eventually). This is impossible in proprietary software. You don't control the software - it controls you.