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BTW, Xandros isn't a pretty looking dektop. And, it is not FREE as in FREE BEER

Nor should it be free as in free beer. It includes proprietary (well, for-pay) software in the install... CrossOver Office.

Free Software is not free, and it probably never will be until our core society changes dramatically at the community and economic level.

Power costs money, bandwidth for hosting the project cost money, domains cost money, developer time costs money, hardware and backups cost money, distribution cost money, and many other aspects of the Free Software-production machine cost money.

Yet more examples of companies trying to abuse the Open Source community, thinking that we're all just milling around in groups waiting for things to do and projects to contribute to.

"Ho hum. When is a company going to come along and ask us to write their code for them. I'm bored."

Sure, we'll get right on that... writing your code for you, for free, while you profit and make a business model out of it. Absolutely! Where do I sign up?

Palm is trying it, Sun is trying it, Linksys tried it, and thousands of other companies tried it. When are companies going to learn that we don't just write code in our spare time because we're bored.

We write code because it is either improves technology, or it is fun, interesting, or scratches an particular itch we have, or because we're getting paid to write it.

If you want us to help you improve your business model, or write your code for you... PAY US. You know, like you would any other developer who writes code for you. What particular itch does the eBay search engine scratch for us? Why should we help? How does this improve OUR community? How can WE use this technology?

The real reason is because they think the Open Source community is just a free consortium to "cherry pick" whomever they want to write their code for them. They can't afford to hire anyone, so they turn to us. Nice.

So here's the obligatory HOWTO: HOWTO Pay for Free Software.

Seriously, I strongly recommend that every company read it and understand how our community works.

"The fact of the matter is, proofreading dialog boxes and checking for consistent menu options and whatnot is not all that fun. Linux development happens mostly through hobbyists, and they're going to spend their free time doing what they enjoy."

There's one subtle issue you almost touched upon here... we do all of our development in our spare time. Many of us have families, hobbies, and full-time day jobs. We also have to deal with writing code, proofing and testing code (sometimes on very foreign hardware or platforms to help solve a bug for a user), and many other things. I'd wager that 80% or more of Free Software development (note: Not Open Source development) is done by people who don't get paid for it.

HOWTO Pay for Free Software is a great treatise on the matter.

But to catch up... when I'm doing something in my spare time, which is very precious to me, and someone comes along and tries to tell me how I should be spending my spare time, it no longer is fun or interesting. I'm just going to go work on something else instead.

Here is an exact conversation I had with one user about a year ago that exemplifies how pitiful the situation is, with greedy users expecting everything for nothing:

"Hi, your application would be really useful to me if you moved the menus to the bottom instead of the top."

"Oh, good idea. Please file that in our online incident tracker so we can keep track of it."

"I don't want to file it anywhere, I'm telling you about it now. Can't you just change it for me right now so I can test it?"

"I'm pretty busy testing bugs for users right now. You've got the source code, please feel free to send in a patch that includes the behavior you want and we'll take a look."

"You suck, screw your project, I'll find something else."

I don't like knowing that I'm supposed to be some sort of "Free Technical Support" guy for every John and Sally that comes along. Like I just sit around waiting for the feature requests to come in. Pfft.

I think we all need to support free software projects. I personally paid money to get the original Slackware 10 CDs from the Slackware Store and I have put some Slackware propaganda on my site. You can also buy t-shirts from their store or join them and report bugs. Another way to help is to show ZipSlack to your friends, if they still use Windows, so that they can familiarise themselves with a GNU/Linux system without repartitioning their disk. You can also subscribe and get Slackware CDs whenever they release a new version.

You can also find more info on how to support free software projects in general by reading this FAQ.

Ground control to Major Tom:
Your circuit's dead, there's something wong.
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you ... Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the moon
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do...

"Naturally. Instead, you will write yet another instant messaging client, or yet another wordprocessor that no one will use, or yet another simplistic game, or yet another text-frickin editor..."

Excuse me, we use it. Just because you don't doesn't mean it's not useful. We write this software for us, not for you. If you want to change our priorities, then you have to find a way to motivate us to write things you would want to use. Some of these could include the following:

1. Stocks or shares in your company
2. A paycheck attached to the development of your product
3. A full-time job within your industry
4. A health or benefits package
5. A donation to our favorite charity
6. ..or dozens of others.

Please read the following:

HOWTO Pay for Free Software

You and your companies have been living off of our creations now for several years. Saving thousands (and in some cases, millions) of dollars by using software we created in our spare time.

Now it's time you learned that this does not come for free.

• Time costs money.
• Hardware costs money.
• Power costs money.
• Bandwidth costs money.
• Rent costs money.
• Bills, groceries, health insurance, clothes.. all cost money

"Ya'll write a bunch of redundant "me-too" apps that matter not one iota."

They matter to us, and to the users that appreciate our creations. We don't really care what you want or think, because again, we do this for us, not for you. If you want to change that, feel free to try any of the techniques above.

"Sure, getting paid is nice but then, who is really going to pay you to produce this unsexy stuff?"

The same people who aren't paying us for the useful stuff we created that you use every day. OpenOffice.org? Mozilla? Linux? Samba? I'm sure I could name dozens of others. How much have you contributed to those projects?

