Because when someone makes money off of my code, it's still my project. When someone reuses my code, it's no longer my project. Now, I don't mind that if it's a free project, they're working for the same goals that I am, and I can get anything good that they did.
I object to someone working with goals opposite those of mine getting a free lunch by exploiting my code. I don't want to work against myself. Besides, if someone can make money off of my free code, they've earned it. They've done something of real value to the people that have purchased it, and no harm, because they had to leave the freedom to the person that they made money off of.
On the other hand, if someone takes my products, adds some feature to it, and doesn't release source, they've given something of value, but they've also taken something of value. And frankly, I'm not that interested in helping people willing to trade freedom for other gain.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against proprietary software in the imediate practical sense. I'd like it to go away, but life is life. Just don't expect me to help people make proprietary software.
I don't think that the Linux community is fragmenting, not really. I think that what you're seeing is slashdot showing factionalism. When you get down to it, KDE and Gnome are working on being interoperable. Portions of Linux are being incorporated into HURD. People still contribute to egcs. I still can email the Linux heretic developer and try to get the thing to work on Linux/Alpha, and he emails me back and we try it. The Linux community is working together. In so far as we enter into it (i.e. code, write documentation, make pretty pictures, write themes, etc.), we aren't really fragmented. It's mostly the backseat drivers who are fragmented, which is natural. Everyone thinks that things should be done their own way, it's the people who actually do things that matter. And ESR and RMS do have very similar goals, at least compatable ones. They want the same thing, though they differ a bit on how to get it. Linus is still working on Linux, Raster is still working on imlib, Migael +250 are still working on Gnome, work on KDE continues, and even the harmony project has been restarted.
The goal of free software is to give everyone as much freedom as possible. By opening the source, you're not promoting freedom in this case but rather hindering it. It's a crappy situation, from the sound of it, but the way that you described it the best thing that you can do is to keep the source closed and serve the people as much as possible. You might want to make it clear to those who are using it that if anyone has the skill, you'll help them debug/improve the software, etc. This way the freedom's there but you're not screwing anyone over. Of course, I don't know how well unoficial stuff goes over with the military. Anyhow, do what's in the best interests of everyone involved. If you really are in a weird situation of keeping the source closed being best for your customers, then do it. After all, the idea of all this is to make the world a better place, not to lose sight of our goals and screw people over for a "cause".
In every situation, we should evaluate what does the most good for everyone (as individuals whenever possible). It just happens that in most cases this is done by Free Software/Open Source. The world is a quirky place, and we have to deal with the situations that we have. We have to shape the world to our ideals, not to our means.
Actually, egcs is owned by the FSF too. if you don't believe me, check out egcs.cygnus.com - everyone who contributes has to sign forms assigning their work to the FSF if they want it to be included in egcs.
Actually, Linux is a kernel and GNU is an operating system. Of course, I call my system Linux, shorter names are easier, and Linux just sounds better than GNU/Linux.
However, Linux is just one implementation of UNIX, when you get down to it. The kernel is the kernel, but do you say that you're on a Linux 2.2.4 system? Why not? That's the kernel.
Because you're talking about more than the kernel, but the sytem type. But the system type is hard to define. The idea of GNU is a free unix implementation. When you slap everything together into a debian distribution, isn't that what you have? A Free (as in speech) unix?
I'll sometimes just call what I'm on UNIX because that's what it really is. A specific implementation of UNIX, yes, but it's UNIX. You call it windows because of what the system is, not because of the kernel. I bet that the window's kernel name isn't windows, but probably something like "windows95 kernel". So do you say that it's Windows95 Kernel?
In the end, there's really no one thing to call it, and we can all use whatever nicknames that you want. The kernel isn't called GNU/Linux, but debian's dist is called Debian GNU/Linux. redhat's is called RedHat Linux. They all mean the same thing, and they all should probably be used at some point.
I just go for Linux because it's easier to say. but I always explain what the GPL is to those who don't know.
He said that he thinks that the proper name is GNU/Linux. In some ways, the right name is Linux. In others it's GNU.
In the end, though, he said this: "The specific name is not really important, though some people might want to think so. The importance is to give credit to the GNU project where credit is due."
