Why Making Money From Free Software Matters

Glyn Moody sends in what could be a watershed article, if the recording and movie industries are paying attention. "People have been making money from free software ever since Richard Stallman started selling GNU Emacs on tapes for $150 a pop. That's been good for hackers, who have often managed to make a living from their coding by working for one of the startups based around free software. And as companies like Red Hat and Google have grown in size and profitability, so have the credibility and clout of free software. But there is another reason why the success of these new kinds of businesses is so crucial: in many respects they offer a glimpse of coming shifts in other industries that need to grapple with the conundrum of how to make money from goods that are freely available. In particular, they offer the music and film industries an example of an alternative to fighting people's natural instinct to share digital abundance, by making money from new scarcities."

Comments

Re:Cognitive dissonance

[dangitman]

Getting a program to version 0.01 or 0.09 might be worth a spare-time development effort. But without some other sort of motivation, the developer may not feel like taking it to 1.0.

So, basically the idea is that people who start worthwhile software projects and have new ideas don't deserve compensation, but the hangers-on who exploit those visions, do deserve to be paid? Sounds somewhat similar to the business model of those RIAA and MPAA middle-men.