🚀 go-pugleaf

Jason Clifford wrote:
>David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes
>>Hell, Red Hat aren't exactly penniless, are they?

>Exactly. The ONLY way to make money from GPL software is to be the one
>who installs and supports it commercially.

No, that's not the only way. 

You could sell manuals. Many people buy Redhat's distribution
only to have a manual (and a meager one at that).

O'Reilly makes a ton of cash from free software as well.

You could pay a lot of the best hackers in the world to hack,
and occasionally have them do an industrial hack - like making
Applix's software run better under linux, or helping Oracle
and Sybase port to linux.

Heck, you could produce GPL software because you are actually
a loosely disguised software consulting firm and not actually
a linux distributor.

>The problem there is that many of the programmers do not do this as they
>are a bit too busy actaully maintaining the package.
>
>Red Hat have a very good way to deal with this issue. They send money to
>the developers - sort of like a royalty payment.

Red Hat PAYS the developers, and they WORK for Red Hat.
They may produce GPL code and have intellectual freedom,
but they are GREAT MARKETING for Red Hat and further establish
Red Hat as the number one commercial linux consulting firm.


>We do not do this yet as we have never made a profit - so far I have
>personally subsidised the business to over �10,000. Once the business
>starts making a profit I intend to follow suit by making donations to
>the FSF and other relevant organisations that fund GPL development.
>-- 
>Jason Clifford
>Definite Linux Systems
>http://definite.ukpost.com/

Red Hat is doing something I do not see anyone else doing -
they are embracing a very different market strategy. They
truly believe the future is in support and consulting
for linux, and not in distribution sales. They want to 
give away the best distribution possible to drive the OS
market down to zero dollars.

That then maximizes the market for software consulting.

It will be interesting if it works. Unless you live in
Redmond.

---
Dave Blake
dblake@phy.ucsf.edu