He said that the name isn't important. He said it would be nice, but it isn't important. The whole tone of the article suggests that the important thing is the freedom. They want to spread the message of freedom, and publicity is a great help in that. Considering how much we owe to the FSF (The GPL, gcc, make, autoconf, bash, gdb, emacs, and many more), it's not asking much to get some publicity. After all, there probably would be no Linux if it weren't for the FSF. There'd be something, but nothing like what we know today.
And in the end, it doesn't matter much what we call it. I don't call it GNU/Linux. But I do explain the GPL to anyone I talk to about Linux. Credit where credit is due.
What would your replacements for gcc, g++, g77, autoconf, make, gdb, bash, and egcs be, out of curiosity?
Btw, you're wrong about switching the linux kernel changing things entirely. With the exception of a few linux-specific tools (like ifconfig, route, init, etc.), you could rip out the Linux kernel and have nearly the same computer. That was how Linux was written, it implemented the POSIX API, so it is inherently replaceable. Any other SYS V implementation of UNIX would be virtually identical.
Of course, the same thing could be said for anything, uncluding the GNU tools. If you replace them with replacements, you're not going to see much of a difference.
We're all really on a UNIX operating system, or more truthfully, a GNU operating system. Remember, GNU's Not Unix. It's a free Unix, which is what we're really all using. We're using a Linux kernel, but it's more a GNU system than it is a Linux system, except that it's a Linux implementation of the GNU operating system.
Of course, that's all mostly academic. I'm using a system built around Linux, so I'll call it Linux. It has a better name. I'll still GPL what I write, and Linux is GPL'd. As Long as the GPL is in public view, calling it GNU/Linux just makes speaking harder.:-)
What you're saying has its true elements, but then again what thing in the world hasn't been tainted? The railroad monopolies, when they existed were basically given to the railroads by the US government. The trucking industry was mostly paid for by the US government (the roads). A huge amount of the technology that we currently use has been developed by the milatary. Much of the medical practice in the US was funded by gov't research.
And some good can come out of tainted things. If the world for RMS was a freer place for the artificiality of government subsidies, the lessen isn't to chuck the freedom, it's to chuck the government subsidies. And he did, to a degree. He earned money, at least for a while, selling GNU software. I'm not sure what RMS is currently doing, my understanding is that he's an expensive independent consultant.
And the current FSF isn't subsidised by the government. It's an interesting historical detail that they were, but then again, much of the valued things in the world have been funded by governments. Where would we be without the roads in the world? Where would we be without all that money poored into medical science? Into mechanical technology? The internet was based on the ARPAnet, which was a government (military) network. Should we abandon the net because it has a tainted origin?
Everything grows. We're living in a world somewhat like the MIT AI labs of twenty years ago. And Migael de Icaza isn't recieving government funding, nor is Linus, Alan Cox, etc.
The MIT AI lab wasn't perfect, but neither is anything else. Government subsidies don't really have anything to do with the modern Open Source/Free Software movement.
What you're saying is a nice sentiment, but we happen to live in the world. People are fallable, and noone is perfect. Sure, in a perfect world we'd educate people instead of having prisons, there would be no laws because everyone would act in everyone else's best interests, etc.
However, we're not there yet, nor will we ever be. Paradise is never going to happen on this side of death. We'll find out about the other side when we're there.
Until then, trusting in the white-as-snow goodness of human nature is just simply foolish. History has demonstrated quite effectively that people will almost always trade freedom for material benefits, and eventually lose both. Why do you think that human nature has improved so much in the last 50 years?
If you can meet these quals, please tell me and take my job now. I want you to have it. I need someone else to take it before I burn out. Show me competence and I'll back you to the hilt. I'll hand you all my press contacts, make whatever introductions are needed, and disappear offstage so fast your head will spin.
He's going to retire when he finds a suitable replacement. That's the best date that any responsible person would give.
And who exactly begged you to promote us?
on
ESR Wants to Retire
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· Score: 1
And what will you do when all hardware is proprietary because noone put pressure for open specs? What will you do when all protocols have been "embraced" and "extended"? What will you do when while all the applications that people need are out there for windows only, and you don't terribly want to learn the tax code and keep up with it to write a clone of taxcut, so that you can replace your parent's win95 with Linux? What will you do when the corporate world plows over you, because noone stood and faught.
Your position will be respectable when you can show as much work done for the world as Eric has done. Your argument will be respectable when people standing off in the corner and ignoring the rest of the world has been proven to make a better world.
