On Mon, 2007-05-02 at 18:47 +0000, Emerson Clarke wrote:
> How do you avoid the situation where no one will use
your library for
> risk of their project becoming a clutter of licensing
restrictions and
> yet, as an individual, still make money from software
?
There are about a million ways to make money from producing
free
software.
* Offer consulting for installation and configuration
* User training and documentation
* Write and sell a book
* Custom extensions, plugins, or etc. for particular
uses
* Ask for donations
* Offer a commercial license with no source-code
redistribution
requirement for derivatives
* Sell the media (installation CDs or DVDs)
* Sell schwag with the logo on it
* Apply for government or foundation grants
* Provide software as a service (Web service, other
service)
None of them are quite so easy as selling licenses for
software, but
they all benefit immensely from broad distribution of Free
Software.
Probably the biggest motivation to release a work as Free
Software is
this: if you don't, someone else will release a program
that's
equivalent and IS Free Software, and then your proprietary
software
sales plummet. The Free economy favours those who give their
stuff away
soonest.
-Evan
____________________________________________________________
____________
Evan Prodromou <evan prodromou.name>
http://evan.prodromou.nam
e/
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