"Ed Ball? Or any other small business for that matter? Hell no, they can't afford that cost with no monetary return."

How ironic. He can't "afford" the "cost" with no monetary return. What if every single Free Software author decided to just stop making new releases until they had a "monetary" return? What then? Would you consider donating or helping out? Probably not.

Incidentally, Ed Ball saved $80,000 by switching to Free Software, almost recouping his entire monetary losses from the damage settlement. If he even decided to donate $10,000 of that to Free Software, it would make a huge shift in the priorities for a LOT of developers and users.

"Hence we run into the contradiction: some software will not be created without money to pay for it and to pay for it requires that money be made to make up for it (at the very least) but since selling software is a no-no (and wont work with GPL - only service and support are sellable), this means that there is no way for required software to get produced."

Excuse me? When did the GPL forbid selling Free Software? In fact, the GPL directly encourages you to do so. I can download Red Hat from the web, make some changes, slap my name all over it, and sell it as my own product (assuming I do not include Red Hat specific tools that are not GPL compatible with it, of course). There is nothing at all stopping me from selling any Free Software I can manage to derive a market for. Go re-read your license.

"You will develop an app for money - that is, people are to pay for the application - until a certain minimum amount of money/income is reached, then it will be released GPL. You get paid, the software gets paid for (and not buy the simple charitable largess of some mystical company) by customers."

How about the same business model that has worked for centuries. If you want me to produce something for you, show me something in return. Monetary, contributory, congradulatory, or barter... it doesn't matter.

You might consider donating because we (as Free Software authors, although I am not one of the core Mozilla developers, I speak for the same community) have already donated to you, and to countless thousands of others, by providing something useful for you, out of our spare time, so your computing experience can be enhanced and/or improved.

Software (Free or otherwise) costs money, lots of money in fact:

1. Bandwidth to host the site that the project resides on, and not just web, but cvs and ftp space as well, to the tune of several dozen (or hundred) gigabytes per day consumed. Bandwidth is not cheap, and it's definately not getting cheaper.

2. Testing every new change, on various kinds of software platforms and configurations; Windows, Linux, BSD, OSX, and others.

3. Hosting the requisite sub-projects that might rely on the main project. In the case of Mozilla, all of the other XUL projects (Calendar, et al).

4. Domain names to point your browser to, including dozens of other parner domains (mozdev.org, etc.)

5. Hardware, machines, test boxes, routers, switches, networking equipment.

6. Backups, backup hardware (tape drives, CDR media and drives, RAID sets of drives).

7. Time. Time to test, time to code, time taken out of a normal day to deliver a high-class product you use, and rely on.

Many of us also have day-jobs, so the time we have left at the end of our "official" working day, is either divided up between our spouses, eating, sleeping, or coding. We're all spending our own hard-earned dollars out of our own pockets, to pay for all of the above, just to keep the project(s) going, and publically available to users like yourself. A contribution of $5.00 or more isn't going to cripple your yearly income.

So, if you feel that our time is not well-spent, to help your computing experience improve in any way, then by all means, do not donate. Just remember, that you have absolutely no voice when it comes to prioritizing bugs or bug reports or outstanding issues you want fixed in a product you don't care to return the favor of support for.

If you're unsatisfied, feel free to return it to the store for a refund of your full purchase price.

You might consider donating because we (as Free Software authors, although I am not one of the core Mozilla developers, I speak for the same community) have already donated to you, and to countless thousands of others, by providing something useful for you, out of our spare time, so your computing experience can be enhanced and/or improved.

Software (Free or otherwise) costs money, lots of money in fact:

1. Bandwidth to host the site that the project resides on, and not just web, but cvs and ftp space as well, to the tune of several dozen (or hundred) gigabytes per day consumed. Bandwidth is not cheap, and it's definately not getting cheaper.

2. Testing every new change, on various kinds of software platforms and configurations; Windows, Linux, BSD, OSX, and others.

3. Hosting the requisite sub-projects that might rely on the main project. In the case of Mozilla, all of the other XUL projects (Calendar, et al).

4. Domain names to point your browser to, including dozens of other parner domains (mozdev.org, etc.)

5. Hardware, machines, test boxes, routers, switches, networking equipment.

6. Backups, backup hardware (tape drives, CDR media and drives, RAID sets of drives).

7. Time. Time to test, time to code, time taken out of a normal day to deliver a high-class product you use, and rely on.

Many of us also have day-jobs, so the time we have left at the end of our "official" working day, is either divided up between our spouses, eating, sleeping, or coding. We're all spending our own hard-earned dollars out of our own pockets, to pay for all of the above, just to keep the project(s) going, and publically available to users like yourself. A contribution of $5.00 or more isn't going to cripple your yearly income.

So, if you feel that our time is not well-spent, to help your computing experience improve in any way, then by all means, do not donate. Just remember, that you have absolutely no voice when it comes to prioritizing bugs or bug reports or outstanding issues you want fixed in a product you don't care to return the favor of support for.

If you're unsatisfied, feel free to return it to the store for a refund of your full purchase price.