So when all hardware goes proprietary, and Linux will only work on old hardware, and the world demands that you live and work in it, what will you do? If you don't shape the world to your ideals, the world will shape you to it's ideals.
If the Linux "community" keeps silent, and lets the world go to hell, and everything becomes proprietary and corporations own everything but the equivalent of some hobbyists commodore64s in their basement, what will we do? If we stand silent and watch the world degenerate, what good will Linux be? If we silently give consent to information being as hidden as possible, what good will Linux be?
As Eisenhower said, "People who value their priveleges above their principles soon lose both." If we just sit the corner and do our own thing, what will we do when the hardware that we are running fails, and their are no open replacements? What will we do when everything is proprietary, and corporations own the world?
People have civic responsibility, even if they don't like to admit it. No one should have what they do belittled because "it was their duty". I'd never be ungrateful to Linus and claim that he did no more than his duty. But where would he be if he never started Linux? And if *BSD was never written?
If we don't try to leave the world a better place than we found it, we're pretty much guaranteed to leave it a worse place. Of course, given a fiarly large lifespan, like thirty or fourty years, we'll probably get to live in a good portion of the decay that we didn't prevent. If we make nothing good, what will we do when we look for good things? When the rivers are going to overflow their banks, we must shore them up, or we will drown. The corporate rivers are poised to overflow their banks. Shall we sit by minding our own business and be drowned in them?
You do realize that exponential growth is impossible after a certain point. The fact that Linux had exponential growth during the immature phase of it's growth is actually quite promising. If Linux wasn't going anywhere, one would expect very small, linear looking growth.
Also, don't forget that these are percentages, not actual numbers. Percentages by their nature have a limiting "population" of 100%. You can't have much growth that looks like exponential growth.
Also, don't forget that you're not looking at a very big interval here. 4 months isn't much time.
Aside from all that, what does it matter? Noone expected Linux to exhibit exponential growth for very long. Nothing could, not even the perfect operating system. Doesn't the fact that Linux server growth outpaced NT server growth impress you more than the fact that Linux wasn't doing it in a completely unprecedented way?
Question: What is your justification for claiming that a man shouldn't consider his morals while at work? Disclaimer: I'm not saying that Linux is the right tool for every job.
1. You can write proprietary programs using Gtk+. It's LGPL'd, not GPL'd.
2. The reason that I am running Linux on my Alpha right now is that DEC helped port Linux to the Alpha.
3. Since Linux is getting so popular, you are starting to see things like Trident Microsystems donating a driver for their 4D wave cards to the ALSA project - completely open source (GPL) with open specs. I'd like to see that with Linux being a 3-man system.
Isn't this article basically someone interviewing caldera as they whine that everyone else isn't as backwards as they are? Life goes on, and progress happens. Any app which isn't a major system app shouldn't be distribution dependent other than requiring certain minimum system libraries. So does Caldera want every dist to package antiquated libraries to be "compliant"?
And what is that about the LSB being "an industrywide push to decide what basic components should go into every Linux distribution"? Well, actually, I just checked out the page, and RedHat is one of the members. There doesn't seem to be much that's actually in LSB at the moment, aside from a spec for glibc 2.0. Exactly how imcompliant is RedHat to these "standards"? How many of these "standards" exist for RedHat's dist to be incompliant?
The Gnome panel has a pager that works with enlightenment, so as soon as you install gnome and run the panel (inserting "exec gnome-session" in your executable (i.e. "chmod +x ~/.xinitrc, once it exists) ~/.xinitrc file, immediately after the "#!/bin/sh" line (the # must be the first character on the first line)).
First off, RMS doesn't degrade the NPL. He said that iw as a free software license, just that it had problems with the GNU GPL.
Second, have you tried to sell Free Software (notice the caps)? If not, why don't you ask Cygnus Solutions how they make their money? Why don't you ask RedHat how they make their money? Why don't you ask AbiSource how they plan to make their money? It's a growing market, but people are selling Free Software.
Slashdot Mirror
Because when someone makes money off of my code, it's still my project. When someone reuses my code, it's no longer my project. Now, I don't mind that if it's a free project, they're working for the same goals that I am, and I can get anything good that they did.
I object to someone working with goals opposite those of mine getting a free lunch by exploiting my code. I don't want to work against myself. Besides, if someone can make money off of my free code, they've earned it. They've done something of real value to the people that have purchased it, and no harm, because they had to leave the freedom to the person that they made money off of.
