Young Programmer, Stop Advocating Free Software!

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 1, 2004 @03:15AM from the *click*-flame-thrower-on dept.

Lansdowne writes "Clemens Vasters, in an open letter to a young developer he met at a software conference, asks him to consider the consequences of writing software for free. "Software is the immediate result and the manifestation of what your learned and what you know. How much is that worth? Nothing? Think again."" While I don't particularly agree with all of the points made here, this is the type of question that needs to be answered to continue to get people involved in Free/Open/Libre/GNU/whatever source/software/code.

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Re:net result by mslinux · 2004-03-01 06:46 · Score: 1, Redundant

"Unlike some assholes, I'm quite happy helping people improve their lives without demanding something in return. Gee, imagine that."

If you owned an apartment building, would you allow people to live in it rent-free? How would you pay taxes on it? What about insurance and maintainence? Software is no different. There is no free lunch.