On the other hand, if someone takes my products, adds some feature to it, and doesn't release source, they've given something of value, but they've also taken something of value. And frankly, I'm not that interested in helping people willing to trade freedom for other gain.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against proprietary software in the imediate practical sense. I'd like it to go away, but life is life. Just don't expect me to help people make proprietary software.
I don't think that the Linux community is fragmenting, not really. I think that what you're seeing is slashdot showing factionalism. When you get down to it, KDE and Gnome are working on being interoperable. Portions of Linux are being incorporated into HURD. People still contribute to egcs. I still can email the Linux heretic developer and try to get the thing to work on Linux/Alpha, and he emails me back and we try it. The Linux community is working together. In so far as we enter into it (i.e. code, write documentation, make pretty pictures, write themes, etc.), we aren't really fragmented. It's mostly the backseat drivers who are fragmented, which is natural. Everyone thinks that things should be done their own way, it's the people who actually do things that matter. And ESR and RMS do have very similar goals, at least compatable ones. They want the same thing, though they differ a bit on how to get it. Linus is still working on Linux, Raster is still working on imlib, Migael +250 are still working on Gnome, work on KDE continues, and even the harmony project has been restarted.
The world isn't falling to peices.
The goal of free software is to give everyone as much freedom as possible. By opening the source, you're not promoting freedom in this case but rather hindering it. It's a crappy situation, from the sound of it, but the way that you described it the best thing that you can do is to keep the source closed and serve the people as much as possible. You might want to make it clear to those who are using it that if anyone has the skill, you'll help them debug/improve the software, etc. This way the freedom's there but you're not screwing anyone over. Of course, I don't know how well unoficial stuff goes over with the military. Anyhow, do what's in the best interests of everyone involved. If you really are in a weird situation of keeping the source closed being best for your customers, then do it. After all, the idea of all this is to make the world a better place, not to lose sight of our goals and screw people over for a "cause".
In every situation, we should evaluate what does the most good for everyone (as individuals whenever possible). It just happens that in most cases this is done by Free Software/Open Source. The world is a quirky place, and we have to deal with the situations that we have. We have to shape the world to our ideals, not to our means.
Actually, egcs is owned by the FSF too. if you don't believe me, check out egcs.cygnus.com - everyone who contributes has to sign forms assigning their work to the FSF if they want it to be included in egcs.
Actually, Linux is a kernel and GNU is an operating system. Of course, I call my system Linux, shorter names are easier, and Linux just sounds better than GNU/Linux.
However, Linux is just one implementation of UNIX, when you get down to it. The kernel is the kernel, but do you say that you're on a Linux 2.2.4 system? Why not? That's the kernel.
Because you're talking about more than the kernel, but the sytem type. But the system type is hard to define. The idea of GNU is a free unix implementation. When you slap everything together into a debian distribution, isn't that what you have? A Free (as in speech) unix?
I'll sometimes just call what I'm on UNIX because that's what it really is. A specific implementation of UNIX, yes, but it's UNIX. You call it windows because of what the system is, not because of the kernel. I bet that the window's kernel name isn't windows, but probably something like "windows95 kernel". So do you say that it's Windows95 Kernel?
In the end, there's really no one thing to call it, and we can all use whatever nicknames that you want. The kernel isn't called GNU/Linux, but debian's dist is called Debian GNU/Linux. redhat's is called RedHat Linux. They all mean the same thing, and they all should probably be used at some point.
I just go for Linux because it's easier to say. but I always explain what the GPL is to those who don't know.
Can you point to someplace in the article where he prohibited you from calling it Linux?
He said that he thinks that the proper name is GNU/Linux. In some ways, the right name is Linux. In others it's GNU.
In the end, though, he said this:
"The specific name is not really important, though some people might want to think so. The importance is to give credit to the GNU project where credit is due."
He said that the name isn't important. He said it would be nice, but it isn't important. The whole tone of the article suggests that the important thing is the freedom. They want to spread the message of freedom, and publicity is a great help in that. Considering how much we owe to the FSF (The GPL, gcc, make, autoconf, bash, gdb, emacs, and many more), it's not asking much to get some publicity. After all, there probably would be no Linux if it weren't for the FSF. There'd be something, but nothing like what we know today.
And in the end, it doesn't matter much what we call it. I don't call it GNU/Linux. But I do explain the GPL to anyone I talk to about Linux. Credit where credit is due.
What would your replacements for gcc, g++, g77, autoconf, make, gdb, bash, and egcs be, out of curiosity?
:-)
Btw, you're wrong about switching the linux kernel changing things entirely. With the exception of a few linux-specific tools (like ifconfig, route, init, etc.), you could rip out the Linux kernel and have nearly the same computer. That was how Linux was written, it implemented the POSIX API, so it is inherently replaceable. Any other SYS V implementation of UNIX would be virtually identical.
Of course, the same thing could be said for anything, uncluding the GNU tools. If you replace them with replacements, you're not going to see much of a difference.
We're all really on a UNIX operating system, or more truthfully, a GNU operating system. Remember, GNU's Not Unix. It's a free Unix, which is what we're really all using. We're using a Linux kernel, but it's more a GNU system than it is a Linux system, except that it's a Linux implementation of the GNU operating system.
Of course, that's all mostly academic. I'm using a system built around Linux, so I'll call it Linux. It has a better name. I'll still GPL what I write, and Linux is GPL'd. As Long as the GPL is in public view, calling it GNU/Linux just makes speaking harder.
Disclaimer: I don't call my system a GNU/Linux system.
You should have a fun time without: gcc, make, autoconf, emacs, g77, g++, gas, egcs, gdb, gmp, at least (a quick check through me RedHat 5.2 system).
Now, if you want to discount all software under the GPL, you're in for a really good time.
Anyhow, how do you plan to make your GNU-free distribution without a compiler?
What you're saying has its true elements, but then again what thing in the world hasn't been tainted? The railroad monopolies, when they existed were basically given to the railroads by the US government. The trucking industry was mostly paid for by the US government (the roads). A huge amount of the technology that we currently use has been developed by the milatary. Much of the medical practice in the US was funded by gov't research.
And some good can come out of tainted things. If the world for RMS was a freer place for the artificiality of government subsidies, the lessen isn't to chuck the freedom, it's to chuck the government subsidies. And he did, to a degree. He earned money, at least for a while, selling GNU software. I'm not sure what RMS is currently doing, my understanding is that he's an expensive independent consultant.
And the current FSF isn't subsidised by the government. It's an interesting historical detail that they were, but then again, much of the valued things in the world have been funded by governments. Where would we be without the roads in the world? Where would we be without all that money poored into medical science? Into mechanical technology? The internet was based on the ARPAnet, which was a government (military) network. Should we abandon the net because it has a tainted origin?
Everything grows. We're living in a world somewhat like the MIT AI labs of twenty years ago. And Migael de Icaza isn't recieving government funding, nor is Linus, Alan Cox, etc.
The MIT AI lab wasn't perfect, but neither is anything else. Government subsidies don't really have anything to do with the modern Open Source/Free Software movement.
What you're saying is a nice sentiment, but we happen to live in the world. People are fallable, and noone is perfect. Sure, in a perfect world we'd educate people instead of having prisons, there would be no laws because everyone would act in everyone else's best interests, etc.
However, we're not there yet, nor will we ever be. Paradise is never going to happen on this side of death. We'll find out about the other side when we're there.
Until then, trusting in the white-as-snow goodness of human nature is just simply foolish. History has demonstrated quite effectively that people will almost always trade freedom for material benefits, and eventually lose both. Why do you think that human nature has improved so much in the last 50 years?
If you can meet these quals, please tell me and take my job now. I want you to have it. I need someone else to take it before I burn out. Show me competence and I'll back you to the hilt. I'll hand you all my press contacts, make whatever introductions are needed, and disappear offstage so fast your head will spin.
He's going to retire when he finds a suitable replacement. That's the best date that any responsible person would give.
And what will you do when all hardware is proprietary because noone put pressure for open specs? What will you do when all protocols have been "embraced" and "extended"? What will you do when while all the applications that people need are out there for windows only, and you don't terribly want to learn the tax code and keep up with it to write a clone of taxcut, so that you can replace your parent's win95 with Linux? What will you do when the corporate world plows over you, because noone stood and faught.
Your position will be respectable when you can show as much work done for the world as Eric has done. Your argument will be respectable when people standing off in the corner and ignoring the rest of the world has been proven to make a better world.
So when all hardware goes proprietary, and Linux will only work on old hardware, and the world demands that you live and work in it, what will you do? If you don't shape the world to your ideals, the world will shape you to it's ideals.
If the Linux "community" keeps silent, and lets the world go to hell, and everything becomes proprietary and corporations own everything but the equivalent of some hobbyists commodore64s in their basement, what will we do? If we stand silent and watch the world degenerate, what good will Linux be? If we silently give consent to information being as hidden as possible, what good will Linux be?
As Eisenhower said, "People who value their priveleges above their principles soon lose both." If we just sit the corner and do our own thing, what will we do when the hardware that we are running fails, and their are no open replacements? What will we do when everything is proprietary, and corporations own the world?
People have civic responsibility, even if they don't like to admit it. No one should have what they do belittled because "it was their duty". I'd never be ungrateful to Linus and claim that he did no more than his duty. But where would he be if he never started Linux? And if *BSD was never written?
If we don't try to leave the world a better place than we found it, we're pretty much guaranteed to leave it a worse place. Of course, given a fiarly large lifespan, like thirty or fourty years, we'll probably get to live in a good portion of the decay that we didn't prevent. If we make nothing good, what will we do when we look for good things? When the rivers are going to overflow their banks, we must shore them up, or we will drown. The corporate rivers are poised to overflow their banks. Shall we sit by minding our own business and be drowned in them?
So what do you want? A RedHat install that automatically wipes your partition table and sets it up the way that it wants to?
You do realize that exponential growth is impossible after a certain point. The fact that Linux had exponential growth during the immature phase of it's growth is actually quite promising. If Linux wasn't going anywhere, one would expect very small, linear looking growth.
Also, don't forget that these are percentages, not actual numbers. Percentages by their nature have a limiting "population" of 100%. You can't have much growth that looks like exponential growth.
Also, don't forget that you're not looking at a very big interval here. 4 months isn't much time.
Aside from all that, what does it matter? Noone expected Linux to exhibit exponential growth for very long. Nothing could, not even the perfect operating system. Doesn't the fact that Linux server growth outpaced NT server growth impress you more than the fact that Linux wasn't doing it in a completely unprecedented way?
How do you turn on Haifa on egcs?
Question: What is your justification for claiming that a man shouldn't consider his morals while at work?
Disclaimer: I'm not saying that Linux is the right tool for every job.
Three things:
1. You can write proprietary programs using Gtk+. It's LGPL'd, not GPL'd.
2. The reason that I am running Linux on my Alpha right now is that DEC helped port Linux to the Alpha.
3. Since Linux is getting so popular, you are starting to see things like Trident Microsystems donating a driver for their 4D wave cards to the ALSA project - completely open source (GPL) with open specs. I'd like to see that with Linux being a 3-man system.
Actually, if you go to the LSB homepage (http://www.linuxbase.org), you will notice that RedHat is one of the members.
Isn't this article basically someone interviewing caldera as they whine that everyone else isn't as backwards as they are? Life goes on, and progress happens. Any app which isn't a major system app shouldn't be distribution dependent other than requiring certain minimum system libraries. So does Caldera want every dist to package antiquated libraries to be "compliant"?
And what is that about the LSB being "an industrywide push to decide what basic components should go into every Linux distribution"? Well, actually, I just checked out the page, and RedHat is one of the members. There doesn't seem to be much that's actually in LSB at the moment, aside from a spec for glibc 2.0. Exactly how imcompliant is RedHat to these "standards"? How many of these "standards" exist for RedHat's dist to be incompliant?
Whatever it was that had the other web guys drooling, of course. :-)
Would you have any screenshots? That would be cool.
The Gnome panel has a pager that works with enlightenment, so as soon as you install gnome and run the panel (inserting "exec gnome-session" in your executable (i.e. "chmod +x ~/.xinitrc, once it exists) ~/.xinitrc file, immediately after the "#! /bin/sh" line (the # must be the first character on the first line)).
First off, RMS doesn't degrade the NPL. He said that iw as a free software license, just that it had problems with the GNU GPL.
Second, have you tried to sell Free Software (notice the caps)? If not, why don't you ask Cygnus Solutions how they make their money? Why don't you ask RedHat how they make their money? Why don't you ask AbiSource how they plan to make their money? It's a growing market, but people are selling Free Software.